I read an article this morning that warned that the tech bubble was about to burst again. It spoke of billion dollar valuations and unicorn companies and a bunch of other things that I found interesting. I’m a fan of innovation and creativity. Makers of things and dreamers of big dreams drive my sense of what can be and help me to dream my own dreams. Now how many of these “unicorn” companies are actually making a difference remains to be seen. From what I read, they aren’t actually producing any profits for their investors but are fixated on expanding their reach…for their products…that aren’t actual products…that don’t actually do anything to make anything better <insert bursting sound here>.
There is a saying that goes “iron sharpens iron.” To me it
means that one person enhances another with their interactions. Hopefully it’s
in a positive way. Someone told me that people want to matter. That gave me a moment to pause and contemplate
the significance of that statement. I think I understand it on the surface but
when I boil it down I realize that I want to matter, you want to matter. We all
are looking for the same things. We all ask ourselves the same questions about
why we are here and what my purpose is. We find the answers to those questions
by our interactions with one another. We sharpen one another by the sharing of
information and experience. The true answers to those questions are answered in
working with others toward some common good or reaching a shared goal.
I run into people every single day that have no idea how a
lot of the gadgets in their homes work. They have no idea how you type it on
the screen and the screen answers back. I met a young man in his early 20’s
that had no idea how to change the SSID or password for his router. I was
thunderstruck. In this day and age, I would expect him to be schooling me. I’ve
seen that particular scenario repeated over and over again during the course of
my day. In my dreams I think mankind should be pushing out into space but most
of the people in my experience can’t perform the simplest of functions on their
own computers. We’re not going to get to Mars like that. The solution to me is
pretty straight forward. Educate one person, then another, and another. The
hope being is that at some point in your exercise in self replication will take
on exponential growth…iron sharpening iron.
It’s the small stuff that really matter. I lose sight of
that when I’m dreaming my big dreams. Dreams and ideas stay exactly that until
you start to actuate them…when you start to move toward what you want. One
person at a time is greater than zero; every time. My goal for the week is to teach one person
one thing. Simple. Doesn’t matter what it is just as long as it happens daily.
Building on the small blocks makes the larger forms and with larger forms come
larger dreams. More and more people getting in the mix to work the impossible.
That’s how we will grow as a species. That’s how we get to Mars…it’s how the
big dreams become the future.
“Just keep swimming” – Dory
FIN
I love you Jim.
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