Audacity is for everyone
Two quotes:
"For anything truly great to take place, there requires a long obedience in the same direction." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Above all, try something" - FDR
I love the tension between these two ideas. They are both right. To be great at something, you must commit all of yourself to the long grind. But how do you find that thing to which you must commit? If you're lucky (or perhaps cursed), it's obvious from the start. You have no choice. But for most of us, you've gotta try lots of things before something sticks.
Holding this tension requires a certain audacity. Audacity is not solely the domain of the chosen few. It's in all of us. You can't change the world unless you first believe you can. There's a part of the world out there, maybe small, that you care about more than anyone else. You might not know it yet, but it's there. Finding it can take a long time. Understanding what it takes to change that part of the world will take even longer. But if you persist in the project long enough, three things are likely to happen. First, you'll get really good at what you are doing. Second, you'll learn to love it. And third, you might just make a really big contribution.
Last night I watched Bono's one man show - Surrender. In it is a powerful scene recounting the genesis of "I Will Follow." Bono implores his band mates, "Let's find the thing that we can do that no one else can do!"
That thing for U2 is this:
Maybe you love their music, maybe you hate it. But you can’t watch this performance and not feel something. Late-night shows are the shallowest of celebrity contexts. Everyone is selling something - books, movies, political candidates - and everyone knows it. Yet on this particular evening, U2 transformed that bland, corporate form into something magical. Watch Will Smith get lost in the moment. You can't fake that, and that's their superpower. U2 believed they could transport people with their music, and they believed this before they could actually make music.
There is something out there that you can love more than anyone else. Finding it takes FDR, getting good enough at it to make a difference takes Neitzsche. Keep trying and keep grinding. Be audacious. Good things will happen. We need them to.