Who Am I?

Posted By Cliff Tuttle | December 7, 2011

No. 769

We have all spent a lifetime with ourselves. But do we really know the answer to the big question, “Who am I?”

The answer resides in your mind.  If you are good at socializing with people you just met but not so good at solving technical problems while working alone, you might think that those observations say something about who you are.  Perhaps. But do they really?  You may never have developed your innate talent for problem solving, for lack of a good, let alone great, teacher.  You may never have wanted something enough to give the level of effort required to do great things.  So who is to say what you might have done with the proper foundation?

I have been slowly working my way through Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs since the day it was released.  It constantly amazes me how this incredibly strange person, with so many apparent negatives, managed to be the person to, in his words, “put a dent in the universe.”  Of course, he couldn’t have done any of it alone.  Without Steve Wozniak, Bill Atkinson and a host of others, and without the extraordinary confluence of events in the 1970’s, Steve Jobs might have lived and died unknown, unfulfilled and unrecognized.

Not that Jobs had any special insight at the time, not until much later.  He just went about being quirky, annoying Steve Jobs and somehow it all turned out exactly right.

Perhaps one in a billion of us can stumble into great achievement by luck.  The rest of us will have to use our prefrontal cortex and figure it all out.  That is, figure out what kind of quirky character each of us must be and what product of that quirky character just might turn out be “insanely great.” Figure that one out, and you might just make your own dent in the universe.

CLT

Welcome

CLIFF TUTTLE has been a Pennsylvania lawyer for over 45 years and (inter alia) is a real estate litigator and legal writer. The posts in this blog are intended to provide general information about legal topics of interest to lawyers and consumers with a Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania focus. However, this information does not constitute legal advice and there is no lawyer-client relationship created when you read this blog. You are encouraged to leave comments but be aware that posted comments can be read by others. If you wish to contact me in privacy, please use the Contact Form located immediately below this message. I will reply promptly and in strict confidence.

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