Life Is A Gamble

HEY

How many men, got hmn?

How many men, got high?

How many men know truth?

How many know their price?

How many know what they look like out of the mirror besides their eyes?

-Tame Tiger

Those sunflowers in Italy were enormous; they made me feel small and somehow more possible at the same time. I remember driving a moto alongside a field of them, their heads bowed heavy with seeds, and thinking about how life was pushing me to grow toward the light; but without informing me about why, leaving me to decide what I’d do with what I might grow. That trip (just after graduating from Uni) sticks with me: sunflowers, cyclops, ambition, and the question of how I might spread whatever I was to become.

We were visiting Uncle Charlie, Will’s Grand-uncle?: a real character: ninety years old, living out in the Italian countryside with a maid, always in his workshop. He started a leather luggage tag while I was there, and mailed it to me a couple weeks later. Small gesture, but typical of the man I only knew for 48 hours. His property was dotted with practical things: a workshop, a neat gravel path, and, stretching out beyond it, fields of sunflowers grown for their seeds. Those suckers were so big. Up close they felt like towers. THICK stems, huge leaves, and heads that turned to follow the sun. They exuded the confidence I was supposed to have as fresh college grad.

Thinking about them now: a seed, the shoot, the long push toward the sun, the swollen head when it’s time to make more seeds, and then … if done well … a scatter of new beginnings. The obvious reading is biological: you grow, you reproduce, you leave descendants. But the metaphor is hitting me different today. Something even bigger than biology.

The “seeds” we spread 
  can be ideas, skills, community-support
art, business, mentorship …

… any way our growth benefits other people and helps things keep going forward.

If you’ve chosen to have children, that route can be indescribably rich, based on my personal experience thus far. It is character-building, humbling, and wildly complex in ways I couldn’t anticipate. BUT it’s not the only way; it’s not the right path for everyone. For some of us, influence might meaningfully channel towards other forms of validation.

More than two concrete things

We should pursue ambitions that put us in contact with other humans in ways that create value.

We should invest time and knowledge locally, uplifting our neighborhoods by teaching people to fish, not just buying them one.

We should orient our ambitions toward creating value that naturally entangles us with other people’s lives.

My goal is for my work to become a vector for influence. I want to grow not just for myself but in order to pass along tools, habits, and opportunities to others.

I want more colleagues. I want more standards in industry: mine

Does what I do increase other people’s ability to do next-level things?

If it does, it’s working.

My intended tools

• Patience

• Willingness to accept incremental progress

• Humility to help without taking over

• Honesty in assessing my environments

Plants don’t all reach the same height. Soil, crowding, and lack of sunlight limit them. Humans are similar. Our “height” is a function of context and the constraints we face.

Thinking about the crowded rows in Uncle Charlie’s fields: some sunflowers were shaded out, dwarfed by their neighbors.

Are you trying to blossom in a place that stunts you?