Patience is one of the most difficult virtues to obtain.
Ironic that often patience is a process that, itself, you must be patient to truly learn, understand, and appreciate.
But when you finally understand patience, so much else falls into place. It’s like a superpower actually. It allows you tap into a well of resilience that most will never get to drink from.
It’s that resilience that a thinker will need. What I do mean by a thinker?
I mean someone who’s not interested in the quick buck or the easy life, but someone who’s interested in creating real change.
Real change often requires novel ideas. Novel ideas come as a result of having time to think. To imagine a place you want the world to become, recruit other people to your vision, then have the wherewithal to fight whatever battles necessary to see it through.
You see, thinkers are also fighters. They have to be. Because in case you haven’t noticed, the world doesn’t easily change its mind.
Humanity has always dreamed of going to Mars. But until Elon Musk, nobody was brave enough to try it.
But Elon is not a hero; at least, that’s not how he sees it.
He’s just a thinker. Someone with the intellectual capacity to make it happen and the love for humanity to be worth enduring the fight.
Oh, he’s also the world’s richest person right now with the gap widening between him and Bezos. But for Musk, the goal was never, “Become the world’s richest dude.” It was to us his skillset to do something vitally important.
Elon defines a goal worth fighting for, then starts figuring it out. As soon as it seems it might be possible, he starts working on a monetization plan to make it happen.
Then he grinds until the thing does what he wants it to. Years if necessary.
That’s a thinker. And a fighter.
And the world eventually rewarded him.