Email This StoryPoint of View: Making the most of what we have
Nov. 13, 2009
By Brittany Hardy
Jeff Bezos helped to convert his parents' garage into a technical laboratory during his time in high school, before creating the powerhouse that is Amazon.com.
Bezos's story reminds us that big successes start small.
With all the many opportunities we have been granted, it is time for students to utilize these resources and employ their minds. Free enterprise allows nearly unlimited means for people to chase after their deepest desires. Often what begins as simple ideas yield the greatest feats.
As we near the end of the semester, it feels easy to slip into complacency and trudge through the remaining classes in foglike exhaustion and discouragement, but I encourage you to keep your focus on learning and utilize your license to wonder as we finish off 2009.
Find your passion and chase it.
Asafumi Yamashita, 57, might not be a household name. However, you very well may have eaten one of his vegetables. His greenhouse, located in Paris, supplies vegetables to some of the world's top chefs and his unique business grosses about $150,000 per year.
Yamashita's idea began small: an initial investment of $500 to buy seeds from Japan. You can do this. Take control of your story. Begin with your passion, whatever it is. Create a small idea and channel your energy, resources and mind into making it a reality. Stop settling. Stop underestimating. Take advantage of what you have been given.
These stories are not exclusive to the older generation; look at John Goscha, 25, Jeff Avallon, 25, and Morgen Newman, 25. While undergraduates at Babson, these men created "Idea Paint," a paint that transforms any wall into a dry-erase service. Their business, which raised $5 million dollars last year, resulted from the three men's frustration over lack of funds to afford whiteboards when they wanted to have school (or otherwise) brainstorming sessions. Simple idea. Big results.
Our minds are powerful tools. I hope that we all take hold of the opportunities directly before us.
Though I believe learning is very valuable, I do not simply refer to opportunities of the academic realm. Go love on people. Go learn a new sport. Go find adventure. Get off the treadmill of life and wake up from the slumber of the everyday. Begin to take advantage of what you have been given.
Life is fleeting. No matter where you are today, buried deep in stress, mourning in an oceanic valley or feeling the breeze and witnessing the view of an emotional mountain: Breathe. Look at the beautiful resources and opportunities you have been entrusted with and take hold of them.
None of this is easy. Being comfortable is easy. Being lazy is easy. Doing what may simply come natural is easy. But to play a role in these stories of great passion and to utilize opportunity requires courage and patience. Do not be another statistic. You could be so much more.
Brittany Hardy is an Argyle junior majoring in journalism and the Opinion Editor for the Baylor Lariat.
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