All Or Nothing At All?

All Or Nothing At All?

Sinatra had a great recording of the song, “All Or Nothing At All” (Arthur Altman and Jack Lawrence) about love. But today, it seems to pervade everything.

All electric cars, no more internal combustion engines. All electronic files, no hard copies. All automated responses, no human operators. All streaming, no more movie theaters. All with the option to vote by mail, no exceptions. All sales are final, no refunds. All school years are 180 days, no less.

When you allow for no flexibility or options, you delimit your chances for success. Polarization is a damper on innovation and better solutions. 

Remember when flight attendants had to be attractive women of a certain height and weight and had their undergarments checked by supervisors?! Some airlines today are permitting tattoos and piercings to be seen on their flight attendants—female, male, and non-binary.

There will be internal combustion-driven cars on the roads within all of the lifetimes of anyone reading this. I’m seeing an alteration in making it easier to access interactive human help online by many businesses. Movie theaters are repurposing themselves.

Life is about options, not either/or, all or nothing. It’s a rheostat, not an “on/off” switch. If we can’t adapt to that, we’re going to have “nothing at all.”