Save the past. Love the future.

You may be the change.

Credit: N.L.Anderson

When I was about 37, decimated by a crumbling marriage and completely lost as to where my life was heading, I read a book - The Postman, by David Brin. It was later made into a movie you’d be cautioned to avoid, but the book was brilliant. And it taught me something that altered my life.

Brief synopsis - in a post apocalyptic world, a traveler stumbles across a mail jeep with a dead mailman in it. The traveler is cold, so he takes the mailman’s jacket.

Throughout the rest of the book, as he moves from village to village, people hand him letters to take to other villages, assuming, hoping he’s an actual mailman. They yearn for a future where civilization is restored. He resists the idea but still carries the letters.

He becomes an (unwilling) agent of change, but ultimately undergoes a metamorphosis, helping to re-establish a mail system that eventually leads to a restored society.

This had a profound effect on me. What I took from it was that anyone can be an agent of change. And what makes a person an agent of change, is an idea.

This had an even greater impact because it dawned on me that EVERYTHING EVER CREATED BY A HUMAN began its life as an idea in one person’s head.

Everything. Pens. Bowls. Constitutions. Wheels. Chewing gum. Rockets.

Take a pen. Someone had to dream up the idea. In the beginning it was little more than a stick pressed into clay, but eventually someone else dreamt up machines to make the parts for a new form of pen. Someone else had to design and build the machines that made those machines.

…knee bone’s connected to the… thigh bone…

When I began to look at the world this way, life changed for me. I don’t take for granted anything I use, and I marvel at what it likely took many people to bring into existence.

It also imbued me with one other precious thing - the realization that anyone can be a creator. Anyone can launch an idea out into the world. Will it be picked up and expanded upon? Not always, but that never means you shouldn’t try.

So, armed with that knowledge, I started Arkitek Scientific, a 3D animation company focused on creating engaging, descriptive animations for the life sciences and technology. I haven’t spoken of it much on Substack, and probably won’t going forward, but the reason I bring it up is because of what the book spawned in my head.

You can turn an idea into reality. Anyone can.

It’s 1995. I’m sitting in the machine shop of a biotech company, building equipment, wondering how on earth life had led me here. I’m looking at all the equipment in the room, newly marveling at the fact that the original idea for all these devices must have started in one person’s imagination.

And it comes to me; hey - I can start an idea too. I’d learned AutoCad and become enamored of computers. I love science. I’m an artist. Maybe I can blend the three and start a company?

Since I’m a subcontractor to this company, I’m asked for my business name. I want to build in virtual space - Arkitek. I decide to go back to school and learn 3D, and launch it. I tell anyone who’ll listen that I’m starting it, and at the end of my two years of study, people are coming up to me, asking me whether I’ve heard of Arkitek and if they’re hiring.

Holy shit.

It worked. I came up with an idea, floated it out on the wind, others picked it up and it gained mass. And then I had to build it, which my partner Doug and I did.

That anyone can generate an idea and translate it into a tangible reality is one of the greatest truths I’ve ever witnessed. So many people live their entire lives thinking it’s always other people who create, develop, build. Imagine. They are never taught they have that capacity too. This is one of life’s great tragedies.

Imagine the explosion of ideas that could arise if everyone felt they could. I’m convinced many people are unhappy because they do not know they have this ability within them. They were never shown, no one has tapped that inexhaustible well of potential. They feel unimportant, marginalized. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons we are where we are at this moment. Too many people feel they just don’t matter.

We are all makers, but only a few know they are.

Photo by Stephan Widua on Unsplash (some radio telescopes are transceivers, but not all)

This past year I’ve been like a transceiver with intermittent capacity. I signal occasionally but mostly have been silent. That’s about to change. I’ve been listening intently though, and thoughts from others as well as my own have percolated and produced yet new thought.

I have reinvented myself four, maybe five times. It’s time to undergo a new metamorphosis. I may keep doing 3D for science because it’s fucking cool and I’ll never rid myself of the geeky joy of solving computational conundrums.

But music beckons. It’s time to rev up my mind’s engine and imagine a new future. To what end? I have no clue. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know. The important bit is that I allow myself the space to create in a medium that gives me far more than it takes. I will keep these three words ever present in my mind as I go forward:

Curiosity

Kindness

Inventiveness

I also remind myself of my goals for 2025 (so that you know I’m not lecturing you…)

• Listen to others, give them the gift of your time and attention. There is no greater gift you can give someone than your undivided attention. It lets them feel seen. Many times, you’ll be astonished and delighted by what you find.

• Be a good communicator. Say what you mean. But be mindful to not hurt others when you do so, unless it’s absolutely necessary. And it usually isn’t.

• Remember that most people say and do hurtful things because they’re in pain. And mental pain is the worst affliction of all. It’s usually not about you. Try, as gently as possible, to find out what’s hurting them. And if you can manage it, send them a little love. It goes a long way.

• Be curious about everything! Learn! Experience! The universe is yours to romp in. Whether you think there’s only one life or untold billions, right now is right now and you might miss it if you’re not fully engaged.

• Grab a bowl full of life and eat it up. None know the extent of their span. Pushing off dreams into the future carries with it the possibility that you’ve shoved them too far into the future, one where you’re not there.

• Many things need to be fixed in this world. That’s always been the case, don’t let it get you down, because the work will always be there. Life is like housekeeping - never done. And when YOU’RE done, it falls to another to pick up those tasks.

  Focusing on what’s good in life doesn’t mean you don’t see the downside. But it does give you strength and patience to deal with it.

• Love the people who’re really pissing you off. They honestly may not know how badly they’re behaving. The hell they’re living in within their own minds might dwarf anything you’re feeling. Or they might know. If so, karma’s a real bitch and the cosmic clock is ticking. Everyone pays, now or later.

• Don’t live a life wracked by fear, anger or hesitancy. True, there are endless injustices that must be remedied, but you have to keep yourself, your mind and your heart alive, open and functioning while you do so, otherwise you will not succeed.

I aim to effectively alter the current trajectory of things this coming year. How will I do that? I don’t yet know, but it will contain equal parts of commitment, faith in my abilities and love for others. I might only move the needle a tiny, barely discernible fraction, but I will move it. So can you.

Onward and upward.