25 October
From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by
Arnold Kunst
Christopher Columbus did his sums and satisfied himself that
he could get to the Orient and the spice trade by sailing west. Everybody, of
course, knew he was crazy. The way to sail from Europe to India was to go south
to the tip of Africa and turn left. The idea of sailing east by sailing west
was as crazy as saying yes by saying no. And besides, ships that sailed out of
sight of land would eventually disappear because they'd fall off! He probably
heard all this when he'd go in for a beer to his neighborhood bar; he certainly
heard it from the non-professionals he approached - court after court after
court - for the money to finance the thing. It is probable that his wife
thought occasionally that she was saddled with a basket case. And when he did
get his miserable fleet of three leaky little tubs two months into the
Atlantic, he faced the threat of mutiny from a disheveled, undisciplined crew
on short rations. There is no doubt in my mind that he would have ended up as
nothing but a jumped-up footnote, a kind of historical freak, one of the legion
of might-have-been’s, if he had decided to try to get the money together and
see if the thing would work. The conclusion is obvious: success in any human
endeavor, while it entails the persistent injection of organizational ability
and imagination, is primarily the result of a will act implacably adhered to.
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