Monday, November 12, 2007

Passion and Purpose

In one of his poems, W H Auden expresses something of the passion that’s displayed when people are living out the purpose for which they are born:

"You need not see what someone is doing
To know if it is his vocation,
You only have to watch his eyes:
A cook mixing his sauce, a surgeon
Making a primary incision,
A clerk completing a bill of lading
Wear the same expression,
Forgetting themselves in a function."

Cited in Warren Bennis, Managing the Dream: Reflections on Leadership and Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2000,) xxvii

Geoff Pound

Image: “A surgeon making a primary incision.”