Wednesday 6 October 2010

What are you waiting for?

You hold your breath. You have moments when you are caught in the headlights, a still unmoveable object in the middle of a cacophony of whizzing data. A chip on the motherboard of life, electrical pulses flying, ideas arcing above your head. You are paralysed. Brain still processing, eyes still flickering, other movement stilled.

Tentatively, you step into the edges of the data streams. Blog feeds collected, news streams scanned, conversations sparking and falling away again as fast as the data itself moved, for conversations are only data, care and heart and love colouring some, intrigue and passion and ferocity colouring others. But all of them worthwhile, all of them different colours, a beautiful rainbow created by beautiful minds.

A 10" window on the world. A data world. Pixellated beauty of intelligence and minds coming together in semi public streams, the worlds largest pub, spiderwebbing conversations pulling others in, epiphanies spiralling out of control into the impossible, the speakers resolutely denying that impossible exists. Here is no place for impossibilities, here is for everyone and everything, for the ideas which were ridiculous but now are not, for the lights which have been shaded to shine brighter than anyone thought possible.

The pace is fierce. The intensity of belief is catastrophic in its potential to do something so complicated and yet so simple. Change the world. Change the rules. Don't listen to your parents who told you to never aspire. Don't listen to your friends who told you furiously typing didn't mean anyone was listening. Don't listen to the people who can't understand that inspiration comes only once to some of us and that hard work should be avoided at all costs.

Instead start to believe. Start to ask the questions. The big ones and the small. Go back to the start when we were all innocent and naive and wide eyed with wonder and ask only this? What are you waiting for?

Don't hesitate. Don't pause too long. Stop over thinking, start doing. Stop the noise, stop the statis, stop the paralysis, stop the negative assumptions. Start the future, start the discussion, start the tearing down of the old ways of doing things and lay the building bricks of the buildings other will live in. Move. Get involved. It's not political, it's not dangerous, there is no wrong answer, only the potential to ask the wrong questions but to receive the right answers.

This is a missive to me. To the part of me wants to hide from the tornado of thoughts, ideas, opinions and beliefs. No more hiding. No more furious typing. The point is not in being the person to change the world, it is only to put together the pieces, to suggest and enable the small pieces in the puzzle, so that together we may build a bigger picture which will change the world.

With thanks to @johnpopham, @dominiccampbell and @johnsturgess

No comments:

Post a Comment