Elephants

I recently stumbled upon a picture of an elephant, drawn by a European artist in the Middle Ages. The artist had never seen an elephant in person, only heard rumors of its greatness and ferocity from soldiers who came back from wars in India and Southeast Asia. It was depicted in a form so grotesque, that it was barely recognizable as an elephant. It's body was a circle, larger than the surrounding houses. Tusks would often number at three or four, and legs were rumored to be thicker than the thickest tree trunks, and made entirely of one long, unbreakable bone.

I then found a drawing my 4 year old sister made of an elephant. I don't know if she had seen one in person, besides the time she was taken to a zoo when she was one or two years old. But her depiction was magnitudes better than that of the professional artist from hundreds of years ago.

The learning and knowledge accumulation of the human race is amazing. Today's 4 year old child knows so much more than the most learned scholar of just a few hundred years before. These thoughts get me excited and overly optimistic of the types of knowledge to reach the minds of my own children and grandchildren, and generations beyond.

The Written Me

Writing is a process of honesty. The words I write in a journal, or in the margins of a notebook during class, or those that I type out into this box, all come from the innermost truth I can understand in myself. I do not know if it is that way for all people, that writing is a sketch of who we really are, but it is undoubtedly so for me.

At times, it is educational. I learn about myself, I get my thoughts in order. Any clever joke I think of, any business idea I have, and strand of creativity that passes through my chaotic mind, I attempt to put on paper. And, looking back, I am often amused and entertained by my own ideas.

But at times, it is scary. I do not hold reservations when writing, because that would be a blatant lie to myself. Different from suppressing mental thoughts, altering my written thoughts is a phony, misleading, act. And deceiving myself would be, simply put, a moral mistake.

Because of my honesty, my writing sometimes scares me. All the thoughts hidden in the back of my mind, visible only to me, and just as easily brushed off- they become real. I can see them, read them aloud, hear them, understand them. But this understanding is the reason I write them down. Writing helps me understand myself. It helps me understand who I am, and what I think, and why I think it. Writing helps elucidate the issues I have with myself and the world, and to frame and to solve them. While at times unnerving, it is writing that leads me to a greater and more confident self-consciousness.

I do not always want to be honest with myself. Why not? Perhaps understanding yourself is the scariest and bravest thing one can do.

An Entrepreneurial Experiment Begins

The future can be a worrisome thing. There are expectations, and demands, and hopes and dreams and worries. Myriad roads lead to dozens of uncertain outcomes, the right-ness or wrong-ness of each to be determined only in the aftermath of each decision. What if we take the wrong turn? What if we make the wrong choice? What if, five or ten or twenty years from now, we look back and see that we missed so many opportunities to have left us in a pit of failure deeper than we imagined possible in our hopeful aspirations of our youth.

There are certain roads that virtually guarantee our safety from such a fall. As a 21 year old business major with no hard skills, there exist many industries that can guarantee respect, status, and financial comfort. There are companies in need of creative thinking, analytical skills, and leadership ability to work and create the next generation of Amazon offerings, Deloitte solutions, and Goldman services.

These paths are exhilarating, challenging, and meaningful in their own ways. Getting invited to join their ranks is worthy of acclimation and a respecting nod. Once in the position, succeeding enough to be noticed, promoted, and sought out by the dozens of companies that will come calling for your service is in itself a slow, and somewhat uncertain process. And, undeniably, our world would not be as developed and progressed as it is today without the brilliance, tireless efforts, and passionate work of the people in these roles.

However, a soon to be graduating business major has another option available to him. Entrepreneurship is sort of mystical word, associated as much with the greatness of our most revered business leaders as it is with the painful statistics of failure. The path of entrepreneurship, in my experience, is often looked at with a sort of tongue-in-cheek dismissal. It is the path of one with little foresight, or patience, or talent to work in the corporate world. It is an industry for 30 year olds, with work experience, an MBA, and a decade of connections. It is, simply put, a bad idea for me to do so.

But I love the thought of it.

Today is December 31^st, 2014. In a few hours, we welcome the New Year, and with it all of its hopes, goals, challenges, and decisions. I have a goal of my own. I begin this New Year with two entrepreneurial projects, the progress of which I hope to track with this blog. Admittedly, and in the interest of full disclosure, this comes partially in the aftermath of my 20^th rejection for full time employment, and an uncertainty of what my future holds. This comes after the hundredth time in which a friend, an aunt, or a stranger has asked me my plans after graduation, and looked uncertainly- and sometimes disapprovingly- as I mentioned entrepreneurship.

But this also comes from a desire to create. To see what my two hands are capable of. To test my brain at the measurement stick of my own survival. My time, effort, and creativity will congeal in success, to various degrees. Laziness, inadaptability, and lack of enthusiasm will result in a disappointing failure.

I believe I can do it. And I must believe that I will. And so, as we sail into this New Year, I make a wish for us all.

May our morning be inspired by goals, our afternoon be propelled by vision, and our evenings calmed by fulfillment. May we find the courage to believe in ourselves, the humility to listen, and the confidence to persevere. May this New Year bring us all success in proportion to our efforts, and happiness far beyond what we can imagine. Have a happy, healthy, exciting 2015.

 

"Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual"

-Natalie Clifford Barney