The first example I can remember was when my friends and I, nineteen at the time, bought a forty foot long school bus. The idea was so absurd and without precedent, that it seemed impossible. It was like being at a zoo, where you know that you’re standing two feet away from a fully grown lion, but the invisible glass separating you prevents it from feeling real. We were ready to hand over cash and sign papers, but it seemed impossible that we would actually own this huge bus. It seemed as though some authority figure would appear out of nowhere and say, “Come on guys, this is ridiculous. Go back to school.”
We bought the bus, and the world didn’t come crashing down on us. In fact, the normalcy of the transaction, handing over cash for a title and some keys, was striking. What seemed like a big deal really wasn’t. Buying the bus turned out to be a fantastic decision, despite everyone else thinking it would be otherwise.
We’re a species that thrives on patterns, which is mostly a good thing, but it sometimes prevents us from looking outside society’s canon of acceptable patterns. We all fantasize about things that we’d like to do, but then accept that they must be bad ideas because others aren’t doing them. We mistake things that aren’t being done for things that can’t be done or shouldn’t be done.
That school bus was a huge lesson for me, and not just because of what we had to learn to remodel it into a road trip vehicle. I learned something more fundamental and important, which has largely guided my life since then. My friends and I had an idea, it was derided as crazy by everyone else, but we did it and it worked out perfectly. For the first time I realized that I could do whatever I wanted to do, and it would be okay.
It’s a strange feeling, standing on that precipice. Even now I have some nagging voice in the back of my head that says, “is it really okay that you’re doing this?” That’s how I felt when my friends and I bought our island, when I moved to LA to live with the pickup artists, when I dropped out of school, and when I sold everything to start traveling. Inevitably, though, I push through that feeling of scary unfamiliarity, and am glad I did.
I believe that this process of discovery and blind faith is one of the fundamental joys of the human experience. We’re able to combine our curiosity, self-determination, rationality, and confidence into discovery. Our world has such great infrastructure that even the most outlandish ideas are still within the realm of possibility.
One of the saddest things is seeing people who are too afraid to do things they aren’t supposed to do. Everyone you talk to has secret ambitions and fantasies, but so few are actually willing to cross the threshold of unfamiliarity and try to make them happen. Most frustrating is that it only takes one time to have this mini-epiphany and realize that you can actually do, or at least attempt to do, anything you want. The second time is ten times easier because the idea that “everyone else knows best” has been shattered.
If you could do anything, what would you be doing? If you aren’t doing it, what makes you so sure it can’t be done? And even if it might not be possible, what would you lose by trying?
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A friend and I made clay bowls and put them up in the Met Museum in New York. The top picture is a group of visitors looking at them. I bet our “art” was the most photographed art in the whole museum while it was up.
Today’s my last day in Puerto Rico! Heading to San Francisco now and then Austin soon for SXSW (not speaking or attending this year, just going to Austin).
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