“YOU JUST DO.” – 11/15/2022
Almost since the onset of its boom years in the 1970s, running has espoused the Just Do It lifestyle. Famously, a tag line for a shoe company, Just Do It was coined by Dan Wieden, co-founder of the Wieden+Kennedy advertising firm. He died October 3, 2022 at age 77.
In one phrase, Wieden captured the essence of a movement that defined an era. Just Do It was the embodiment of an unspoken, but powerful lure to a fuller life, as a generation came to its maturity seeking to explore the limits of its physical abilities.
Looking back from this far vantage point, and comparing it to the era preceding it, one can see what a luxury, what freedom it was to be able to seek such fulfillment. Not every generation is afforded that luxury in equal measure.
I recently published a book about my parents’ meeting and marriage during the waning, gray days of World War II in Poland – BISIA & ISHAM: The Countess & the P.O.W. (there is a link to buying it along the black bar above this post). It’s a remarkable story of an escaped American POW, and a Polish resistance fighter reared in a medieval castle who met and married in a matter of 11 days. though neither spoke the other’s language.
Broadcaster Tom Brokaw dubbed theirs The Greatest Generation, an acknowledgement of the testing times they confronted like few generations had before. Yet in my experience, it was responsibility that defined them. I can’t remember a single day my father didn’t get up and go to work. Or one in which my mom ever shirked her responsibilities as a teacher in a career spanning 40 years.
Steadfast is what their nations called them into service to be, and it’s a measure of what they tried to impart to us. But history rarely repeats itself from one generation to the next. Thus, the lessons learned in one may no longer apply as directly, no matter how valuable.
For example, compare our Just Do It mentality with my dad’s response when asked how he and his cohort managed the massive challenges of their generation, including the Great Depression and WWII.
“You just go,” he said. “You just do.”
There is a hard-eyed acceptance in that response that has nothing to do with what he might have wanted to do or where he may have wanted to go. How similar, yet how different a phrase from our “Just Do It”.
“You Just do” suggests a world coming at you hard, like a big wind that puts you on your back foot. What Shakespeare called “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” where choices are few, opportunities limited. Duty, not want, is the order of the day.
Just Do it, by comparison, suggests a determination to achieve a challenge of one’s own making.
“You Just Do” takes up the mantle of responsibility for challenges beyond such choosing.
We are all born into the whirl of time, our challenges determined by the sweep of history. Just like the greatest American presidents are the ones whose times required greatness, so, too, are our lives predicated upon the ancient Chinese curse, “May he live in interesting times.”
A curse? Or a blessing? Only time will tell. Hope you enjoy the book.
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