We Need The Contrast

The power of an experience is not absolute. Visiting Louvre is exciting for everybody but the guard of the Etruscan Hall.  It depends on the contrast with your current complexion and the novelty of the stimulus itself.  One way to renew our impressions about an old experience is by contrast.  The US border with Mexico has just that. 

Just in the limit, there is a huge mall. It’s not that different from the rest of the malls in the USA. Every single franchise is represented... everyone: GAP, Levis, Nautica, Old Navy, Tommy Hilfiger, Reebok, Skechers, Banana Republic, Victoria Secret, Bank of America, McDonald's, IHOP and a whole building for Nike. This last one looks hilarious because the rusty fence of the border is just behind and you can see the border patrol cars driving around with a big logo above reading “Just Do It”

No doubt in my mind, this country has produced the greatest material wealth ever generated in history.  It gives us the precious opportunity of coming here, progress, save, succeed, buy… and get tired of it. This last experience is the most valuable of all because it tells us that even with two cars, a home paid for, a corner office and a trophy wife, happiness seems to be always somewhere else.

The place we are now is not the problem. We are just like the guard of the Etruscan Hall of Louvre; walking too many years through the same marvels to appreciate them. We need the contrast. And we humans like to make the contrast in the upper direction.

We got in use to electric light, so we made computers. We got in use to planes, so we built spacecraft. We got in use with vaccines, so we are fooling around with genetics. And we will get there, and we will get bored again, and we’ll look for the next impossible. 

That’s why working in a solved problem is like poisoning our souls. We are dreamers, creators, poets and entrepreneurs. We breathe innovation. We live because there is something else to be done. We are not equipped to survive, we are meant to bright.  

Yes, there are those who carry, push and repeat; I call them animals. I like them, protect them, feed them, but I’m not in their group. Their mission isn’t mine, nor their nature, neither their destiny.

We are creators. We refuse to let this world in the same position we found it.