So, I went to a wedding this past weekend. It was a lot of fun to see an old friend get married. The ceremony was beautiful and the reception a blast. They even had an open candy bar, yes CANDY bar. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. All kinds of candy, all available for you to place in a tiny white paper bag. I was giddy as a bear devouring hohos. My wife patiently patted my arm and said, “If we ever get married again, we can have a candy bar.” So, I sat back, chomped on a yogurt-covered pretzel, and dreamed of the day I’d marry my wife for the second time.

While sugar plums danced in my head, I happened to notice the dance floor. Now, I’ve got a little bit of rhythm, but watching me dance is like watching a bear devour a box of hohos: kind of odd, a little unsettling, and completely unnatural. I have, therefore, avoided dance floors much like a camper would avoid a bear eating hohos…(Could a box of hohos really satisfy a bear? Or, would he be extra hungry for meat afterward?)

But, there were a few kids there who were just having a good time dancing their hearts out. To be honest, they weren’t very good, but they didn’t care. They turned and twisted and to quote that great philosopher, Will Smith, “got jiggywidit.”

This made me think of two things:

First, of a passage in a book by Gordon MacKenzie called Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace where he talks about doing presentations in schools. During these presentations, he would always ask how many of the students were artists. At the first grade level, almost every kid waved their hand high in the air. By the second grade, about two-thirds still waved their hands proudly and so on. By the sixth grade, peer pressure and the desperate need for acceptance caused only a kid or two to timidly move their hand to eye level.

Secondly, it made me think of a post on Seth Godin’s blog about how marketers are in the business of destroying happiness. In order to market a product or service to someone who is quite happy with the status quo, we need to destroy that status quo – so that they feel a need to buy the product we’re selling. We provide the cure-all for the problems they didn’t know they had.

And, I couldn’t help but wonder if our consumer-based culture is one of the factors in transforming the dancing kids & the artists into people who see themselves as bears eating hohos.

Is there a better way? I think so. I hope so. But, I don’t have any firm answers.

What do you think?

Related posts:

1. Stop Dancing and Bring Something to the Table.
2. Must Miss TV

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