Finding Your Instrument

After I finished the book Rocket Men, I spent some time watching interviews with the crew. Even with the humility they displayed, you can tell they were special people. When I look up at the Moon, I can't really grasp that humans walked on it. To my reassurance, almost all of these astronauts felt the same way.

Here is this elite group of people, all of which have done something that no other human has done, and even they are struck by the magnificence of it.

Not everyone gets the opportunity to do something like that, and yet, I can't help but wonder what the world could look like if we created the mechanisms to get them on their proverbial Moon walk. Not everyone needs to go into space to make theirs happen.

Even against the backdrop of the current chaotic tenor, there's an attainable avenue to this destination. It's easy to point to the world and see a barrage of problems, and yet there's a special type of magic that exists thanks to what we've invented and disseminated over the past few decades. The space program is a quintessential human achievement, yet today we have capabilities that NASA could only dream of at the time.

I could see this perspective being naïve to a fault, though I suppose that is the default assumption until it's been tried.

The only reason we're alive is because a speck of dust just so happened to be at the perfect place in an orbit around a star, moving through a massive, uninterested universe. What are the chances of being here? There are countless ways in which this experiment could have ended, yet this little rock still spins in orbit. By extension, even with a whole host of life, we happened to evolve at the perfect time. There's a narrow spectrum of ingredients and conditions that make humanity possible, and not only did Earth meet them, but it gave us an abundant energy source originating from life millions of years ahead of us (and they miraculously vanished thanks to a meteor).

This energy source is how we've proliferated, and without it, there'd be no way to reach the Moon, let alone leave the planet.

So, while space exploration may not be the most pressing item, on a cosmic scale, it seems imperative for us to try it, because the chances of being able to do so are already so infinitesimally small.

This doesn't mean we ignore problems at home. Many of our problems likely also impede this heavenly voyage. This brings opportunity - the Apollo Program acted as a tractor beam, pulling countless ideas into existence. The same can happen now.

I'm not smart enough to be one of the people leading the charge in this endeavor, but I know there are people alive that are. One of the unknowable problems is the number of Einsteins and Mozarts that graced the face of the planet, passing away without the chance to find their instrument.

The human mind is the greatest instrument that's ever existed. Everything around you today is there because someone acted upon their thoughts and ideas. That's how we went from living with sticks and stones to smartphones and space shuttles.

Innovation enabled Da Vinci to draw, Mozart to play the piano, and Picasso to paint. Imagine a world where Mozart was born before the invention of the grand piano. Or perhaps a world where he was born in Cuba instead of Austria. We have a moral obligation to develop new technologies to allow everyone to express their genius.

Genius occurs when someone wants to communicate, and they find their medium to do so.

The Internet allows us to begin a campaign to match everyone with their talents. A campaign to identify our gifts, and unlock a previously impossible future. It's imperative to invent the instruments of the future so the human melody can continue.

Life in a sense, is the pursuit of finding the right instrument to express yourself. Gates found the PC. Mozart the piano.

Your contribution to humanity’s symphony begins once you find your instrument.