Friday Afternoon Confessional: I’m not an undertaker.

It is crucial, or so we are told, that we undertake things. In English, such undertaking can earn you the title of entrepreneur. It’s such a tongue-twistingly ugly word that it’s reserved for the successful few. Anybody can be an undertaker, but entrepreneurs, real entrepreneurs, are few and far between. It’s, by the way, characteristic of ugly nouns for ugly elite concepts to attract ‘real’ as adjective and contaminate it with the need for italicization. I confess I’m annoyed with the concept (which says little because I equally confess that I’m annoyed at being annoyed).

In my native Dutch language, the noun corresponding to ‘to undertake’ is not taken by the specific undertaking which is to take dead people to their underground destination. So we’re all supposed to undertake, ondernemen, and become true undertakers, ondernemers (for ‘true’, see ‘real’ above). As is adequately demonstrated by the time it takes me to come to the point, I ain’t no undertaker. Oddly enough this is also supported by the fact that the only corpse I plan to be associated with is my own whilst – in proverbial Dutch and The Apprentice – entrepreneurs have to handle corpses with the same ease as undertakers do.

Which brings me to why I’m no undertaker.

Basically, I don’t plan to take anybody under.

I confess I don’t really care what’s right bottom on the excel sheet spelling out what’s underneath me and what I’ve taken. It’s just that I do not have big hairy balls and, believe you me, real managers not only think that both bigness and hairiness of their balls is crucially important; they also like their balls Simple  and Measurable, basically the amount of people and money they’re amassing in their personal spreadsheets. They feel smart that way.

So what has been pointed out to me is that I can’t be a true entrepreneur because I am not driven by ownership. And I am not. I’m really not. I confess they’re right about me. I’ll desist then like pussies do. Crawl back where I came from. Leave it to those real men who are out their to take or are on the take.  I won’t compete anymore realizing now that I’m not competitive. Thanks, guys, for clearing that out for me. Sorry for the intrusion. Peace!

I confess all the same that this world would be a better world without undertakers. Actually, I’m pretty damned certain that this world would see a lot more initiative if there were less undertakers. I should have lived in the 60s. Rather, I should have died in the 60s as that would have spared me the pandemic spread of the American Dream. We’re all so much taken under a concept of ‘making it’ that in the end nobody is making anything anymore.

That can’t be true, can it? Shouldn’t we be eternally grateful for all these entrepreneurs giving us the internet and whatnot? Are we not living the epoch of explosive creativity? Would any of these great technological gifts have been possible without the real entrepreneurs who subjugate employees and consumers in order to realize their single-minded vision? Sure it’s true. Everybody knows it’s true. Nobody tries to mess with the big hairy balls though.

I confess I’m not going to mess with them. That would take the big hairy balls which I clearly don’t have (and don’t miss, which is even worse according to the voices of the other side). I have zero belief in the strategy that you have to fight fire with fire. It’s a big hairy balls-belief. And I won’t have it. I won’t join them to beat them. And they will be completely right when they attribute my failure to join them as weakness. It’s a weakness I wear with pride.

Man, do I sound like a broken record (add smiley-face of your liking)!

I already confessed at being annoyed to be annoyed. Serves me right for trying to go against my grain and trying to join them. Being Realistic. Doing things in a way which is deemed Acceptable. Creating milestones so whatever we do is done with right Timing. Trying to be smart. Here’s to naïve stupidity. I’m shaving my balls as we speak, shrinking they will do automatically. All my faith is with the young people realizing that naïvely stupid people lucky enough to be born in money got us our progress. So the only way forward is to make sure nobody needs luck (nor balls) to get ‘in the money’.