Are you willing to be an “unashamed misfit?” Most true wizards...

Are you willing to be an “unashamed misfit?” Most true wizards were, and are. Mohandas Gandhi was. Albert Einstein was. Richard Feynman was. Steve Jobs certainly was. Not bad company, I’d say.

What is it that makes so many great world changers “unashamed misfits?”I think it is because they have the courage–or perhaps they just can’t help themselves–to think their own thoughts, even when those thoughts don’t quite fit into the culture they were born into. These are individuals are intent on seeing the world as it is, but with the energy and courage to take on the responsibility of changing that world. They have the spirit and the mental capacity to follow the motto of the true wizard, and really “Question everything.” 

What do we mean by that phrase-”Question everything? At least one of it’s implications would be that we must question all of our assumptions. And yet, there must certainly be some assumptions, some conventions that are beyond questioning. If we don’t share some basic assumptions, how could we live as a society? How could we even communicate? There are many “assumptions” that are such a part of our world experience, that seem so obvious, that we’re not even aware that they are assumptions. We simply take them for granted.

For example, we believe in gravity. If we’re sitting and we stand up, we expect the floor to stay beneath our feet. When we open our mouths to speak, we expect to hear our own, familiar voices come out. If I place a coin into my hand and close the hand tightly around that coin, you would expect the same coin to be there when I open the hand. If something other than what we assume will happen in any of these instances, our world is shaken for a moment. We have an experience of magic–of experiencing “the impossible.” And yet there are situations where all of those basic things I just described don’t lead to the expected results. You can book a “Zero-G” flight and experience “no gravity.” You can inhale helium and the speak in a voice that sounds nothing like your own. And any competent performing magician can make a coin either disappear or turn into something else, “right before your eyes.”

Those willing to truly “question everything,” to question every possible assumption, including the most basic–those are the ones most likely to really change the world. Those, at least in my book, are the true wizards. I hope you’ll choose to be one of us!

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