• Hi, I’m Brad Abare

  I'm a make-it-happen guy working with big idea people. I design teams and orchestrate strategy so that great ideas I believe in get done.
  
  I am Jamaica's husband, Foursquare's comm director, Personality's founder, and a catalyst for CFCC.
  
  
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Almost every week for the past many years, my patient wife will hear me utter an exasperated jumble of words that are just as much rhetorical as they are self-incriminating. “What am I going to do with my life?” has been my sentiment de jour for way too long. My reoccurring cries are not meant to minimize or marginalize any of the fantastic failures or meager momentum I’ve experienced the past 30 years. Rather, my question echoes out of my deep search for a meaning-filled life I long to live.

However, lately, I’m becoming more and more convinced that purpose and meaning are not meant to be figured out or pursued. Instead, I think I’m supposed to be pursuing conflict. Purpose and meaning will follow.

Am I the only one who gets joyfully depressed when I read stories like those of Jim Stockdale, Tyndale & Luther, Wyclef Jean, and John Wood? Joyful because of their significant sacrifice and ability to overcome conflict. Depressed because I’m pretty good at reading books about stories I can’t tell.

Someone once said: “When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.”

When kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up, we often hear responses like “firefighter,” “doctor,” “astronaut,” “spiderman” or “superman.” I wonder if at the core of these responses lies a desire that all of us have to be part of an epic conflict. We want to rush into the burning house and save everyone inside. We want to defy the laws of physics and explore planets we know not of. We want to scale huge buildings and fly over big cities destroying the bad guys and rescuing the good ones.

But the older we get, we replace our epic desire for conflict with an epic appetite for comfort.

Donald Miller’s latest book talks a lot about this idea of conflict, and what makes for a good life story. “If you aren’t telling a good story, nobody thinks you died too soon; they just think you died,” he says.

Roy H. Williams talks about passion and commitment in this week’s Monday Morning Memo. He said that “Passion does not produce commitment. Commitment produces passion.”

I want conflict.
Conflict I am passionate about.
Which will result in my commitment to overcome such conflict.

The question is, what conflict should I be running toward?

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