When I was still very much figuring out what shape Groundwork would take, an acquaintance-turned-mentor-turned-friend told me about the Helsinki Bus Station Theory, originally attributed to Arno Rafael Minkkinen, from a graduation speech. The idea was initially prescribed for artists, but I think it’s broadly extensible, and has struck some chord in me that feels deeply relevant to what we’re building at Groundwork.
Here’s the idea: at the Helsinki Bus Station, there are tens of platforms to take off from. But all of the buses take essentially the same route out of the city, making the same stops. Train paths that diverged substantially by the end were indistinguishable at the beginning. Translated into career terms, that’s those first few years out of college, where you’re going down a path that’s pretty similar to many of your peers. It all feels a bit banal. And it’s not until you have stayed on the bus for an uncomfortably long time that you’re able to reach a unique destination. The analogy for creativity is easy to grasp: you persist past the ordinary to reach something unique, something that only you could have summoned forth.
What I love about this idea is what it implies. The lesson is one of commitment, acceptance, faith and, to a degree, boredom. In contrast with so much of what our contemporary lexicon prescribes, it is not an idea that explicitly glorifies striving (and it even sort of explicitly denounces busyness). It’s quieter. It glorifies instead the beauty of believing in oneself and having the patience to see what many years of persistence and patience means you can do.
It also reminds me of my Dad. This was his LinkedIn bio:
That “41 years, 8 months” can move me to tears. He stayed on the bus. He persisted through architecture school, through Denver-based internships, through a move to Connecticut and building a business in a new market, through starting his firm with a business partner who eventually got off the bus, through a business shift from primarily residential to primarily commercial, through many, many evolutions. And what he had at the end was an adoring community of people, deeply grateful for the beauty he had built around them, and in awe of the commitment and reverence with which he treated his work, their homes and their towns. There were so many beautiful outcomes of his willingness to stay on the bus.
I suppose I come back to this idea because long before I had the right language, a part of me has always been sort of obsessed with “staying on the bus” because of my dad. But in the past couple years, I’ve worried that given the realities of work and life in this phase, this idea can be one that hits a nerve, a nerve perhaps like,“Yea, ‘staying on the bus’ sounds great for those who can, I unfortunately need to do something different,” or, a bit more softly, “Since having kids it’s clear to me I don’t have a career that is important enough to me to stay on the bus for.” So I guess it makes me sad that given the current default dynamics in our country, we, as mothers (or parents, caregivers, all of us here), may be less likely to get to stay on the bus and see the glorious place our bus may take us.
I don’t necessarily have a silver bullet answer. Groundwork, is of course my take on a potential solution, with the goal to make it easier to maintain career consistency during peak childrearing years. A bit of a bus ticket for the next 2, 3, however many stops, so to speak.
But another idea that I find comforting is that in staying on the bus, the “bus” doesn’t need to be limited to your career. Your bus can be a friendship, a volunteer engagement, a hobby, an athletic or artistic pursuit. Each of those things will reap the benefits of your long-term, sustained, dedicated commitment. And perhaps, provocatively (or really not that provocative at all? I don’t know) I don’t think your bus is your relationship with your kids. I think the vast majority of us will do all that’s in our power to stay on the “bus” that is our relationship with our kids, no matter what. So I think we each should have another bus, too. One that feels a bit more uncomfortable and perhaps even sometimes hard to justify. But one that lets us see what we can do over a long time horizon. One measured not on the fast-paced, bite-size scale of our day-to-day, but over years, even decades. Long enough that we can look back, shake our heads, and say "Wow, I can't believe that's where I started."
