If God was an Entrepreneur — Part 1
(Seeing God through the rose colored startup glasses)
“Let there be light” He willed and just like that, one fine day, the world began!
Understanding God is not easy and I claim no enlightenment or interest in theology. Neither His methods nor His means are easily comprehensible to us mortals. Considering human quest for God has yielded little result, it’s fair to admit that He is beyond our realm.
While we struggle to build even a bug free App, He conjures up massive heavenly bodies and complex genetic material out of vacuum (not even thin air!). We struggle to be on time for those back to back meetings and He is simply omnipresent- all places, all the time. I know it seems a little farfetched, therefore, to see Him as a fellow entrepreneur.
But probe deeper and you would know that all is not well under Him. Beyond our awe of The Divine, the trouble in His magical enterprise called ‘Earth’ is all too conspicuous. I mean, take a look around and the insanity that surrounds us nowadays!
Surely, His issues are much more complex than ours and He too seems to be having some difficulty in sorting these out. If you thought being an entrepreneur is challenging, it should be tad comforting to know that being God is not easy either. Maybe His powers are a bit overrated and stories all apocryphal, akin to anecdotes of Einstein, Howard Hughes, Steve Jobs or Roman Demigods.
With realisation of His challenges and similarity in exaggeration, I m glad we have found some common, albeit small, ground with Him.
Visionaries build great enterprises?
I m told that having a foresight, a ‘Vision’ is a prerequisite for building a successful enterprise. Although I’m uncertain if such paranormal, future-gazing eyesight exists, I do agree that this brings a bit of super human imagery to an otherwise boring narrative of plain hard work, serious errors, retrials and persistence of the entrepreneurs. We love magic in our fables and this veil of a miraculous divine vision may have blinded us from seeing God’s real pain and toil to build our world.
We take life on Earth for granted but it hasn’t been without His share of trials and tribulations. If Earth is by any measure a successful enterprise, then, by contrast, those barren, hot or cold heavenly bodies seem like a zillion failed experiments!
Closer home, Edison once said ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work’. It seems God has a similar trial and error approach.
I risk a guess that His first venture ended up somewhat like Pluto- dark, frozen, tiny mass of gas, rock and mud. Full of errors! And so, I presume, He pivoted to something like Sun and found it too hot to handle. Journeying from one extreme to another and exploring everything in between, He finally found the right mix on Earth! Much similar to an entrepreneur seeking a Goldilocks balance of growth, profit, scale and sustenance.
Both, mortal Edison (and many like him) and eternal God, have a flair for learning from mistakes. It sounds simple in retrospect but it’s never easy to get up after failing again and again. In God’s case it’s a zillion cycles of build-fail-restart. His persistence is inspiring and He goes further.
He isn’t sweeping failures under the carpet of embarrassment. Instead, aligns them up neatly in the sky and lights them up every day for everyone to see. ‘There is no shame in failing’ is His message I suppose.
So, next time your venture fails, remember you are in good league. Just look up. Stars may just be the daily dose of reminder you need to keep going.
(Originally published at www.ideacandles.com) (Click here for Part 2.
(Pic courtesy yourstory.com where the longform of this article was also published)
