I think often about how important the written word is to so many of us. It is truly incredible how the most abstract ideas can still be conveyed through arbitrary collections of characters given arbitrary meanings. These past two weeks, I’ve been given the opportunity to, along with my peers in the cohort, read one of these books dealing so heavily with one of these vague ideas. In “Dare to Matter”, written by Dr. Jordan Kassalow and Rabbi Jennifer Krause, our authors seek to not only define things like purpose or responsibility, but also to guide readers into a place of thoughtfulness and contemplation, as if to give to readers the same push as Dr. Kassalow was given during his life.
At first glance, the title “Dare to Matter” doesn’t seem like anything more than a couple buzzwords to help sell the book. But the authors truly mean to make a more profound statement using that phrase, and it shows throughout the book. Daring to matter is much more than that first glance lets on. But what does it mean to dare to matter, then? By Dr. Kassalow’s definition, daring to matter is”owning our uniqueness”, and using that uniqueness to change the world. This takes into account how truly difficult that task is with all of our busy lives. That difficulty is what makes daring to matter so important. Dr. Kassalow wants us to act as if our actions were totally our own and that nobody else would stand when we would. As he says, “In that combination of great responsibility and possibility is where purpose is born…” (Kassalow 18). Reading “Dare to Matter” gave me some great chances to reflect on what I have done, am doing, or plan on doing in order to “take the dare” so to speak. In what ways do I or can I matter? I think that at this current stage in life, I have an excellent opportunity to experience the world in less of a cemented perspective than I may have in twenty years. Even while I’m stuck in quarantine or practicing social distancing, I still feel drawn to the world and the people who live in it. I think that, alongside professional and educational progress of course, a real social understanding of all sorts of communities, cultures, traditions, and beliefs, will be key to me making a difference and mattering. Another interesting idea in “Dare to Matter” is the idea that some things “feed” us while other things “need” us. This concept is taken from a third-century Jewish commentary, exemplifying the ties from every era of human history today. The idea is that we shouldn’t concern ourselves with creating a perfect world all by ourselves, it’s not possible. Dr. Kassalow emphasizes that we should identify and work on solving those problems which we know we are capable of solving. He writes about how looking for problems we can solve instead of looking at a big picture view of every issue that the modern world contains can entirely change your attitude, so that making a difference no longer feels like a task for “someone else”. Kassalow writes, “the only thing about working for change that will feel impossible is not doing what you realize you have been created to do”. (Kassalow 114) “Dare to Matter” has some very important lessons to really digest. It’s not so much a guide on how to make the world a better place with a specific step-by-step process, but it does provide a way to get on each of our personalized paths to making a difference. We should strive to be the ones to stand up and decide to do something. We have to stop thinking that someone else is going to do something instead. With a little help, guidance, and support from family and friends, I think we can all choose to take the dare.
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In times like our own, ambiguity is becoming second nature to a lot of us. There is so much uncertainty about the future now, especially since everything that we had predicted for this year all the way back in January has no been effectively turned upside down. We live in a permanently different world from 2019, and this new world comes with a whole list of new challenges, not the least of which is, of course, ambiguity.
Being a leader comes with the responsibility to be willing to navigate situations in which ambiguity is present. We are part of a world and a society in which we cannot possibly predict with 100% accuracy how a given month, week, day, or even an hour will play out. When in a position of leadership, the ability to successfully traverse a sea of uncertainty and variability is especially important. Leaders do not sail this sea alone, they have dependents and peers who need a role model and an ally to make the same crossing. This is increasingly evident as the world’s nations and companies are becoming more outward-facing under the pressure of the constant watchful eye from the public and media. Let’s take a look at something overwhelmingly familiar to us right now, the global COVID-19 pandemic. This crisis is incredibly interesting because it has never truly occurred on this scale at any time during history. Sure, there were plans in place from companies and countries, but as it is said, “no plan survives contact with the enemy”. Had COVID-19 emerged at any time prior to the 2000s, I believe it’s safe to say that the effects would have been catastrophic. It’s truly impressive that the world economy has not only survived the pandemic so far but has come out on nearly the other side continuing to grow. Of course, we can attribute the success of remote working and learning to the use of incredible technological advancements within the last decade, but we shouldn’t let that diminish the credit of our world’s leaders in government and executive positions. These leaders were given a seemingly impossible task, to protect their citizens or employees and customers while maintaining a stable and productive economy or business. And as far as I can tell, they have succeeded for the most part (knock on wood). In the past four weeks, my peers in the Scott Scholars and I have been in contact with the executive team at Arbor Bank, an incredible institution that I am so excited to have the opportunity to work with. During this