The idea is you have some great ideas.
The idea is sometimes you don’t notice your great ideas because
they are very different than what already exists.That difference, which makes you shy off your ideas, is part
of what makes your ideas great, and needed.The idea is that the rest of us could use your great ideas
if you get them out among us. The idea is your different ideas
could help make a different world that would be a better place
for us all to live.The idea is that some of the words here will remind you of
your ideas.A guy I used to work for, Stewart Brand, said that once you
have an idea you have about five minutes to do something about
it. You don’t have to do everything the idea calls for within
five minutes, but you’ve got to do something right away to make
it real.That’s a good idea, too.
I haven’t finished this yet. It moves at a very deliberate pace and I have resisted the urge to power-scroll down and get to the conclusion: from what I read so far, that’s the kind of thinking this piece is gently but unyieldingly opposed to.
My initial reaction was a mixture of relief at hearing/reading some things I had always wanted to hear and pain at having heard instead all the other less helpful responses:
When I was a kid, the things that really mattered, the things took me to being alive and feeling alive at the same time, when I noticed them out loud, it wasn’t so much that people said, “That’s wrong.”
What they said was, “That doesn’t matter.” Or — things that mattered to me, the whole chorus of the way the people around me lived said, “That doesn’t exist.’
[tip]