Monday, October 26, 2009

Building Things and the Work It Takes

Where have all the entrepreneurs gone? All those creative souls making a megabuck or solving the world’s problems… oh, that’s right, they’re still here!—or should I say, we’re still here!

It almost seems fractional, but we’re all rather entrepreneurial. I asked my wife very casually, ‘What’s your definition of who’s an entrepreneur?’ and she said, seemingly without a nanosecond’s thought, ‘Have an idea and run with it.’

And that’s just it. We all have our ideas and we all tend to run with them, more or less. Some just have superior ideas, or they run further with them.

Of course, the secular world would have us think this is all about business and profit—this is not so in real terms. The broader reality is so much more fun and vibrant.

It’s about building things. “Things” is a large concept that looks ever so different depending on the situations, the people, the context, the environment.

There’s a world of possibility available—a much bigger realm than we’ll ever care to realise.

I recently had a reflection regarding how much work is involved in ‘building things.’ It’s truly astounding and many who’ve not travelled the extensively entrepreneurial path may not even be aware. It’s just staggering how many hoops must be jumped through—even on small endeavours.

To achieve a great thing takes a great amount of time and a great journey—nothing significant happens overnight.

And we’d do well to remember this as vessels of good ideas. We think of something amazing that we can do or be involved in and we feed that idea. We fertilise and water it, nurturing it healthily.

What are we building? What legacy are we leaving? What things of true magnitude do we perhaps baulk at, simply because it’s ‘too hard’ or because it’s ‘too much effort?’

Start, continue, resolve, fight, adapt, compromise, establish, grow, renew, commission, improve, finish—celebrate. And then, start again…

© S. J. Wickham, 2009.

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