Idea Hunt

Much of my life has been an idea hunt. Lib­er­a­tion is a mat­ter find­ing a bet­ter approach. Some­times the ideas come from books; some­times they come from the mouths of small chil­dren. On rare but impor­tant occa­sions, they come as direct inspi­ra­tion. No one knows exactly how or why moments of genius hap­pen, but they do. Insights are gifts of alert con­scious­ness. They are not always the result of for­mal edu­ca­tion or hav­ing some grand men­tor.

Ideas are tools. They are not to be hung on the wall or wor­shipped. They are to be used. Not all ideas are equal. Apply­ing them takes the sort of wis­dom that comes best by trial and error. Error is a won­der­ful thing. It tells us what does not work. I have a rather high opin­ion of some of my worst mis­takes. To this day, I have con­tin­ued to ben­e­fit from the lessons derived from my own stu­pid­ity.

I have a few favorite ideas: stay aware, even when doing rou­tine things; never for­get that peo­ple are walk­ing his­to­ries — there is a greater con­text to the crazy things they are doing; love God, neigh­bor, and self; don’t fight time, it is big­ger than you are; live each day is if it were your last; don’t get caught in your ego or any­one else’s; money is never per­ma­nent; and God is the world’s great­est come­dian play­ing in front of an audi­ence that is afraid to laugh.

Ideas have a his­tory of their own. Though bet­ter ideas replace them, they still had a way of tak­ing human­ity another step. Blindly fol­low­ing one or a set of infe­rior ideas is a form of idol­a­try. A sin­gle newly-discovered idea can do more for you than com­ing into a whole lot of money. Insights into your behav­ior are pre­ferred to the insights about oth­ers. Quite frankly, peo­ple get on our nerves because we have not dealt with our own nerves first.

My pro­fes­sional life has been one of hunt­ing and shar­ing ideas. Because of that, I feel dou­bly blessed. I have been paid to do what I would have been doing any­way. Before today is over, I will find a few more ideas. Some of them will not be worth remem­ber­ing. Some of them may just change the world.