time, we have conducted several empathy probes with many members of this team. A big point that every single interviewee had made was just how prepared they were for a pandemic scenario but how the book, so to speak, could only take them so far. They could never have predicted the symptoms or the incubation period of COVID or the politics of mask-wearing and social distancing. The point is that Arbor Bank’s plan was well prepared, but couldn’t cover every angle. So the leadership didn’t just rely on protocols and plans, they made real, human decisions based on the health of the company and more importantly based on the safety of their employees, clients, and communities. Mark Winn, the Executive Director of Marketing at Arbor Bank specifically said “we adapt, we persevere, and we move forward” when talking about his team’s rapid response to the pandemic. There are stories like this one everywhere around us. Ambiguity is met with a passion and a drive from leaders to make the decisions necessary to successfully navigate what would otherwise have been an unforeseen blow. As developing leaders, we should take care to acknowledge those who have come before us. Every leader has faced uncertainty. How they responded to that uncertainty is often how they have defined their legacies. Uncertainty is not a new concept, it has been with us since the beginning and will continue to be with us. Looking back may seem counterproductive when discussing the future. Learning how leaders of the past have sailed that same sea of uncertainty on which we find ourselves may not give us the solution or tell us which way the wind will blow, but it will show us how to prepare our ship for whatever waves, rocks, or storms will come. Not knowing is no excuse not to try. When we think of creativity, what kinds of words are conjured in our minds? Artist, musician, inventor, architect? So often we confine creativity to special individuals, people who were “born creative”. But that’s far from the truth, isn’t it? Every one of us is creative in one way or another. It’s part of our human nature to create and for most of us, it’s an innate need to be able to create and express ourselves through our creations, whether that expression comes through an art form, writing, or even just solving problems in our workplace. Without human creativity, the world would be so much colder, darker, less efficient, and just worse in general.
We shouldn’t limit our definition of creativity to only one or two parts of our society or only one or two groups of people. Doing so would waste so much potential for everyone. We should be promoting the use of creativity in every child, every student, every adult, every person. Creativity drives innovation, and innovation is what makes our world better each day. Letting each member of our society fully explore their creative side and fulfill their potential leads to the greatest ideas possible, especially if we collaborate. Collaboration is a huge part of the creative process. Sure, one person may be able to invent something or paint a picture, but they need inspiration from something or someone or else that project is limited in scope to only what that single individual can come up with. It doesn’t matter how smart or creative someone is, there can always be improvements or helpful ideas or inspiration that can come from someone else. Ideas can float out into the world and be picked up by someone else, adding their ideas in turn. A good leader is someone who facilitates this sort of collaborative thinking, and even participates in it themselves. Having the right environment for ideation is crucial to the success of any project. That doesn't just mean the decor of a meeting room or the temperature of a laboratory, it means the people most of all. Promoting a healthy social environment for collaborative thinking and creativity is a vital part of any leader’s responsibilities. But does a leader necessarily need to be creative themselves for creativity to exist in the team? Well, in my opinion, that depends on how one defines creativity. When we limit ourselves to thinking of creativity as something people are born either good or bad at, we fail to see how creativity is in each of us. Like I mentioned before, I define creativity as the human ability to perceive, understand, and manipulate ideas in their mind to express themselves or accomplish a goal. Using this definition, I would say that a leader absolutely must be creative in order to truly inspire and motivate those that they lead. But I don’t think that “needing a creative leader” should be a limiting factor at all. We are all creative. But a true leader who takes advantage of creativity to its fullest potential is one that cuts no corners when it comes to ideating and provides those they lead with everything they need to let the creativity and ideas flow. And that starts with the people. Interacting with other people can be incredibly difficult. Communication, while being one of the greatest assets and gifts to the human species, is a skill which must be practiced and refined. It’s something that is nearly impossible to master. But without it, we wouldn’t have the advanced society which we have today. Many times, we find ourselves coming into contact with individuals who may or may not share our perspective. Too often, when people come across situations like this, the interaction devolves into arguments or confrontations, especially in such a divided period in history such as ours. As leaders, it is our responsibility to learn to better interact and have meaningful conversations with both those we agree with and those we disagree with. How do we accomplish this? By listening. Listening is an especially important skill to develop for any leader. I think that a lot of conflict in the world stems from the refusal to even take the time to listen to someone else. Being able to really internalize the ideas and issues coming from our team members is exactly how we can make things better within and outside our team or work environment. We cannot move towards progression if we continue to hold on to each of our own ideas