What we do makes us who we are

Checking the list of entries that I have produced recently, I have realized that there are a number of them linked to decisions we make and how we drive our lives. When you think about it, even in the tightly scheduled life of today we still make hundreds of decisions every day, so it is to some extent and integral part of being alive.

Photo: Françoise Foliot

Over the weekend the fates of internet pointed me to this video by JPL Chief Engineer for Mission Operations and Science, Marc D. Rayman, whom I sincerely admire and follow since long time ago. Initially I was a bit startled by the title "If It Isn't Impossible, It Isn't Worth Trying", because it sounds tinted of grandiloquence and triumphalism, but then I thought that maybe the editor had "tweaked" a phrase from the video to make the title more catchy, so I decided to give it a try.

Unfortunately, the video did contain the sentence in the title, in fact it is repeated several times over the soft-spoken and otherwise very interesting talk. But this mention of the impossible as a precondition for a worthy goal bears a dangerous echo of Grant Cardone's "10x rule", which in turn drinks from the well of Positive Thinking by Normal Vincent Peale. Cardone, in particular, advocates for setting up incredibly high goals, which seems to overlap with Rayman's message, but when discussing the means to reach this goals he proposes a level of narcissism and disregard for the feelings or the well-being of anybody else nearing on psychopathy.

Comparisons are never fair, and it can only get worse comparing with someone of the stature of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, but when he proposed in 1961 to "put a man on the Moon by the one of the decade", he explicitly acknowledge that it was hard and that it was going to require the effort of the whole nation, and even then it might not work, but he did not say it was impossible. In that sense I am afraid that Rayman erred on his choice of words and, at the risk of correcting one of my heroes, should have said instead "Even if something seems impossible, it might still be worth a try" (admittedly a lot less catchy).

Being aware of the difficulty of the task does not necessarily imply that we should not try but, as the stoics posit, be ready to take some distance from whatever the outcome is, because there are innumerable factors (visible and invisible) contributing to an enterprise, so even if it succeeds the merit is not all yours and in case it fails it is not entirely your fault. This thought brings me back to a reflection I owe you already since a couple of weeks now about the lesson received by Kurt Vonnegut when he was a child. At an archeologist's attempts to make small talk at a summer camp in 1937 the young Vonnegut explained that he did theater, played violin and piano and took art classes. When the archeologist showed his amazement at the accomplishments, Vonnegut dismissed them arguing that he was not good at any of those activities, to which the archeologist replied:

I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.

It is remarkable how this comment predates but strongly overlaps with the thought of Sartre and other existentialists, and opens the concept that arts and craft are enriching by themselves, regardless of the product of the work. As a child I had the great luck that my mother was extremely supportive at anything I was curious about (and she even had some suggestions of her own), so I ended up trying the most diverse activities, from horseback riding to kayaking, shooting with an air pistol, playing violin, learning touch typing, writing a book, traveling a lot... I can only concur with Vonnegut and his archeologists that everything we do enriches us.

I have been very fortunate with the opportunities that life has provided and feel lucky to have gathered this trove of experiences so far. Thanks to COVID-19 the hunt has been on hold for a few months now, but I hope the hiatus will soon be over. Enjoy your evening.