Our Guide to Getting Somewhere

The other day, after the third or fourth snowfall of the season, a passé idea for a meme started popping into in-boxes across my city. It griped about the weather, took shots at our transit system, our architecture and our workforce. It wasn’t that witty, or even all that biting. It made me sigh, though.

Given any 10-second window, I can recite 20 great things about Edmonton. On an off-day. While multi-tasking. And another 20 during the next window.

But that makes it sound like my pride was stung, and that’s not it. I’m in marketing. I have a pretty thick skin. No, what irks me is anything that slows me down. Dragging apathy along is exhausting. Add pessimism, and we all run out of gas.

This city is home to considerable economic success because most of us aren’t complainers. We dart around barriers because we know that lean and nimble often gets the jump on big and slow.

Success doesn’t just grow. It needs to be fed.  The formula is a lot like something I read the other day, when I came across the masthead of The Economist, the weekly newspaper that looks like a magazine and offers insight into politics, business and science. Its mission statement goes like this: “First published in September 1843 to take part in ‘a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.’ ”

I know which side of that contest I’m on. Do you?