as perfect truth and block out everyone else’s ideas as false. Staying in an echo chamber of ideas does just as much to hurt ourselves as it does to others. That’s not to say that listening is a purely selfish action, however. Listening to someone else with your whole attention is realistically a selfless thing to do. Hearing someone out shows that you are empathizing with them and that you value them as a human being. It doesn't matter whether or not you agree with them or if you are convinced, what matters is that it is creating constructive dialogue. As a leader, listening is a necessity for being effective conduit for progress. Innovation doesn’t come from one person at a time, it’s the culmination of many people’s ideas and the product comes from everyone listening to each other and contributing to the conversation. An inherent aspect of really listening is exercising one’s empathy. Listening is an empathetic action, building connections between people and opening doors and bridges to a better understanding of one another. Listening is a massively impactful action, not only on an individual to individual scale, but going as far up as to influence international relations. The world would be a far less beautiful place if every world leader buried their heads in the sand and refused to listen or compromise. Obviously, as we go through our lives, we may find that listening is much easier said than done. Sometimes, we are just having a bad day, or we can’t find the time or energy to listen to even those we love, or the way someone is treating you or has treated you in the past makes it difficult to listen to them, but that is really the beauty of listening. It’s something that takes work to get better at, but each step we take towards better listening skills makes our lives and the lives of those around us that much better. Once we devote ourselves towards consciously listening more, we really find that there is so much more to experience in terms of communication. Yes, it may be hard. But that hasn’t stopped those who came before us from becoming the innovators that has made the modern world what it is today, so why should it stop us? One day at a time, we can all be better listeners. How can one visualize someone else’s feelings? It seems like a silly question with no purpose, but it’s actually a more important idea than it might appear to be. All too often, especially in our modern world, it is so difficult for people to see the world from another’s perspective. It’s something that every one of us is guilty of doing at least once in our lifetimes: building a wall around our ideas and plugging our ears so as not to challenge them. Personally, I believe that plenty of our world’s problems would have easy solutions if only we all could understand where everyone else was coming from. The trouble is realizing that we all have our own perspectives. So what kind of method can we utilize in order to catch a glimpse into other people’s perspectives?
In a lot of cases, it’s easier to just pretend like other people don’t have the same kinds of emotions as you do. But of course as we know, human emotions are what really unite us all as a species, so it does a great disservice to all of us to think of ourselves as more special than any other. Empathy interviews are a chance to truly internalize this idea. This week I had the great privilege of conducting an empathy interview with a peer and fellow Scott Scholar, Temi. The goal of this exercise was to visualize the attitudes and emotions of an individual over a certain amount of time. In our case, Temi and I discussed our experiences in socializing as First-Year college students during the era of COVID-19. We each charted each other’s experiences as a line on a graph detailing the positive and negative emotions we both felt from the beginning of the semester to now. Using this line, we were able to directly see specific events and experiences and we came to a better understanding of why each of us felt the way we did at that very moment. The empathy interview exercise not only helped Temi and I understand each other better, but it exemplified how the attitude and tone of a person in one moment isn’t just arbitrary, but rather the summation of days, weeks, or even years or prior experiences all building on top of one another. Were we to take this into consideration in our daily lives and interactions with other people, we may be able to better understand people and create more productive experiences for all parties involved. The applications of this way of thinking about people in a leadership role are incredibly valuable. Seeing just 8 weeks worth of Temi’s experiences showed me just how similar our perspectives were as well. Each of us had difficulties and exciting moments due to or in spite of the current pandemic. The empathy interview helped us both really grasp how similar our experiences are. In times such as these, empathy is one characteristic that everyone could use. We don’t always need to conduct an empathy interview for each individual we come across in order to have empathy. Just being conscious of the way we treat people and consider our actions is part of having empathy. Watching this TED talk this week was a great insight into the mind of an empathetic designer, and a lesson which really resonated with me and surely with many others who have watched it as well. The story Mr. Dietz tells his audience is a deeply personal one and is a perfect example of using empathy as the driving force behind a project from minute one. Dietz begins his talk by explaining how excited he was to finally put his newly designed MR scanner to work in an actual hospital. Dietz explains how joyful he was to walk into the scanning room and see his machine ready to be put to use. But as he leaves the room to allow for a patient to get their scan, he has this profound experience. The patient is a little girl, no more than seven. She is absolutely terrified, even as she just walks down the hallway. Her parents try to comfort her but even they are deeply troubled, as a trip to the hospital requiring an MRI is never an easy one.
