Category: Blog

I recently watched the Enigma movie, the one talking about Alan Turing.

A wonderful movie that shares some of the difficulties Turing encountered during his life and lastly during the fight against the nazi.

After the movie we all began talking about how thanks to geniuses the world is now what we have come to know it.

But is that right? Do we stand on the shoulders of geniuses only?
While I can’t deny that geniuses did help the revolutionize the world, I can’t stop thinking that the world is this way mostly thanks to normal people.

Think about it for a second: How many geniuses there were in history?
Given the plethora of inventions, ideas, features we have access to I don’t think the geniuses invented them all.
Some of them are indeed a work of a genius, but some others are just the result of a slow and steady evolution, and others are the result of unknown strangers.

Let’s talk about George de Mestral, shall we?
I first started thinking about his contributions to the world after watching the movie Garden State (if you didn’t watch it, do it now).
George wasn’t a “genius” per se, in fact nobody probably knows his name, but he invented one of the most useful thing you could find in a house: Velcro.

Yes, that velcro.

I think we love too much the idea of the geniuses as saviours of the world.
It’s a nice view because it relieves us from having the burden to make this world a better place.
Why would we try to help the world? We are just normal people. Changing the world is for geniuses, and I’m not one of them
It’s easy to think this way, isn’t it?

But life as we know it has grown thanks to normal people that did normal or extraordinary things.
Watch closely: normal or extraordinary.
Not one or the other, not both.

Could you change the world with just normal actions? Yes. many people are doing that in this same moment.
They are helping homeless people having a dinner, or maybe they’re just solving a problem and the next whatsapp might be born.
It doesn’t take a genius to have a problem and try to solve it, it just takes courage and time.

In fact the courage part is needed only when you want to share it to change the world.

So what’s the deal?
Are we all geniuses?
Absolutely not, geniuses are way above the average, but that comes also with a price.
Yet what we are is pure magic because we can do the difference, because the history tells us that the whole world is here thanks to people like us.

Normal people who just wanted to solve easy things.

If there’s a way you can help a friend in need, then indeed you should help.

But aside from that, another thing you might want to do is to help him anyway, to give a friend a new opportunity, a choice, a better life.

Don’t start only with the one asking for help, consider the silent ones, the ones that don’t talk.
There are people in this world that keep all the pain for themselves. They shut their mouth and you won’t ever hear them suffering, although they do.

They do suffer as much as us, but they prefer not to show.
Or maybe they just don’t realize they could live a better life.

I’m not talking about forcing people to change, or showing them “the way” (btw, there’s no “the way”, so if you believe it, stop it).
No, I’m talking about giving without expecting.

Give them a chance to network with a people they might help again, or which they might need.

Give them a chance to talk and give yourself the opportunity to listen.

Give them a change to choose what they want to do, or maybe just give them the relaxation to not decide a thing for one night.

Take them out in the beauty of the sunshine, offer them a coffee and just give to them an unexpected present, something that will remind them of how beautiful this life is, how full of mysteries and energy it is.

It’s a simple thing, yet it’s powerful.

If we need to improve, we only have a choice: hang around with people who are better than us, that delights us and makes us better humans.

No workaround here

Is there a way to save the world?

As individuals I believe we just can’t, there’s no way, superpower, or skill which can help us achieving such an enormous goal.

But together, yes, we can build, we can change.
We can make the world a better place by following our dreams, no the driven by ego dreams, but the ones that help people, that create a better place.

Those dreams, the ones where you help someone, are the best in the world.
When you follow that gut feeling, everything will change.

What is the obvious?

Obvious is when you already know how things will go, is like having a solution to a math problem without the need to solve it.

Knowledge become obvious after you spend many hours learning or practicing.
You internalize every mechanism a skill requires and it becomes obvious to you.

Like swimming, at first you don’t know how to swim, then you start learning the basics.
How to put the arms, how to move the feet.
Then you practice, again and again, until everything becomes automatic.

Then again you keep improving by doing things you don’t know how to do, actions and movements new to you.
After a lot of time spent swimming, the difficult becomes easy and the easy becomes obvious.

It’s obvious then that you must have a breath pattern, etc etc.
So obvious there’s no need to think about it anymore.
You won’t think of what you need to do, you just do it.
After a while you forget about all the small steps, you remember the main core, but all the microsteps you have integrated into your movement, all the adjustments are lost.

They are obvious afterall.

Time after time, the obvious becomes invisible. It is no more a part of your knowledge, the knowledge of your brain.
It’s a memory of your body, a reaction to an impulse, a connection.

Once the obvious becomes invisible we are left with the skill.
What about teaching then?
Can we teach what we learned?

Sure we can.
We can tell the main parts, the things we remember, the movements that are important now.
But what about the micro adjustments? The small learning steps now forgotten?

They are all gone.

Once you get to the invisible obvious all that learning is gone, and you are left with the expectation that by doing X you’ll have Y.
Just a connection, a response to an action.
The path that from X leads to Y is now foggy, and you can’t quite tell what’s in there, what’s the progression.

The invisible obvious is not something that will appear while you learn.
It will appear in the everyday life too.

Relationships of any kind can be affected by the obvious invisible once you automate actions in your mind.
If your spouse is complaining you might think that she always do this when she want to have some love for you.
It might be true, but what if you’re considering obvious something that isn’t?
What if now you’re on a different path?

Prejudice, expectation, is the invisible obvious.
It seems like a friend, but it’s not.