ToT - Thought on Thursday - Ozymandias

"IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone, Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws The only shadow that the Desert knows:— "I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone, "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows "The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,— Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose The site of this forgotten Babylon. We wonder,—and some Hunter may express Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace, He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess What powerful but unrecorded race Once dwelt in that annihilated place." – By Horace Smith.

 The less famous version of the poem - written by Horace Smith and not Percy Bysshe Shelley.

What does it mean? To me it means, all that we achieve in this life will someday fade away.

All the medals we win will someday become scrap metal.

All the discoveries we find will one day have little association with the founder (who invented fire or the wheel anyway?)

All our great times, adventures and escapades will become first distant memories, then foggy memories and finally when we pass they will be forgotten.

What survives is art. Maybe that's why I've always had a passion for it but, so many years I could have spent perfecting my craft have since turned to dust.

Apparently anything put on the internet will remain forever, but in that far future will anyone find anything interesting to search for on October 3rd, 2013 on the Motivating Minutes blog? Time will only tell - and I won't be holding my breath.

(ToT) Thought on Thursday - "I'm the smartest man in the room"

In the past 48 hours - and maybe it was more recent than that - I've had the good fortune of being in the presence of the smartest man in the room....

First of all - no it wasn't me - but you already knew that.

I was at an event where the gentlemen who happened to be M.C.ing came off with an attitude that since he had achieved a certain level of wealth he had the right to assume that everyone in the room was ignorant. 

He was there to tell the room how we could be happy in both our business and personal lives and then he proceeded to tell the audience things that I had learned through my own personal study either a few months or a few years ago.

This attitude was in stark contrast to that of other verified wealthy individuals I've had the divine pleasure of meeting over the past few weeks. These individuals' material and mental wealth far exceeded this character's claims of personal wealth.

When I was in the room with them they were constantly asking what I thought although they had  wealth of knowledge beyond what I may ever hope to obtain.

When I was in the room with "the smartest man in the room"  he kept spouting orders and asking questions that he [thankfully] had all the answers to.

 I knew I was in the wrong room when he barked at an audience member for the mortal sin of whispering to (what I believed to be) his mother.

"That's how you control a room!" said the smartest man in the room after silencing the whisper. I'm not sure but, for some reason I felt a little dumber for being in the room in the first place.

Shortly after I left.

- If there's any lesson here I guess it would be this - never automatically assume you're smarter, more talented or better than those in the same room as you. Always assume there is someone smarter than you in the room and you'll save yourself the embarrassment of proving it for a fact.