This experience that Mr. Dietz had at the hospital was a massive turning point for his creative process. For all intents and purposes, his machine was a success. But he tells his audience that as he went home, all that joy of his great success melted away and he saw his MR scanner as a failure. Even today, he still looks back and views this first MR scanner as a dud, as something that didn’t accomplish what it should have. And so Dietz got back to work. This time, however, he began his work with a different goal in mind. The perspective changed from being entirely his. He began to see his machine as if the little girl in the hallway was looking at it, already frightened by the sterile hospital and the intimidating nurses and doctors and dreading the march into the dimly lit room with the big machine. This way of looking at a project is exactly what is meant when someone says that empathy is a necessary component of design. As Mr. Dietz himself said in his talk, “Empathy at the beginning is the heartbeat of the project”. When Dietz redesigned his MR scanners, he did so in a way which wouldn’t scare children away, but welcome them. He wanted to make the process as painless or even calming as possible for both the children and the parents. Dietz tells us in an emotional part of his talk that after his project was finally complete, a child had asked their parents if they could come back again the next day. The simple question was exactly what kind of an experience Dietz wanted to create for these children: Turning a scary experience into one that children could even enjoy. Dietz reveals that the hospitals he worked with sometimes had to sedate up to 80% of children just to get them to be calm or still enough to get the scans, but since the newly designed machines came in, that number fell to 0.2%. Mr. Dietz’s story is a truly incredible tale that speaks volumes about the effectiveness of empathetic designing and the impact it can have on real people with real emotions and struggles. It was so important that Dietz designed the MR scanner with an user’s mindset. Had he designed only for efficiency or cost-effectiveness, he would have been left with the cold, pale, machine which created panic in their users: children. But because of his new perspective and his empathetic view on his project, he ended up creating a machine that not only allowed for easier results on once terrified patients, but more importantly it gave peace of mind to parents and allowed for the kind of joy you only find in children to remain even during a trying experience. This is exactly the kind result every designer should strive for, and also the result which can be unlocked only through an empathetic design process in which the end-user is who the project is being designed for. Without knowing who your design is meant for, it is almost impossible to really lock in to the aspects of the design that matter the most. At the end of the day, we should hope to see our projects end up being as much of a positive influence on others as it can possibly be instead of just concerning ourselves with whether or not it “works”. It is worth it to go back and redesign something if it means creating a more meaningful solution to those around us. I hope we can all take something away from Mr. Dietz's story and make the designs of tomorrow more human-centered and more meaningful than ever before. In Patrick Lencioni’s book, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team”, a lot of attention is paid to the interactions between the leaders of the company at the center of the plot. In fact, that’s where most of Mr. Lencioni’s lessons are given. When reading through Five Dysfunctions, it was very easy for me to tell that something within the company we had been following was wrong. Obviously Decision Tech, our central start-up, was not getting the desired results and was in a tough spot. But there was also a lot of almost tangible tension between the leaders of Decision Tech as well. But when I asked myself how I might have gone about fixing the problem, I found that the solution was not as obvious as I had first assumed. So how does one go about fixing a dysfunctional team?
This week for our Leadership Development class, we had the great privilege of writing a thank you letter for our assignment. This might seem like a very simple or trivial task from the surface, but if we dig a little deeper, there is plenty of meaning to be derived from this assignment. It’s not an activity that most of us find ourselves doing often or at any time outside of special events: Graduation, Christmas, birthdays, etc. But writing this letter really made me consider how much a single card can mean to someone, especially when it doesn’t feel forced or like it had to be done.
