Accomplishing nothing often exceeds our expectations. We strive to be successful on whatever standard our experience and thinking justifies as correct, right, proper, profitable or advantageous. Rebels throughout history have often be relegated to the roles of villains or ne’er-do-wells. They go against the norm. They reject the accepted and seek to turn truth itself on its ear. At least that is what is thought of them at the moment. History, again, often records their efforts as revolutionary, remarkable insight or fundamentally re-directive. How about a recent example? As he considered what to build into his automobile, Henry Ford said that if he had asked the average man on the street what was needed to advance their situation in life , they would have said “A faster horse”. However genetic engineering was not a well established science in those days. Henry’s radical approach to the need for better transportation accomplished nothing for those who wanted a faster horse.
We might think it strange to call the inventor of the assembly line mass produced automobile a rebel. But there were many who believed his disruption in the blacksmith trade would be the financial ruin and downfall of America. He was vilified and persecuted in the public square because his ideas were so radical that he was seen as public enemy number one in many circles. There have of course been many other examples. Certain well meaning social activists wanted slaves to be freed. A group of rebellious terrorists dared to tell a kindly king that his tax on tea was going to far. The Chinese, Mongolians, Gauls, Spanish and on and on, have all had there historical landscapes interceded with rebels who became heroes while seemingly, at the time, tearing apart the fabric of the status quo. In other words, accomplishing nothing.
Now before you assume this is a recommendation to promote social upheaval for historical recognition, let me assure you that has already been done many times over without significant improvement in our stats of being. Yes, many of those who stood against injustice and tyranny have risen to the status of greatness in the eyes of those who benefited from their bravery. Yet, many more line the halls of infamy and failure. These are relegated to fall out of favor in history to be seen as atrocious demons or even worse, forgotten for all time. Honestly our verifiable history is extremely short. We can look at thirty to forty centuries of records including a few of the good and evil who made major impacts, but little if any records exist of the common people trying to do good in a world where the deck seems to be stacked against them. So the goal is not to spend your life accomplishing nothing.
What if instead of insisting that we have to be the catalyst for the next revolution, we allow someone else to fill that role? What would it mean to our descendants if we were to not spend every waking moment accumulating wealth we cannot spend? What if we did not demand our own rights but rather submitted to follow someone else’s accomplishments. What if we chose to accomplish nothing? This is hardly what you would expect to hear as a commencement speech subject. Nor would it win you many votes in a boardroom filled with successful entrepreneurs. Yet of the millions of babies born in your life time, how many will be remembered in a hundred years? Not just by you or those born the same year as you, but by the recorded annals of the history of mankind? And of all those few who are greatly remembered, how many accomplished nothing?