Originals and why you are one.
Of recent, a thread of mind-bending thoughts were running in my mind. At the beginning of the concluded week, I made a public call for community members for the newly launched program, t=0 for integral, dx, a collobarative community of electronics and electrical engineers. I thought of much, gaps and opportunities, fears and doubts set before me. At one point, I feared I had created a huge mountain before me and I had to run-up it.
It was a mind-daunting experience that tired and tore my already exhausted mind. So many doubts haunted and ruthlessly darted my mind. This evidently exposed weakness inherit in every human.
As humans, we gravitate to actions that require least effort. In the psychology world, this is refered to as the principle of least resistance.
To stand for some thing and challenge the status quo requires much energy expenditure. There is much to overcome ranging from doubts to fears. We tend to be social animals that long to belong to the herd. Diverging from the herd calls for “punishment” and percieved as uncalled for.
These experiences buried many great ideas of persons that feared to diverge from the herd and challenge the conventional ways of human technology.
Those confident enough to make their ideas sprout out of their minds, are a rare breed confident enough to make the world a better a place, with the backdrop of ridiculous attacks of Luddites. In his best-selling book, Zero to One, Peter Thiel writes, “Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius”. A rough stat would precisely predict that out of 100 persons, chances are you shall find four geniuses and one or none who is courageous.
To be original is to see the fault in the default, be courageous and shot for the moon. The future generations shall not remember a man who hid in the herd and sailed with it. It shall remember a woman, a man who took it upon her/himself to make the world a better a place. A girl who didn’t use her age or gender as an excuse to bask in the status quo.
To move along the dotted line is to beat no new paths and discover no new places. To be a Columbus of your workplace, family, nation or your own life is to vision a land beyond the waters of the threatening sea and courage to take voyage. At the shores of the new land, one shall thank oneslf to never have left her/his potential at the table of mediocrity and conformity.
Abraham Lincoln, writes the great thinker W.E.B DuBois, “He was one of you and yet he became Abraham Lincoln.”
May you find the courage to act on the ideas that well-up in your creative mind. We long to give you a standing ovation one day. Amen.
