A good friend of mine asked me this morning if this thoughtfully titled book, “The Long Obedience in the Same Direction”, captured what we meant by pursuing OPUS with a long-term perspective. For a practitioner of any faith, this book may have absolutely nailed it. But obedience is far from the right description of what I believe an authentic OPUS should feel like.
In my mind, an OPUS should be something that lights you up when you read it. It is a vision for your life that takes all your unique gifts and applies them in this world from a place of service. Your Unified Strategies push you to pick hard PAs because you know they are going to make progress toward this dream state of yours, if you do them.
The combination of these elements fuels your forward momentum, building strength and confidence along the way. Overtime, you start to believe that anything can be accomplished with a sustained commitment to see it through.
Many may think this is pie in the sky pollyanna thinking and that’s their choice for wanting to believe that. I believe that almost any authentic OPUS can be achieved in a decade. The choice to not even try to put pen to paper on what that could look like is simply that: a choice.
Life, outside of faith, should not feel like a life of obedience. This is the road toward disciplined drudgery, at least from my perspective. Choose a labor of love instead. We only have one life and 5-8 decades to even try to pursue a long-term OPUS.
The best time to write an OPUS was a decade ago. The second-best time is now. Give it a shot and dream bigger.