I pulled the following quote from a neighboring blog:
“Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.”
Doug Larson
The blog and entry is: http://myironshoes.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/marathoning-is-just-another-form-of-insanity/ I found it while clicking the Stumble button on my browser.
Its a sentiment that I’ve seen expressed before, maybe even this exact quote, and it’s one that really resonates with me. It’s loaded with all kinds of fodder for deeper thought– how does humility play into discovery, is genius just a form of idiocy, what does it mean to be smart versus being seen as smart, and so on.
It also reminds me of a few things Douglas Adams played with in his Hitchhiker’s series. There’s the bit about learning to fly (throw yourself at the ground and miss) which may be literally impossible but is a wonderful metaphor for doing the right thing with all the wrong tools.
I was playing Zelda one day, looking for some hidden sword, and my girlfriend at the time walked by, asked what I was doing. When I told her, she suggested I try digging up the ground– maybe the sword was buried. I tried to patiently explain to her that the game’s parameters didn”t provide for a shovel, or any kind of digging function, that I would have to find it by clicking on the right object, like a rock or a tree. Gimme the controller, she said, and when I did, she started clicking random buttons on randoms spots on the grounds. 10 seconds into this, me all the while shaking my head and rolling my eyes, a little animation played of Link producing a shovel, digging up a hole, and finding the sword. She grinned and went back to something important, while I gawped and resolved to be less certain about things.
Douglas Adams also said, somewhere, that while doing the improbably was fairly difficult, doing the impossible was actually pretty easy. Flying for example– clearly it is impossible to fly. Then Orville and Wilbur decided to give it a try, and now, I can go to my sister-in-law’s bridal shower some 2500 miles away in just a few hours. Walking on the moon– now, that would surely be impossible. Not only did Neil Armstrong do it, we have a nice joke to commemorate the event.
Today what caught my eye most about Larson’s quote is that “were not smart enough.” I think it’s high time I stop dismissing people or ideas based on how “smart” they are. Not only is it arrogant, it’s woefully lacking in a creative outlook. This goes too for my own ideas. Too often, for example, I’ve dismissed a joke I thought up because it was dumb, to only to have my (actually very smart) wife find it hilarious. It’s time to stop calling things dumb.
Next week I’ll work on ugly. Hello, stomach!
