Engraved on the sides of each up-and-coming professional’s briefcase—chalked on the concrete of VIP parking spaces, finger-nailed into the windows of corner offices, sewn into the elbow patches of academia’s tenured soldiers—are the new rules: The 21st-century job is not the one you keep fifteen years. The economy not one in which you make lateral moves (go up, uP, UP). The ideas of the 21st century ride global freeways (not tiny, think big, biG, BIG). In this circus, no one wants to be the C-word: complacent.

This thinking extends beyond the business realm. Are you constantly challenging your kids’ minds, bodies? Are you doing the same for yourself? Watch it. Complacency will blanket your entire home life. HOME is no place to rest! You should, too, be thinking of ways to conserve more energy, integrate different medias in seamless ways. Just doing the basics, you could fall into—that’s right—complacency. (As I type this a woman is being placed in the scaffold at her monthly Young Professionals meeting for not applying for that promotion, attending that interdisciplinary conference, signing up for that weekend exploratory committee.)

It seems we—Gens X and Y, Millenials, the Army of Satirizing Retro T-shirts Wearers and Ipodamediatrons—have been fed a narrative only part pressing reality. True, manufacturing died in the U.S. before many of our birth dates. Supporting yourself or your family with a factory or service-industry job counts as a feat these days. The thimble, the man on the horse, the iron—all gone. Today’s Monopoly pieces: the thinking woman, the thinking man.

On this floor, we’re trading and selling knowledge and the B.S. *cough* I mean, networking factor. Studies explore the difference between workers who schmooze their bosses and network more and those who diligently execute their duties at their desks, and find the former advancing faster and higher. Gotta maintain marketability, keep competitive, consider the next move, hold your finger on the pulse.

Agreeing with that assessment somewhat, I believe that more factors into whether one lives complacently. It is not only innovation that puts a spit-shine on life. Some of its butteriest parts involve practices, memories that were the same for our parents and theirs and theirs, circumstances brought about when we have complete complacency about parts of our lives—that is, “calm or secure satisfaction with oneself or one’s lot” (Merriam-Webster).

Nor do I think one can be complacent in all aspects of life—was it Stanley Crouch who said everyone is an elitist when it comes to something they care about? And not all of us have professional goals that warrant non-complacency in the way of, say, an Anthony Van Jones. The world still needs everyday Atlases to carry it, make it habitable. Certainly carrying different skill sets, expectations, and education levels than our 1950s counterparts, we nevertheless toil in our cubicles or offices each day and twerk it till we clock out. We may love it, may just do it to get by or provide for our families, but nothing’s wrong with it. Never could it indicate we are not daily challenged.

The thinking creatures we are—more waits for us: the dad picking the kids up from school each day, never late; the socialite with the side interior-designer business; the p.m. activist clocking twilight hours; the singer moonlighting at the weekend wedding; the single twenty-something providing vicarious living for her married friends; families birthing, eating, and celebrating; even a woman loved only by her dog and her books. Healthy ambition, yes, is there for us. But so is succulent and simple enjoyment.