I wrote my thank you letter to an old childhood friend who I haven’t seen in a long time. He and I grew up together and were best friends for years until he moved from our home town of Norfolk, Nebraska to Omaha. We still kept in touch, but it was so much harder to maintain a meaningful and personal relationship when our experiences in school and at home started to deviate so significantly fro each other. Eventually, he ended up moving even further away, moving to Seattle. Needless to say, it has been a long time since I last really spoke to this friend, let alone wrote a letter. But it is worth noting that this wasn’t just a generic “thank you for being a friend” letter that I was writing. I truly am thankful that I had a friend like him growing up, and I still feel guilty a lot of time when I think about how I let our relationship drift away like I did. Sometimes I still catch myself thinking about what it might have been like being to be able to watch each other mature and grow into the young men we are today. This thank you letter was a long time coming. I really do have so much to thank this friend for. If I’m being totally honest with myself, I know that his friendship and his respect were hugely influential for me growing up. I didn’t realize it until a long time after he had moved, but now I know just how much his empathy towards others had affected me. His maturity and attitude allowed me to mature and set me on the course of where I am today. I truly believe that this friend gave me the chance to develop my empathy early on. I always saw empathy in him, not just in the way he acted towards me, but in the way he acted towards everyone he came across as well. It’s only right that would share some of that empathy with him too. One of greatest lessons one can learn from writing thank you letters is how to develop empathy. I know I’ve talked with plenty of people in and outside of class these past few weeks about empathy and its importance in both a professional environment as well as in everyday life. In terms of leadership, it is easy to forget that our peers are more than just the people you work with. They are just as human and just as important as we are, and letting them know that we realize this has a bigger impact on others than we may think we know. Giving credit where credit is do and paying attention to the needs and aspirations of others is part of having a healthy empathetic mindset. And empathy, as Jeremy Rifkin says in “The Empathic Civilization”, is the key building better relationships and societies. We’ve all got a lot to be thankful for. Sometimes it’s worth it to just sit down and express those feelings of thankfulness in words so that the people who have gotten you this far know that it was worth it. It always feels better to give than it does to receive. So thank you, Aidan, for the years of friendship and for all the lessons you taught me. It means the world to me, and I’m sure you’ve changed more lives than just mine. The world could learn a thing or two from you. Recently, I, along with the rest of the Freshman Scott Scholars, was able to watch a short documentary titled "Extreme By Design". It detailed the journeys of three university students as they set out to solve a problem faced by the poor across the world. Not only did it show us the idealistic end results of some of the projects, but it also showed us the behind-the-scenes challenges and struggles that each team had to endure in order to finish their projects in time.
Obviously, solving a problem at the magnitude of the challenges these students were issued is no easy task. But there is a lot to take away from the methods and the madness that took place during the documentary for all of us, even if we aren't tackling something as big as these students did. One of the biggest lessons I took away from it was that of empathy. Empathy is one of the most important pieces of the design process, not only from an ethical point of view but also from a strictly practical point of view as well. If you aren't designing a solution with the people it's meant for in mind, then you may as well not be designing it in the first place. It is vital that the solution is being constructed around the problem from the perspective of those who need it the most. A misdirected solution isn't a solution at all. The students in the documentary got their perspectives by putting their boots on the ground. These students traveled across the world to their assigned communities. These were areas of the world stricken by poverty and where the people were all too familiar with tragedy and loss. Being able to see how badly their solutions were needed was excellent motivation for the students, as well as a glimpse into exactly what kind of a solution needed to be designed. This opportunity was essential for the students to create a meaningful and impactful answer instead of staying in their classrooms and trying to guess what the communities needed. Some students the documentary followed were particularly affected by their experiences visiting their target communities. One group set out to create a medical device that could save countless lives in a community in which child mortality is a massive and tragic issue. These students visited hospitals and families and saw tragedy and hopelessness first-hand. The group came back from their trip filled with a new zeal to complete their project having seen the problem from the eyes of those who needed a solution most. There were some students, however, who did not take their experiences with these communities to heart. One such group was followed during the documentary, and we watched as each mistake drew on the last and hurt the project irreparably. This group's lack of empathy and understanding for both their target communities as well as each other resulted in failure on almost every level. The individuals in the group were all incredibly smart and talented and yet their project failed because they missed out on such an important aspect of the design process. What started out as simply a lack of direction turned into tension between members of the group. Each member of the team wanted to blame another for what was lacking in the design. This tension transformed into anger and pettiness as the group refused to communicate or even try to understand. Simply put, this group in particular failed because they were unwilling to navigate a conflict stemming from their inherent misunderstanding of who and what they were designing for. We've all been a position in a group project where it feels like the work process is breaking down, wether it be due to forces inside or outside of the group. It's incredibly frustrating to see something you have put so much into fail. But it's