An activity-ist walks into a bar

I've talked quite a bit here about the critical question in shaping a life being whether you're an activist or a passivist. What I should have done was use two made-up words: Activity-ist and passivist. The position I mean to advocate is really one that places what we do (activity) at the center of a life-building plan.

So what does happen when someone who believes in this activity-driven way of living life walks into a bar? Well, for one thing, it likely has a big influence on how he or she walks through the door.

Let me explain:

I constantly find myself in conversations, both in and outside of my therapy practice, where people are telling me how much they don't like this or that place or event of set of circumstances (or lately this or that time of year--this being a favored way of talking about the end-of-year holidays).

But what would happen to this way of talking about things (events, the holidays) if we saw them as an activity? In other words, what if the bar (to stick to one example) wasn't so much the stools and the tables, the beer and the food, the music and the televisions, but was seen rather as the set of activities engaged in by all of the various people hanging out in the bar, including you?

If you walked through the door with an understanding that what happens while you're at the bar has a lot to do with what you make happen, then you can't really issue a passive indictment of the experience: "Oh, I didn't like that bar. I had a lousy time."

Sure, this bar might be too loud or too smoky for your taste, or you may not like the crowd, but you have a role, too, in shaping whether or not you and your companions have a good time.

The punchline?

I guess the punchline is yours to tell. Whether walking into a bar or through any doorway in life, how things go when you get in there has an awful lot to do with what you make of it.