Monday, July 30, 2012

Beauty and time

As I sat pondering today, I couldn't help reflect the awe of Grand Canyon. I visited Grand Canyon in 2004, yet the memory is so vivid. Anyone familiar with the history of Grand Canyon knows that the canyon was formed by a gradual change in the earth's crust. I'll save the statistics, and simply say that it took hundreds of thousands of years for the canyon to be formed. In the present day, it looks gorgeous and awe inspiring. I was just thinking about all the other spectacular things that nature has in galore and not one of them was formed in a whiff.  Even man made wonders were not built in a day or two. All those things that are beautiful, that have a long lasting impression, those that won't be forgotten easily - have all been a result of a constant, long enduring process.

This thought came about as I was building one of the features for my app. It reflects upon the wisdom of many 'old school' entrepreneurs, that to build a long lasting company or an application, it takes a really long time. The thought also correlates with John Cleese's creativity ideology, that,  the more thought you put into an endeavor, the more creative you can be. To make beautiful things, therefore takes time, a long time. In other words, to make my app beautiful, to make it so that it stands out amongst a billion other apps in the ecosystem today, I should be prepared to put in a lot of time. To put in this time, without actually having a notion of solid day to day progress, is really hard.

Just for a perspective, going back to the Grand Canyon, assuming there was some entity that created the canyon, what would've been the thought process of that entity, as thousands of years passed during the making of the canyon. What would've been the day to day progress ? one millimeter of rock displaced. How inspring :).