Happiness or Meaning?

I know this blog is supposed to be about lessons from my day job at a design firm in Silicon Valley, but this little tete-a-tete between two characters from the breakaway hit show Heroes is rather profound and worth citing here:

Linderman: ”There come a time when a man has to ask himself whether he wants a life of happiness or a life of meaning.”

Nathan: ”I’d like to have both.”

Linderman: ”Can’t be done. Two very different paths. To be truly happy, a man must live absolutely in the present, no thought of what’s gone before and no thought of what lies ahead. But a life with meaning, a man is condemned to wallow in the past and obsess about the future.”

Wow. There’s gotta be a connection to pushing pixels and creating good user experience and all that in there somewhere.

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