1) Do you ever find yourself striving for perfection, and then being disappointed because it always eludes you?
THREAD 👇
THREAD 👇
2) As a young student in Hamburg, Peter Drucker went to see the opera every week.
He had very little money, but showing up an hour before the performance meant scoring any of the unsold cheap seats allocated to university students for free.
He had very little money, but showing up an hour before the performance meant scoring any of the unsold cheap seats allocated to university students for free.
3) Upon one evening, he sat for Falstaff.
“I have never forgotten the impression that evening made on me,” he said, totally overwhelmed by Giuseppe Verdi’s comic opera.
“I have never forgotten the impression that evening made on me,” he said, totally overwhelmed by Giuseppe Verdi’s comic opera.
4) Drucker was shocked to learn that Falstaff, with its incredible vitality and zest for life, was written when Verdi was eighty.
5) “To me, then just eighteen, eighty was an incredible age.”
This was a time when life expectancy, even among healthy people, was around fifty.
This was a time when life expectancy, even among healthy people, was around fifty.
6) Then he read what Verdi himself had said, when asked why, at his age and famously considered as one of the nineteenth century’s foremost opera composers, he had taken on the hard work of writing one more—an exceedingly demanding one, no less.
7) “All my life as a musician,” Verdi said, “I have striven for perfection. It has always eluded me. I surely had an obligation to make one more try.”
8) Those words made an indelible impression on Drucker.
He resolved that, whatever his life’s work would be, Verdi’s words would be his lodestar.
He resolved that, whatever his life’s work would be, Verdi’s words would be his lodestar.
9) If he reached old age, he would keep striving for perfection knowing full well it would surely elude him.
10) A year before Drucker passed away, at 95 years of age, having written 39 books and countless articles, he was asked if there was anything else in his long career that he wished he had done.
11) “Yes, quite a few things,” he said. “There are many books I could have written that are better than the ones I actually wrote. My best book would have been Managing Ignorance, and I’m very sorry I didn’t write it.”
12) I write more about Drucker and his importance to your next chapter—or maybe the one after that—here. stray-reflections.com
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