When Isaac Newton talked about “standing on the shoulders of giants,” it’s not clear whether he wanted to pay a compliment to René Descartes, whom he mentioned two lines before, or make fun of the recipient of his letter, a man of small stature.
Had Newton been talking about my grandpa, he might have slotted him into the latter category. For one, my grandpa only stands at 1.65 meters short, and for another, his tiny fashion shop in his 900-soul village went bankrupt in 2013. He was 73 at the time. Still working. Still trying. But the numbers had been going down for years — and neither the second nor the third mortgage could prevent the inevitable.
Clearly, my grandpa is not a giant, and yet he taught me an incredibly valuable lesson: I will never start pouring outside money into my bootstrapped business. If it can’t carry itself, perhaps it’s not meant to be carried at all. Because of this principle, I might get a 9-to-5 this year. It might not make my life easier, but it will prevent me from going into debt to save an asset that may have become a liability. It’ll allow my project to continue to exist in a slightly altered state, and who knows? In this new mode, it could even unlock more creative and ultimately financially sound ways to work on my enterprise!
Make no mistake: We can learn from the slip-ups and successes of the everyday people around us just as much as we can learn from the greats in the history books. We stand on the shoulders not just of giants but of shrimps, pipsqueaks, and snapperheads — individuals cosmically insignificant yet still of immeasurable, infinite value to all the other humans around them. To you. To me. To us.
Learn from who you can learn, not just from who you think you should. Even Newton learned how to walk from his immediate family, and if we are to stand on our own two feet, then we better do it on whatever foundation — or whoever’s shoulders — will hold up to the task.