The Beginning

The critic Anatole Broyard once opined that

The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.

Today is one of those days that isn’t. A middle, that is.  It feels like something has begun and it feels as if other things have ended.  For someone my age, who grew up during the 60’s and saw the Civil Rights movement at its peak, yesterday provided an end of sorts to that time.  One of the things I thought about watching the 200,000 people in Grant Park last night was the 10,000 people in that park 40 years earlier who were loudly demanding change during the Democratic Convention and how they were beaten, gassed, and jailed for doing so.  It felt like the end of that demonstration had finally come and change is upon us.

What’s the business lesson today?  Maybe that as business people we can’t dictate to our consumers; we can only reflect their desires and, in the words of Ray Davies, give the people what they want.  Even if it takes 40 years.