But YOU can still plant flowers if that same steamroller feels like it is running over you!
Machines can perhaps create a desire in you to achieve something. You see a new iPad and think ‘Wow, just imagine what I could do if I had that’. That is desire.
But initiative is something else. It is desire in action. It is doing something with your desire. An iPad, or any other technology, will never be able to give you the initiative. You have to have it, or build it, or borrow it, or fake it, but however you get it, it must, in the end, come from within you.
But if you do find it, in whatever way, then a steamroller is no match for you. Of course, it’s best to avoid known steamrollers (read negative people and situations) but that is not always possible. How you deal with the steamrollers of your life, both intentional from negative people and unintentional from the Universe itself, will be the deciding factor in how far your initiative will travel with you.
The light is green.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.” – Walter Lippman, 1889-1974, American writer, political commentator & journalist.