The Art of Non-Conformity: Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work, and Travel

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A couple of years ago, I was in London on a three-day layover after flying in from Africa. I had been in Sierra Leone for several months and was looking forward to walking the streets, hanging out in coffee shops, and seeing friends before heading on.

On my first night in the city, I had nothing important to do, so I took the underground down to Trafalgar Square. I bought a takeaway curry meal for dinner and ate about half of it on a park bench. Then I went walking down Oxford Street for about 15 blocks in search of the nearest Borders bookstore where I hoped to spend the rest of the evening reading books and drinking coffee. I kept the rest of my dinner box with me, because I thought I might run into a homeless person who would appreciate some food. After walking 10 blocks, I hadn’t met anyone and began to feel silly about carrying around half a box of vegetable curry, so I finally threw it away.

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Photo credit: Selva

One of my favorite poems deals with the subject of accomplishing much in life and then not having anything to show for it afterwards. It’s called Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the text is below:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

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Everyone lives their life by some sort of internalized list of values or moral code, but many people don’t take the time to sort out what they really believe in. Because of this disparity, they often feel conflicted when deciding how to make regular choices about time, money, and personal decisions.

One definition of integrity is how closely your life aligns with your values. In other words, do you do what you say you do? Do you live your life according to what you believe in?

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Image by welsh

Regardless of what kind of work you do, it’s usually not difficult to set yourself apart by going beyond the status quo of being average.

All too many working environments are filled with all kinds of people who are just ambling through their jobs. Many don’t want to be there at all, and never miss a chance to let everyone know how much they’d rather be somewhere else.

Others are embarrassingly opportunistic, focused entirely on themselves and “what’s in it for them.” Their every move is built on pleasing the people they think will determine their future. Still others in most workplaces base their time and energy on the goal of just getting by. They do what they need to do, for the most part, but they rarely take risks and rarely excel.

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