Don’t Confuse Genius with Tenacity
I visited the Wright Brothers Memorial. Here’s what I learned.
I was at the Wright Brothers National Memorial this weekend, and was really struck by an idea at the heart of it.
The Wright Brothers, of course, were the first to break the surly bonds of Earth, something human beings dreamt of for millennia, really since the first time someone saw a bird. Through the gauzy filter of history we tend to think of this triumph as the product of some particular genius on Wilbur and Orville’s part, though what comes into focus as you tour that memorial is something else.
Human flight was so daunting a problem because it encompassed many problems… starting with lift, but quickly including control of not just direction but pitch, yaw, and roll; and extending to big power demands with restrictive weight limits. The Wrights overcame each of these challenges less through genius, and more through tenacity. Building on the foundation of what they’d learned in the production of bicycles, the Wrights worked systematically and diligently through a process of trial and error that can only be described as terrifying, sustaining not only the effort but the enthusiasm required to succeed as hours turned into days, months, and years of physical labor and harrowing experiments.
The marble obelisk that sits atop the highest point of the memorial — the point to which the brothers had dragged their heavy gliders again and again, only to plunge from on fragile rigs of wood and cloth as they perfected their design, includes this inscription:
Conceived by genius, realized by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith.
“Dauntless resolution,” sustained through faith, and passion to achieve a goal that sometimes seem impossible. I think that’s at the heart of all great human achievement, and that it’s something we sometimes forget.
It’s the process to be applauded here, not just the result. As T.S. Elliott said,
“There is only the trying, the rest is not our business.”
For more on this definitely read or better yet listen to David McCollough’s fantastic book, The Wright Brothers.
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