1-9-90 is an internet reality. Ninety percent of everyone who uses the internet, including all facets and extensions for it simply consumes the content. They read, share photographs, play games, and take in someone else’s work. Nine percent do a lot more than that. They don’t just consume but rather contribute to the creations they discover. They organize little tribes and makes something great, even better. But only one percent. One, single, solitary percent actually creates something, shares something, and contribute to the human experience.
There seems to be a great imbalance there. A sad imbalance really, but also a tremendous opportunity for anyone who wishes to live more meaningfully and in turn experience a happier life.
The key is to be part of the 1%. It means everything because it is so rare and precious. Imagine where or who you would be if instead of talking about creating something, you actually set forth and one day looked and shared your creation.
I don’t think that it’s that hard. Certainly when you see one percent and ninety nine percent, on the surface it looks like an incredible division. An unbridgeable divide that most people accept as reality and simply the way it is.
But that is not the way things are, if you don’t want them to be the way they are and it has nothing to do with being privileged, special, chosen, talented, or gifted. I’m not saying that good genetics, a little bit of wealth, and a really good teacher don’t speed things up or shakes things up. All I am trying to say is that deep inside of us is a creator. We were creator, and as creatures we have an unquenchable thirst to create and give back. To contribute something meaningful to the world we take part it. We have a desire to do more than simply consume.
But pretty much every one of us just consumes.
It’s sad really. So much talent. So many ideas, songs, poems, humour and new things that the world will never have a chance to ever see disappear from existence because people don’t feel like they are good enough to create, and powerful enough to create.
We sit around waiting and watching, consuming, and sometimes helping because we are quietly waiting our turn. It’s our turn. It has always been our turn and just like you don’t have to raise your hand to go to the bathroom, you don’t have to wait until you are ready to create.
Go out and create. Take what is inside your mind and give birth to it. And I am not talking about artistic endeavours here. I am talking about every single facet of being human. Creation is necessary in all disciplines and in every human enterprise. Nothing is unimportant and no contribution is too small. It is always either made or unmade.
The odds are stacked against us. The odds of you and I creating something and sharing it with others is extremely improbable, until we do it!
The divide between the 1%, the 9%, and the 99% seems huge. It is massive, until we choose to leap forward, and suddenly that leap is not a leap, that divide is not that wide. It is just a step, a throw, and something we we will wonder why the hell we didn’t do a little bit sooner.
Cover photo generously provided by photographer Kelly Sikkema.
https://unsplash.com/@kellysikkema