It was Isaiah Berlin who said:
To understand is to perceive patterns. To make intelligible is to reveal the basic pattern.
Everything has a structure, everything has a pattern. On first hearing these words, you can almost sounds daunting or overwhelming however when understood properly, as an entrepreneur, or as a creative this could be a moment of liberation.
I was always taught from a very young age that structures and patterns are part of the problem and not the solution. That anything that mediated the human experience was always something that we should be willing to tear down at any cost.
The truth of the matter is, you need to spend only five minutes outside, to see that this is not the case. That patterns can invoke beautiful, almost transcendent experiences. This is the role of the entrepreneur: to use your skills and passions to combine them in such a graphic and artistic way, that it invokes and inspires others to participate in the narrative you are creating.
Let’s unpack this a bit more. What do I mean when I use the word pattern? Well, simply put-humans experience seasons. Yes, I’m also referring to the climate-based seasons, where we go from Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring. However, I want to take this a bit further and explore this in the context of being an entrepreneur.
An entrepreneur is a creator, inventor, a person who can see a pattern and what others cannot. It is the ability to look at tools and find ways in which you can justify using them to invent something that makes the life of another better.
However, for many entrepreneurs, the idea of having the ability to see a pattern is emotionally exhausting. Part of that, is the industrial revolution. Meaning, we have standardized society and standardize creativity to the point that if someone does not invent something that makes sense to everyone else, then somehow they are ostracized.
Your ability to sense or see a pattern where no one else can, is the very reason why you are an entrepreneur. In our now post- industrial society, we are in need of people who see a variety of patterns and execute these patterns in a variety of different ways.
Picasso once said:
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
We must be willing to sacrifice the socialized adult in the name of the creative child within each of us. This might seem like some shitty fortune cookie type of thinking however, if you look at society, creativity is everywhere. Someone, somewhere was willing to push beyond the normalized barriers to dream up a society that exists as we now see it.
The industrialization of what it means to be an adult is one of the saddest events that has ever occurred in all of human history. This may sound like an overstatement, but in reality, justifying the marginalization of creativity is sort of social death.
One practical way to escape the standardization of monotony, is to ask:
What does it mean for me to come alive?
The last thing the world needs is another table, or another television, or another bed to sleep on. Sure, those things are just as important to have around in bulk.
But, truthfully speaking, what the world needs is what you were willing to create to help augment the human experience. Sometimes this means that you have to simply buck trends, piss-off bosses, and push envelopes into nonexistence. You might even have to start all over from scratch.
But what better place to start all over, then a blank canvas waiting for your creativity to run wild? That is true freedom, isn’t it? The ability to pursue unfettered dreams and make them reality.
Entrepreneurs are meant to save the world; if you were creating things that are already in the world (just for the sake of creating something) then you’ve just standardized monotony without even knowing it.
So, this is your moment. This is your blank canvas. This is your manifesto. This is not someone else’s dream, this is yours. Take it, dream of the impossible, and make it possible! The world needs entrepreneurs better themselves, not someone else.
