#82: "Stay foolish, stay hungry"

7 ideas to help us tackle 2024

Surely you have to appreciate a tryer? Not everyone does. Not in the subconscious parts of our brains. Cars. A reputation with splendor. Elon Musk with his plastic jawline and fabricated hair, that’s what we are prone to like. Our brains conveniently forget the balding hero who lived for a year on one dollar a day to prepare himself mentally to lose everything if he failed to relocate the human race to Mars. That’s idea one. Seeing our subconscious selves and what motivates us in 2024 is probably going to be crucial.

I love that Steve Jobs was kicked out of his own company for being an ass-hole. It is probably the most important part of his journey. That solid brick wall which smashed his nose in just enough for him to bleed, stop, and reflect where his scurrying feet were taking him. Nowhere… Let’s call that idea two. Trying and failing is not only inevitable, but helpful. With AI tearing into every aspect of society what a beautiful mantra to hold onto.

Jobs learned one thing through that process. Failure wasn’t his enemy. Pride was. His failure uncoupled him and at thirty he finally saw more clearly than ever before that he loved what he did, he thought it was important, and that it had the potential to serve other people. So in the simplicity of that one revelation, he adopted a simple saying - “Stay hungry, stay foolish”. That’s our idea three. When we’re in deep pain we can talk ourselves out of it if we choose to.

2024 is set to be a significant year. Jacob Zuma’s genius opportunism with MK is an obvious marker of the tectonic shifting we can expect between all our toes. I suppose in the face of all this change, all this whirling, we would do well to say' Steve Job’s saying to ourselves a few times. Try it on for size. Take it for a spin before we choose a saying of our own. Why? Control is not an option anymore. That’s idea four. You don’t have to smash your nose up against a spectacular failure to see that. We live on a molten planet spinning at over 17,000km an hour. Our second biggest election looms in May and it is anyone’s guess which way it will go... Trump’s somehow resurrected himself as the only likely Republican candidate? And the Isarel-Palestine conflict continues to thicken signifying crumbling confidence in Western values possibly for all time…

So what would happen if in the face of all this chaos we abandoned the illusion of control in 2024? That pursuit of perfection we thought kept us safe? What would be the consequence of choosing the path of love and foolishness? That is a question rather than an idea. One I ask myself often enough to make it our number five.

Saying it out loud sounds as stupid as it reads. I get that. Let’s remind ourselves ladies and gentlemen that one legacy of foolish abandonment is likely in your pocket and the price of the average SA home loan. The iPhone is the proud, almost perfect, product of asking the right questions of ourselves rather than expecting our culture to provide us with adequate answers. Take time to reflect on those luscious curves of almost every Macintosh that Jobs built post his exile. They sound a trumpet for all of us to release a deep sigh if we listen closely to what they scream. Phew. “I don’t need to be perfect today”, is what we should hear them say. “I just need to try and not be perfect enough so that I get out of my own way”. Idea six.

And that is really important now. In our imperfection lies our genius. That’s the powerful point of “Staying foolish”. It is only when we cast off the constraints of expectations we place on ourselves that we can truly begin to discover what’s hidden beneath all those layers of ‘normal’. Those seeds of genius waiting to germinate. It’s not exclusive. Science says we all have inner Jobs. Or Musk (don’t forget he lost everything as well in his pursuit of ‘foolishness). Or Gretta Thumberg. The person spun together by a cosmic, creative Force that seems to know exactly what He/She is doing when we look hard enough at the created world around us. In us are solutions to today’s increasingly complex problems like how to get rid of those weeds on your verge. That crime at your door. The corruption and complacency in your street, school, and cities. In us are better processes for the teenagers grieving divorce and depression a desk away from you… Us. Yes us. Us potentially glorious fools carrying answers to every complex problem if we just give ourselves enough space to try...

I see the idealism in these ideas. I do. And they have left unseen scars across my entire body and mind. And still, despite the pain and confusion they are prone to bring, I believe they are better medicine than pessimism. Pessimism and complaining are just too easy. Too weak. We leads neatly to our most practical and poignant insight - idea seven. Let’s watch what comes out of our mouths in 2024 mindful that what we say doesn’t just darken others’ doors.

So I wish you all the best of 2024. Not in houses, or salary increases, or promotions, or affirmation; but in peace. I wish on you the blessed peace that only being ourselves can bring and the satisfaction of seeing that make the world around us just that little bit more beautiful.

“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”