Today is February 13 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is "Are you making enough mistakes to uncover what is in order to get rid of what isn’t?"
As a child Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) often made items from materials he found in the woods.
By age 12 he experimented with designing a new apparatus for human propulsion of small boats.
He was expelled from Harvard twice and by his own appraisal, was a non-conforming misfit.
In 1922 his daughter Alexandra died of complications from polio just prior to her fourth birthday. Fuller dwelled on her death, suspecting that it was connected with damp living conditions.
This provided motivation for Fuller's involvement in Stockade Building Systems, a business which aimed to provide affordable, efficient housing.
In 1927, at age 32, Fuller lost his job as president of Stockade.
The Fuller family had no savings, and the birth of their daughter Allegra in 1927 added to financial challenges. Fuller drank heavily and reflected upon the solution to his family's struggles on long walks around Chicago.
During the autumn of 1927, Fuller contemplated suicide, so that his family could benefit from life insurance.
At this moment Fuller said he experienced a profound vision that would provide direction and purpose for his life when one day he heard a voice proclaim “From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.”
Fuller stated that this experience led to a profound re-examination of his life.
He ultimately chose to embark on "an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity."
Fuller would go on to publish over 30 books, develop numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome.
Fuller observed “We were deliberately designed to learn only by trial and error. We’re brought up, unfortunately, to think that nobody should make mistakes. Most children get de-geniused by the love and fear of their parents – that they might make a mistake. But all my advances were made by mistakes. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn’t.”
As you go about your day consider asking yourself "are you making enough mistakes to uncover what is in order to get rid of what isn’t?"