Weekly Wisdom – Sweet Urgency

What is the mood of Sweet Urgency?

There is a mood that arises when we face, confront, and accept that we are mortal and do not have unlimited time in our lives. It becomes stronger the older that we become. Many people don’t experience this mood because they avoid facing their mortality, until it cannot be avoided. But whether we‘re younger, and looking at how to direct our lives, or in our elder years where time is preciously shorter, our finitude produces the urgency to get on with what’s truly meaningful to us.

This is a choice rather than to live in a posture of deferral because we think we can get to it later.

Rather than fear, desperation, or impatience, the sweetness of this mood is based on turning towards what really matters to you. What is the true source of value, meaning, and aliveness for you. Your sweet urgency to use the time in your life well. Not later, but now. For the sake of what truly matters.

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.
                                                                                    — Carl Jung

Design Perspective

“Sweet Urgency” is a term first spoken to me by my wife, Josephina Santiago. We talk daily about our lives, living, thinking, and experiencing. We were speaking about human finitude, our own experience of becoming elders, and the sense of urgency and focus to do what is still left to do that matters I our lives.

Sweet urgency is more immediate when we’re older, but the awareness of our finitude – that we have limited time in our lives – is a gift at any age. To pay attention to our inner life, not just our outer circumstances as part of our life journey. The enemy is deferral, any reason we have for not doing that. To drift, be busy, be uncertain, or have stories that keep us apart from what really matters.

A discovery in my work with generative leadership was that it is always based on being a generative human being. Being generative is not just for leadership. It’s for all of us, all the time. Being generative means that we have learned to make choices and take action based on what is truly the source of value, satisfaction, and meaning in our lives and the lives of others.

This source is our Care. We cannot have value, satisfaction, and meaning except by being connected to something we care about. I’m not using the word “care” to mean worry, woes, or reaction to what demands our attention. I’m referring to what is the source of what truly matters to you. Care is an emotion, not just an idea. You feel it deeply in your body.

Although it may take some effort to find, it is in each of us. Some call it our destiny, or our purpose, or our calling. It is what truly matters. I define a good life as finding our deepest care, and organizing our life to take care of that care.

Sweet urgency is the mood to notice that we don’t have forever, or later, to do that. A lifetime may be too short. But it’s time to be about it now.

For example, this conversation and newsletter is part of my sweet urgency.

What is your sweet urgency?