Change The World NOW!

I wanted to share with you an incredible vision statement from a start-up I am privileged to sit on the Board of. At this time I am not able to name the company or the founders of this incredible venture, but you will hear about them in the near future, both on this site and around the world. But the words in their business plan blew me away. And they reminded me of the essence of this blog - the power of the individual and the different each of us - YOU - can make in this short life.
As you read these words don't think about the company, their product or what they are. Think instead of how these words can apply to you. I come into contact with so many people around the world who are constantly searching their meaning in life. A very small minority have already found their purpose and are pursuing their life's work with the kind of determination and focus that most of us only dream of. You need to do the same.

In the words of Marianne Williamson "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." If you are not familiar with Williamson's immortal words from A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles, you can read it here. They are some of the most powerful words ever combined to show man that we have the permission to let our light shine, and in doing so we unconsciously give others the permission to to the same. Contrary to what others sometimes tell us, nothing can get in the way of achieving our individual greatness. Nothing.

I hope you enjoy this vision statement as much as I did. I hope it helps you figure out what mark you want to leave in this life, what impact you want to have on yourself and others.

Vision

One thousand years from now, when human beings travel in spaceships among the stars, what histories will they write? Who will they remember? What will have mattered? It is likely that they will have long forgotten Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy, or even Abraham Lincoln, as the United States may no longer exist. Yet they could never forget Henry Ford.

To paint in broad strokes, before Ford people traveled by horse and by sail, whereas afterwards the motor powered travel by automobile. This innovation kicked off an infrastructure rush that built a vast global system of roads and highways within only a few decades, so that you can drive from Paris to Johannesburg, or from Toronto to Buenos Aires. After the car, flight was an afterthought. Space was an afterthought. This concept of transportation - that a person could move from Point A to Point B exponentially faster than by natural means through the use of an artificial device called a motor - was so big that the impact of the Model T surpassed even Fordʼs visionary imagination; kicking off an expansion in technological industrialization that continues unabated today and that will persist into the farthest foreseeable future, so that a millennia from now Mr. Ford will be remembered as the catalyst.

2010. The future is here. It surrounds us; we have eyes, but see not. Thirteen years ago, Steven Paul Jobs inherited an almost bankrupt company called Apple. Today the device in my hand, an iPhone 4, allows me to have a free, real-time, face-to-face video call in flawless high-definition with my best friend in San Diego, 2,500 miles away! Apple designs have turned technology into art. Generations to come will turn back for inspiration; Jobs has given us a tour of the (gigantic) realm of possibility. Appleʼs legacy may just impact spaceship design in 3010.

In 3010 AD, when people read about Leonardo Da Vinci, they will either gape in awe, or refuse to believe that so much could be accomplished in a single lifetime. Leonardo invented prototypes of airplanes, helicopters, and submarines before they could be feasibly built; he studied biology before biology was a study; he performed autopsies to examine the five senses and sketch the human body in detail; his insights into politics made him a prized advisor to the great kings of Western Europe; during feasts he would organize assembly lines in court kitchens to produce gourmet delicacies that delighted the palettes of princes... And he still found time to paint the Mona Lisa.

Da Vinci mastered the greatest technology of all - the human being. His life exemplified a new way to be human. Lʼuomo nouvo, call him a wizard, a polymath, or legend, was just a man. Every healthy human being that has ever lived enjoyed access to the same core technologies - eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin, body, heart, and mind. Why have so few of us risen to the heights of our potential? Life is the most precious gift, the most enchanting opportunity. Life is too short to waste time on trivial pursuits: Da Vinci accomplished everything in 67 years. Yet so many people spend their best years stuck in a routine, plodding to and from a cubicle, gears in a a dehumanized system, discontent and jaded. We were meant to live for more. Hold out your right hand to spread out your five fingers. If modern medicine gives us 100 years to live, each finger counts for one-fifth, or twenty years. My first twenty years has been spent. My last twenty years will be spent in retirement, tired and sleepy, sipping wine reflecting on actions that defined the sixty years contained in the three middle fingers. Which begs the question: what will we do with our life?

I am finishing a degree in history at Cornell University. If this discipline has taught me any lesson, itʼs that there are three types of people: those who write history, those who come and go, and those who make it happen. Itʼs up to the individual to choose a place in the narrative. So: is it all about you? Or is it about impact?

Impact, impact, impact! Who will you influence? What will you do? What will you create? What will you change? What will you leave behind? Over the course of of the 21st century, technology will transform our civilization. Reflect on this thought experiment: if the founders of the United States, who wrote the Constitution in 1781, had access to our modern technology, government would be an iPhone App, and people would vote on Twitter, and George Washington would have run a high-tech startup called the USA. Principles would have endured - “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” - but institutions would have looked radically different. In our lifetime, systems and institutions will be re-made, because the premises on which theyʼve been built have been fundamentally altered by technological advance. This special moment in time gives us an opportunity to lay foundations that will stand generations after weʼre gone.