Visions Create Reality
I did a nostalgia type column last week. I guess you could call it an Old Year retrospective. Like sixty years ago. So maybe I’ll try my version of a New Year’s piece this week, even though it’s a tad late.
I was sorting through some accumulated notes and column ideas before placing them in one of my new filing cabinets. One note was a few words exploring how new things replace the old.
Autos began replacing horses and buggies at the turn of the last century. That was before the 1900’s began, for any infants who might be reading this! Horses and the conveyances they pulled had been around for thousands of years. Consider the audacity of Henry Ford imagining he could improve something so venerably ancient, for the benefit of the common man.
But imagine it he did and his dream became reality. However it was an all or nothing concept. Mr. Ford couldn’t just install a gasoline engine in a buggy and hitch a horse alongside to take over if the engine failed. Some of the early auto owners may have wished he could.
Many people thought these ‘new-fangled automobiles’ would not last. Noisy. Scared the livestock on farms when they roared by at twenty or thirty miles an hour. Caused horses to bolt and lose their riders or the carriages they pulled. Put people out of work, too. Leather harness and whip makers, builders of coaches and carts, horse ranchers
and traders. For good or ill, the contraptions did remain. Became bigger, faster, and now ordinary men zoom around on the earth at speeds unheard of in the past by even kings.
When the Wright brothers took to the air very soon thereafter they encountered the same problem. They couldn’t just put wings on a car and leave four wheels attached so if it fell it would just roll on along. Well, planes do have wheels, but of another design. Many did fall before flight for mankind became a practical reality. Neither Ford or the Wright brothers and those who came after gave up on their dreams for the future of transportation. They refused to accept the verdict of naysayers.
You or I may never envision a marvelous invention to benefit all mankind. And anyone with a deeply vested interest in the old is not too likely to embrace the new wholeheartedly. But we all have dreams. Pick one and go for it - all out - or leave it alone. Success does not lie around, waiting to be picked up by just anyone. Move off the beaten path, even just a little way, find your vision, and make it reality.
©Sylvia Nickels
