I’m reminded of the “three kinds of people” adage: some make things happen, some watch them happen, and some wonder what happened.

The “makers of happenings,” stand apart. They have a spark, a hunger, a vision. Freed of constraints, they move ahead, always at the vanguard. Constrained–by poverty, by social or cultural or political mores–they struggle and chafe and plot to break free. Some succeed, some are beat down, some die trying.

The doers are the changemasters, the leaders and artists and builders and visionaries who have carried humankind on their shoulders…out of the African savanna, into the northern continents, and eventually to the furthest reaches of the planet and beyond.

But today, a world of seven billion sinks rapidly into a morass. The doers are still among us, but only the most aggressive or the most fortunate rise above it. Others struggle… to be heard in the cacophony, to be seen in the strobotic flash of news and entertainment, to lead out of a mire of mediocrity and populism. A tragedy…and perhaps our final undoing.

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