Five For Your Hive: Second Wind
Second Wind, Apple, Did You Enjoy It?, Failed Genius, Life Experience
Second Wind
In a compilation of writings titled Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965-1990, Václav Havel muses upon three pathways an artist can undertake after achieving success in their fields. “Sooner or later,” Havel writes, “[an artist] finds himself at a crossroad: he has exhausted his initial experience of the world and the ways of expressing it and he must decide how to proceed from there.” First and most straightforward, he can replicate his brilliance by repeating what he has already done. Second, he can reach a higher level of success by building upon the foundations of his past achievements. Or a third, “he can abandon everything proven, step beyond his initial experience…liberate himself from what binds him to his own tradition… and try for a new and more self-definition…In other words, he can find his “second wind” by attempting something completely new.” “Anyone who chooses this route,” Havel warns, “will not, as a rule, have an easy time of it…His original elan, self-confidence, and spontaneous openness have gone..he must, in fact, start over again.” Finding your second wind and rediscovering your power—that’s the idea for today.
I Suddenly Understood Why I Loved The Company
Jony Ive moved to Cupertino in 1992 to take a job in Apple’s design department. Although he was doing what he loved, he wasn’t happy. CEO Gil Amelio had little appreciation for design and was trying to maximise the money the company made with “shitty” products. “All they wanted from us designers,” Ive said, was a model of what something was supposed to look like on the outside, and then engineers would make it as cheap as possible.” He was about to quit, about to find his second wind…until Steve Jobs returned. Everything changed. Almost immediately, Jobs “bonded with the affable, eager, and very earnest Ive”. They shared design philosophies with each other, enjoyed analysing step-by-step design process together and often “wrestled with each new design to see how much they could simplify it.“ “[We] discussed approaches to forms and materials. We were on the same wavelength. I suddenly understood why I loved the company.” So instead of quitting and being lost in the wind, the presence of another individual reignited Ive’s passion for product design, paving the way for the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and the Macbook.
Come Into Their Own
In Out of Our Minds: The Power of Being Creative, Sir Ken Robinson once told a story about a concert pianist turned literary editor who worked on a book he wrote. After giving a concert in London, the conductor was complimenting how good her performance had been, but then looked her in the eye and said, “But you didn’t enjoy it, did you?” She was taken aback, but knew he was right. All these years, this feeling wasn’t obvious because she was busy doing “what she was good at”. Being born into a musical family and having shown great talent, no one—including herself—asked whether this was what she wanted. But “being good at something,” the conductor said, “isn’t a good enough reason to spend your life doing it.” So after wrestling with this thought for weeks, she closed the piano lid and never opened it again. It wasn’t long before she found her second wind in the art form she truly loved—books. “When people find their [creative] medium,” Robinson writes, “they discover their real creative strengths and come into their own.”
Failed Genius
In the 1960s, Kim Ung-Yong was recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records for having the highest IQ in the world. He could read in Japanese, Korean, German, and English since he was a toddler, and by the age of eight he was recruited by NASA as a researcher. But after working for the agency for seven years, Kim was disillusioned. He felt lonely and isolated. He had no friends other than the adults he worked with, who were older and too busy to socialise with him. So he quit and returned to South Korea to chase his second wind—devoting himself “to teach the next generation” at Chungbuk National University. Despite being labelled as a “failed genius” for not maximising his rare, intellectual power, Kim had always maintained an air of nonchalance about his decision to fall off the path. “I’m trying to tell people that I am happy the way I am,” Kim said, not because he was born a genius, not because he had talent—those are not good enough reasons—but because he could do what he wanted to do, and that’s how he comes into his own.
I’ll Just Flow With The Wind
When I was fifteen, I wanted to become a teacher. I told my high-school teacher about it, and he was elated. “If this is what you want,” he told me, “You’ll have to go to junior college…sit for your A-Levels…enroll into college….and then to the National Institute of Education. These are the steps you have to take. There isn’t really any other way around the system. Do this, and you can be a teacher.” I didn’t follow his advice, and ended up in slew of career paths: I cleaned houses. I scooped salads. I took pictures. I did public service. Yet something felt amiss. There was no fulfillment. So I forget about everything and spent a year in Japan with my family. It was there that I could hear a voice in my head saying: “What are you called to do? What’s the big vision?”, which led me to recall the conversation with my high-school teacher almost 15 years ago. Now I’m mentoring kids at Gosh! Kids. Is this my second wind? I can’t say for certain. I’ll just flow with the wind.