MAKING STUFF WORK
There is a famous story about Issac Newton - not that story, the other one, about the plague.
On Christmas Day, 1664, London reported their first plague death. By April the following year, people feared its unstoppable reach. The famous diarist Samuel Pepys captured the emotion well. “Great fears of sickness here in the City… God preserve us all.”
Newton, during this time, was studying in Cambridge. He had worked hard, with a few intriguing hacks here and there, to get his foot into that exclusive door. But now, Cambridge was on lockdown - the country was on lockdown - and it was clear his best-laid plans were falling apart.
His emotional state wasn’t great, and so he headed back home and made himself a DIY study. With a notebook he nicknamed as his ‘Waste Book’, Newton filled the pages with reading notes, observations, learning and questions.
History records this moment as his turning point. Some even term is as his transfiguration. But here’s the thing about this type of ‘moment’ storyline - it can be slightly overdramatic. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and it can make sense of a timeline in a way that those living within that moment struggle to understand.
The reality of Newton’s life-changing moment? IT WASN’T DRAMATIC.
Most of what Newton did was boring, tedious and frustrating. He wasn’t energised every single minute of the day, neither did he lock himself away in the study morning, noon and night. Newton’s transfiguration came within the mundane of having to ‘make stuff work’.
The story of Newton is a reminder to us all that the mundane is boring.
The mundane is frustrating.
The mundane is a hack and DIY job.
And that’s what makes it transformative.
