Great People Talk About Ideas: What Are You Talking About?

The answer to some of your problems might hide in that one question

Once upon a time, I worked in a restaurant. Well, really the majority of my life I worked in restaurants until I stopped working for someone else altogether.

Among the deluge of customers, repeat and not, was a man of incredible knowledge. Having a conversation with him was equally invigorating as it was slightly irritating. I’m sorry if you figure out this is you, but sometimes I had to actually work at work, ya know? Not just chit-chat, much to my dismay.

If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, you get it. There’s “Margarita” who shows up at 6:30 PM on Mondays, “Sumpin-Sumpin” will show up a little later. And there’s always “Newspaper” for lunch but the days of the week vary. And quite a few in between.

This particular gentleman was only recently added to my “collection”, and he only hung around for a little while. But he could talk!

One particular conversation went on an entire night. In between tending to other customers, I’d pop back in and he’d pick back up where he left off.

I believe it started with vacation. How the salty sea air contained higher quantities of magnesium, which was why you were happier by the sea. Magnesium being important to brain health.

It wavered into how the opening passage of the Bible was ‘Let there be light’ and somehow why hydrogen was the first atomic element. This is years ago now, but I’ll never forget the one thing he said.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. -Eleanor Roosevelt

Great people talk about ideas.

This struck a nerve with me. Obviously, since it was more than 5 years ago that this conversation took place, and to be quite honest, I don’t know that I could tell you this gentleman’s name.

Now, this was at a pivotal point in my life. Going to college but no real plan. Young and dumb but old enough.

If you’ve gotten this far, you probably know what I’m about to say. Like the land of the misfit toys, I never quite fit in anywhere.

I’d always wondered what it was that made me ‘weird’. Mostly I was a loner and a wallflower. Friends with everyone and no one at the same time. Preferred the company of the teachers or a good book to most of my peers.

When he said that, it hit me. My whole brain lit up like a Christmas tree. Now, there are a ton of reasons that I’m odd. Totally fine with it.

But I could never quite muster up the right enthusiasm for who was doing what, or care about what they were wearing. Wave your freak flag, life is too short.

If you’d like to do psychoanalysis on someone though I’m game. Break out a Rorschach inkblot and we can talk about that.

I’ve been called many things, lazy being one of them.

It’s an endless joke between my husband and me. Not because we can’t be lazy. Of course, that’s true.

Our ‘doing things’ may just look different to other people. I don’t go out and hang out with friends much. My one hour out of the house every week is to go to the grocery store. Where I don’t talk to anyone if I can help it.

We used to do a lot more, including a cross country road trip for three months, but that was a different life.

Interspersed in that other life was a yearning for more. More time, more money, more freedom.

And a purpose. A reason for everything. I would scour the internet researching different jobs for me. Reading books looking for the meaning of life. And I guess I kind of found it.

I’ve read more books than I could tell you. The dream is to make money so that I can read all the books that I want without a care in the world. Like the episode of the Twilight Zone without the breaking my glasses part. So I’ve been hell-bent on figuring out how to make that happen.

So how do you buy time?

That’s basically what I’ve spent my time doing. I’ve missed birthdays and tons of other types of get-togethers. Been called lazy or otherwise for it. Plenty think I’m just rude, which is fine by me. I’m most definitely a loner.

But I’ve been so busy filling my head with ideas, I don’t have much time for some of those other things! I’ll skip the concert, I won’t get a picture with that actor, and I don’t call my friends near as often as I should, because I need more time!

Time is money. Ideas are money. Rattling around in my brain is ideas. When I have the money there will be plenty of time for concerts and the like but right now I’m enjoying being lost in ideas.

And sure, a ton of those opportunities are already long gone. But I don’t miss the important stuff if I can help it.

“Today I will do what others won’t so tomorrow I can do what others can’t” -Jerry Rice

That’s why great people talk about ideas.

They simply don’t have the time to talk about other things. Any biography will usually tell the same tale of the true genius types. Obsessive is usually used to describe them.

A genius needs to be completely engulfed in their projects. Eat, sleep, and breathe the idea or ideas that they’re working on. It’s almost required to work past the obstacles and get to the results.

Edison invented the lightbulb after thousands of failed experiments. Ford created the car engine after he’d gone broke and the engineers told him it wasn’t possible. Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team and is arguably the best basketball player yet.

In the pursuit of living a life others can’t, you almost inevitably gather the wisdom to be great. To work past your insecurities, your fears, and your self-limiting beliefs to get to the top of the mountain. It’s about understanding that some help build you up, and others only tear you down. The fine line between surviving and thriving. Because there are a ton of people I know that think they’re thriving.

Talking about people usually creates drama. And talking about events that already occurred is just reciting history.

Talking about ideas that don’t exist anywhere but in your imagination. The telephone became the cell phone with seemingly never-ending capabilities. Lightbulbs turn themselves on when you tell a device to do so.

Get obsessed.

I used to think that I was supposed to go to college and get a degree and then a job and work there until I die basically. And that path can work for many people! I’m just not one of them.

Get obsessed with your passion projects. Find that idea that sets your world on fire. I thought I was doomed to a life of antidepressants because I couldn’t find that thing that I thought other people had. My brother wanted to be a fireman since he was a kid, guess what? He’s now a fireman.

As I got older I realized I was just being told to live a life that wasn’t for me and I didn’t consider any alternatives. Go to college and become a teacher. That was my only directive. But I spent enough time with ideas to formulate a few of my own.

I’ve been obsessed with the idea that there really is something more to life. Watching people I care about waste away in a job that doesn’t light up every fiber of their being isn’t fun for me! I want to inspire people to find that thing that makes them feel alive.

Isn’t that the whole reason we’re here?