This is the tag for a recent jeans commercial - Levis, to be specific, that got me thinking. While some of us are still struggling to get the basics right, to understand the what and how of what we choose to do, there actually are some people out there who have gone beyond that. There are people who have set standards and benchmarks for others to follow and have constantly broken their own records.
With a population demographic that's not worth boasting about, with such vast human 'resource' and such reverence across segments of society for education or achievement of some form, how is it that we're not out setting benchmarks and standards for others? Every once in a while there's a Mumbai Dabbawalas or a Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. Could our obsession with the intellectual elite be part of the reason? Intelligence, though, sadly, is not about figuring out the mysteries of the galaxy, or the human body, or the atoms or god particles alone. It's also about finding something as simple as an everyday piece of clothing like the humble, but now exalted jeans, and taking it to a level of performance and perfection that is a trail blazer for so many others to follow.
From the little I have known and seen, I know there is no dearth of people who have had visions and the courage to pursue these visions into reality to churn out successful businesses out of nothing. But like James Collins has said, we're too content being good to bother about being great. I remember reading somewhere that Homer never wrote more than a few lines of his Iliad a day, because he wanted every word he put on paper to be epic. He could not and would not compromise the sanctity of his work by simply putting in everything that crossed his mind. He did not give in to an illusion of vanity. Instead, he paid an ode to it. That's such a far cry from the verbal diarrhea ( to borrow from Bridget Jones) we see turn into movies like Twilight that come to haunt our sanity.
With a population demographic that's not worth boasting about, with such vast human 'resource' and such reverence across segments of society for education or achievement of some form, how is it that we're not out setting benchmarks and standards for others? Every once in a while there's a Mumbai Dabbawalas or a Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. Could our obsession with the intellectual elite be part of the reason? Intelligence, though, sadly, is not about figuring out the mysteries of the galaxy, or the human body, or the atoms or god particles alone. It's also about finding something as simple as an everyday piece of clothing like the humble, but now exalted jeans, and taking it to a level of performance and perfection that is a trail blazer for so many others to follow.
From the little I have known and seen, I know there is no dearth of people who have had visions and the courage to pursue these visions into reality to churn out successful businesses out of nothing. But like James Collins has said, we're too content being good to bother about being great. I remember reading somewhere that Homer never wrote more than a few lines of his Iliad a day, because he wanted every word he put on paper to be epic. He could not and would not compromise the sanctity of his work by simply putting in everything that crossed his mind. He did not give in to an illusion of vanity. Instead, he paid an ode to it. That's such a far cry from the verbal diarrhea ( to borrow from Bridget Jones) we see turn into movies like Twilight that come to haunt our sanity.
