So much has happened since the last post. I am deeply grateful for the structure and discipline instilled in me during my time at Columbia Business School that coupled the freedom and limitless opportunity it presented. I ended with a bang, and time will tell of any legacy there, be in the establishment of the Venture Capital Club, the University-Wide Solveathon “Columbia Impact” or the interviews on what it’s like to pursue venture capital. I hope my additional efforts helped the collective whole. I certainly enjoyed it, and that is reward enough.
What I care more about than legacy are the people, thoughts, and connections I made during this time. The space and ability for self-development, exploration, trial and error. The irony is that all of this can be completely recreated for 1/40th of the cost. For ultimately, it came down to amassing a community to discuss common topics and exploring thought processes. That’s the true value of the school, it’s ability–predicated on its reputation–to search the world for amazing students, teachers, and community to blend in an awesome smoothie of gatherings, be they classes, networking events, lectures, trips.
If we were all recorded during those class conversations of dealing with certain case studies, if there was macro analysis and AI parsing our comments and mapped across all business schools with similar case studies, you’d find a compendium of thought processes that are the “peak” examples of what our generation can think about…that is, those represented and selected as “peak” examples…aka those who have continued to excel for their age group on standardized tests and personal network connections of power and wealth.
This idea to analyze our thoughts wouldn’t be hard to implement, and there are companies out there scraping through much more intricate data. Ever wonder what it’s like to be in business school? Ever wonder what kind of people get MBA’s? Are they that much smarter? What would their collective conscious say about a topic or business problem? Crowd-sourcing something like that is not too far off…but would you actually value what we said?
There were just some days though that I looked around (including at myself) and wondered if this was the best we could collectively achieve. Is this really the best of the best?
Oftentimes, the truth came much clearer to me through wandering the streets of New York City, Riyadh and Angkor Wat. Not from the prestigious resumes assembled in my class (many of which still awe and amaze me). It was from those street merchants, random strangers, and hospitable hosts that provided the diverse experience which delivered truth to me.
I continue to be reminded of this type of truth I first thought about during my pre-teen thinking. The thought that it matters not the origin of the messenger of truth, it may be a beggar or a prince that says it, truth in its form resonates regardless of the deliverer of that message. Our ego encapsulates some type of credibility and authority to the deliverer of that message, a very egoic state of assessing truth, which at its core is being crumbled by the abuse of and lack of both in our journalism, media and current definition of “leaders”.
The fact is, these systems that promote this type of thinking cannot help itself. It has bred biases since the very beginning and the attempt at fair and balanced was simply too naive of a thought process for the reality of the situation: that our realities are far more complex and intertwined to promote one objective reality to the masses. The fact is, reality is relative to the observer. Moral relativism is a touchy subject, so I will just point to the countless Youtube videos on relativity from a physics perspective.
I keep going back to the question I posed in my mastermind so many years ago to a dear brother and friend, Dano. I asked him if there is a difference in getting a multiple choice question correct, is a right answer right no matter how it is got?
I argued back in New Zealand in 2009 that there was not a difference, right is right whether you guessed “A” and was lucky, or always knew you were right and so said it was “A” which made it right, or knew the answer from studying it was “A”, or knowing that the “B, C, D” alternatives were wrong and therefore must be “A”.
What was described in retrospect in this innocent conversation was a more complex thought process that entails so much more than my myopic experience could explain at that time. I am still processing it. However, the answer to me is still the same, there is no difference, the right answer is “A”. Truth is truth. But I was focusing on the wrong part of the scenario.
What matters more is focusing on the journey to getting to that answer. Each journey is different and therefore the individual is affected in different ways by the various routes of answering that question. The question itself then becomes the constant and getting to that answer becomes the variable.
Think of the personalities, history, and ego that would be involved in answering the question correctly in each scenario. They all answered it right, but it was the journey to that answer that is so unique and different, a somnambulant cacophony of ego, past life experiences, and confidence.
This too is recreated in the journey we all take towards the fountain of youth, the metaphorical representation of eternal living. The answer “A” is living, it is the constant. By reading this you are living (or an AI bot). Congrats, you’ve answered the question correctly, but how you get to the answer is the real purpose of the question, the real purpose of living.
How are you getting to the answer “A” this year?
How does your ego, past life and desires shape your journey in getting there?
To us all getting to “A” this year however we must,
Clifton