My mentors have helped shape me unto who I am, and who I want to be. They have inspired, humbled, and encouraged me. But right now, I want to share some things they've taught me.
Some of them I've only had a few, fantastic conversations with; others I've kept in touch with more consistently, so please understand that I use the term broadly, as a kid who doesn't really know what to call the people who have taught him lessons he will never forget.
And those lessons are many. They know how to share things with me that I can't learn from textbooks, and answer the questions I don't know I ought to ask. Here are the four lessons that have impacted me most powerfully.
Be Creative
The act of creation is a powerful and passionate endeavor. It is the tranformation of imagination into reality. It is a drawing of distantly related arts, practices, and ideas together to fuse them into a novel invention. Creativity should not be a sidenote, it should be a main driving force and purpose in life.
Creativity certainly does not belong only to the humanities. I'll use an illustration given to me by a mentor, Dr. C, because I believe it makes the point most clearly. He said, "I could take you into the operating room, and in a week have you performing a hip replacement surgery. You follow the procedures, step-by-step, until you sow the patient up. But it would take decades to make you an engineer."
Why? Because engineering is creativity. Dr. C calls the act of creation the most enjoyable part of his life. "Some people spend their lives making money and starting businesses. I've performed the entrepreneur's role a few times, but in my life, I've loved to create things so much more."
Another engineer, Mr. Walker, also described the primacy of creativity. Once when I asked about entrepreneurship, to my surprise he didn't say much about business at all. He told me I needed an idea first. "When you look at the great entrepreneurs," he began, "you see that they all began with the great idea. Michael Dell, Steven Jobs, Wozniak... they each had an idea that they grew into something great."
Pursue Opportunity
Dr. C's life is a compelling argument for this philosophy. It is a series of wildly dissimilar but exhilarating chapters, woven together by expertly hunted opportunities. Sometimes those opportunities serve themselves up on a platter, but more often they lurk unseen and unsought in the shadows.
The general image we see when imagining an opportunity is something like this: you're sitting peacefully in the dining room, when upon a sudden, you hear a knock at the door. You rush out front, where the man in the suit is holding the giant million dollar check. In our minds, we expect opportunities to be job offers, scholarships, and unexpected blessings.
But this is the real world, where opportunities are often as cleverly hidden as they are abundant. The opportunity hunter must have an eagle's eye, always on the watch for prey. He must have a stubborn, dogged, persistence. And when he sees a worthwhile pursuit, he must tackle it with a matter-of-fact readiness.
Treat People Magnificently
I once asked a particularly personable gentleman, Mr. Falconnier, what he could tell me about people skills. To my surprise, he didn't really give me much (at least, not about what I then thought "people skills" were). He simply elaborated on a remarkably consistent theme of his: treat people magnificently. Make them feel worthwhile.
Powerfully deep relationships come out of treating people right. Some of my mentors have achieved remarkable things in life, and still they say that friendships are the most deeply satisfying things they've been blessed with.
Opportunities do come out of treating people right--we've all heard, and the biographies of my mentors attest, how powerful of a tool networking is. Enormous personal gain comes from great relationships, even for the most selfish Randians. But these don't comprise the rationale for treating people magnificently. That rationale is a matter of plain rightness. If you treat your Wal-Mart cashier any worse than your loan officer, something's wrong.
Find Mentors
Ignorance, I've found, falls into two categories: illuminated ignorance, and shadow ignorance.
Illuminated ignorance is what you don't know, but are aware of. You know that you don't know it, but you know that you ought to know it. Any freshman engineering student can call advanced calculus and thermodynamics his areas of illuminated ignorance. Luckily, ignorance of this sort can be burnt away by teachers and textbooks.
Not so for shadow ignorance. This is the kind of thing that you don't know, and aren't aware of. You don't even know how ignorant of it you are, nor how crucial it is. For me, the three lessons above each fell into this category at one point or another (if not conceptually, at least emotionally and convictionally). What's worse, you cannot fight shadow ignorance with books or lectures or self-help books. These sources provide answers; but you don't even know the questions you're supposed to ask. Only your mentors do. They size you up and evaluate you. They figure you out. They relate lessons you never would have thought to ask for, illuminating the shadows of the unknown.
It's important to make sure the mentors you choose know what they're talking about. The world is full of ignoramuses more than willing to share potentially dangerous nonsense with you. I know, because I've met them, and been mentored by them. Avoid their spewings. A mentor's life must attest to his or her wisdom and experience.
I have been blessed to meet these kind of people, and blessed that they have chosen to give me hours of their valuable time. The lessons I've tried to share here aren't the only ones I've received, but they're ones that burrowed into my head until they radiated a blinding obviousness. I can't be sure I'll ever fully live them out, but I can be sure to try.
I wanted to share them because they matter to me, and I hope they may be valuable to someone else. Who knows, one day you might end up relating these ideas to some teenager sitting across the table from you, sipping coffee and scribbling down illegible notes. If so, God bless you. You'll never know how much that kid will appreciate it.
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