a dangerously steep slope, as we saw from "Extreme By Design". Letting one loss in the design process drive a wedge between you and the rest of your team only does more harm than good, further compounding your frustrations and hurting whatever you're working on. Empathy for whomever you are designer for is only half of the coin. It is absolutely vital that you have empathy and compassion for your team members as well, no matter who they are. Being willing to listen and understand the people around you is a huge step in maturing and becoming a good leader and a good part of society. Unfortunately, it's also one of the hardest steps for many people as well. Being able to adapt to the attitudes, needs, and desires of the people you work with and for will allow for the wheel of progress to keep turning and for life to get better for everyone across the world, it just takes a little perspective. During Wednesday’s virtual meeting of our Leadership Development course, the freshmen of Scott Hall were given the opportunity to watch the documentary “It Might Get Loud”. The documentary was centered around three legendary guitarists: Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, The Edge of U2, and Jack White of The White Stripes. Each musician told their stories and provided context to each of their unique styles and outlooks both within and outside of the lens of music. We were asked to identify elements of leadership within the three musicians’ lives and their stories. One of the biggest elements of leadership I was able to find within the documentary and in these three musicians’ stories was their independence. Each one of these men were entirely responsible for themselves and their art. They did not rely on their managers or their fellow musicians to bring them happiness or success. They set their own goals and accomplished them by their own means. One of the strongest aspects of a leader in my opinion is being someone who tends to want the freedom to entirely fulfill their potential and to allow the potential of those they work with be fulfilled as well. There is, however, a major difference between independence and isolation. The musicians in “It Might Get Loud” didn’t cut themselves off from the rest of the musical world. Quite the opposite, they were constantly inspired by other artists from throughout history. A leader utilizes their independent nature in a way in which they are freely able to be inspired by others’ ideas, just like our musicians, as well as bouncing their own ideas off of others. This brings me to another element of leadership. A leader should be a conduit for successful ideas just as much as a source of them. In a successful and productive environment, creativity and innovation cannot just come from a single individual. Usually in those cases, the ideas stop coming after a period of time and the team stagnates. In addition, the creativity of every other member of the group is suppressed, which can be harmful to the work environment as well as the team members who aren’t allowed to express their ideas and plans for success. By contrast, in a work environment in which all team members are allowed to bring up ideas and then bounce around the whole team the team productivity and health are both given priority. A diverse group of individuals, each with their own experiences and perspectives will do wonders for any team. The experience of one person pales in comparison to the experiences of a team, and just like Mr. Treasurer said in the quote I used last Friday, bringing experience to the table is a great thing to do. While we talk about the individuals within a team and their experiences, it’s also a great time I think to talk about how important having empathy is to me. I want to be led by someone who can see things from my perspective and from others’ as well, and I also want to be that kind of leader in my life and my interactions with others. It is incredibly essential to treat every person like they matter because they absolutely do matter. But what does that mean, to matter? To me, mattering is having your ideas and presence valued by both those around you, whether it be a boss or your peers. Mattering is extremely important for an individual’s mental health. It is a terrible thing to feel as if one doesn’t exist or that one doesn’t have any value within a community or group of people. Therefore, it is the responsibility of a good leader to encourage their team to continue to bring new ideas to the table and to express their creativity. Positive reinforcement for ideas, even if those ideas aren’t always used, is a super helpful action for a leader to make and, at least if I were a team member, will often earn a leader respect and those ever-valuable shiny eyes I wrote about last week. Encouragement and engagement can make all the difference in making team members feel welcome, respected, and valuable, which are all important aspects of a great modern workplace or team environment. Drawing from “It Might Get Loud”, the question was poised to us: Do you think the artists in the documentary were mattering? Based on my personal definition of mattering, I believe that they absolutely were. Each of the three musicians are known for their game-changing and legendary styles and techniques as well as the pure talent they show off when they perform. But they also were members of a team, in this case their bands. They were individuals who used their talents and experiences to make their bands better and more “productive” - or in the sense of a rock band, more successful. These guitarists weren’t emotionless robots with their entire lives dedicated to perfect guitar technique to be utilized in songs they had no hand in writing. No, they were active participants in the creative process. Not only did they help create iconic albums and perform with emotion for millions of fans around the world, but they also helped define how the guitar is played within the music industry. It’s safe to say that all three of these guitarists mattered to millions of people around the world just as much as to their band members and managers. I aspire to live a life that matters. To that end, I want to live a life that will matter to more people than just my friends and family, although that matters to me a lot as well. I’d like to live my life so that I can positively impact the lives of as many people as I can. In that sense, I would matter in the same way as our musicians, indirectly impacting others through my actions. In a way, I think that should be the goal that we all strive to achieve. If we all wanted to positively impact each other, we wouldn’t have nearly the amount of suffering in the world as we do now. |
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