DOERS
There are many men who want to see a thing done and one among them does it.
What makes such a person take action? What is special about his, or her, make-up that would cause them to differ from others about them?
I have often wondered about great inventions and discoveries; about the fact that many other men must have had the identical idea; actually thought of it years before, but never did anything about it. Certainly. Columbus was not the first to imagine there could be a way to the other side of wherever he was at the moment. He was not the only one to have some idea about the world being round ...certainly not flat. The idea returned again and again to his mind until he did something about it. He acted, even though he did not understand, it now appears, and, furthermore, never really came to know for sure that he had discovered a totally new continental expanse rather than touching on the edge of Orierntal lands others had told about having visited.
Could it be a quality that touches on the supernatural? I rather doubt that, because everything else we do is - except having life within us - can be plotted out in a logical, understandable manner. It could be a quality often called being "stubborn" which is, usually, viewed with scorn, but which could have a redeeming value if it is the spark which enlarges into a flame of dedication to get a thing on the road to development and completion. There may also be a link with another word which was, I think, devised from scraps of languages H. W. Fowler had left over fifty years ago when he did his thing of taking the English language apart and sorting the pieces of it in to linquistic bins and shelves for our better use. That word is one my mother used to urge upon us when we were lazy. To get along in this competative world, to meet both educated and non-educated smart-alecks you're going to come up against you must have, she decreed, something called "stickability"...or "stick-to-a-tive-ness"- the common guts which enable you to stick at a thing until it is absolutely, stone-cold done!
Very often simply little ideas come to us and are dropped without see the gold they contain. Think how often ancient man must have noticed that the cockleburr type of vegetation affixed itself to his clothing before someone took that simple idea and made a paper clip for office use and Velcro cloth for disappearing act magicians and now for everyone. Somebody watched a beaver build a dam. Someone with a glint in his eye and grease in his elbows saw the basic principle of ou labor saving evises in Nature and emulated such action mechanically.
This is about the time I usually kick myself! Here I am writing about it, instead of doing some of it myself!
Your case could be just as hopeless...sitting here reading about it.
Do you realize we are both holding up the advancment of civilization?
A.l.M. December 4, 2003 [c599wds]
