Just Ask, the aesthetic of risking NO for an answer
2022 Year of Aesthetics Series №11
7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? — Matthew -7: 7–10
I have looked at a interesting chain of events of taken opportunities, I took Latin , because the smart kids in our school took Latin, I fought with my father over this vs German. Latin set me on a course of being in a room with town kids (I was a farm kid) and kids from very educated families. Also, I was exposed to a wonderful Latin teacher, English teachers, debate, and my best friend, whose dad was a Judge. I also was able to take honor science classes in chemistry, bio, etc. All these people encouraged college, and against my fathers wishes, I enrolled in NDSU in Fargo ND. I was able to get a degree in classics and chemistry while there. A good friend encouraged me to take electives in engineering. This lead to me going to college for 5 years. College was affordable and many took an additional year at that time.
When I graduated I wanted to live in a city I applied to jobs in LA, Chicago, NY and Minneapolis (I had interned in Minneapolis). I landed in Chicago on money and seemed the right place. I did not like my job after a few years and asked to go to grad school, it was an era when companies handed out technical degrees, I started out in Chemistry masters but did not see that going anywhere so my friend Nancy, (who liked whiskey and went with two of us to a near by bar after class) later suggested I drop out and do engineering.
I chose Chem E which was only tangential to my job, but my boss had a sister who went to IIT and thought it was good for me. It was night school so I could work (I was tired of being a poor student) and I was in a pool of professional students. I met my study partner Tom who discussed his employer and helped me get in to a job. Tom also was dogged in doing problems and keeping up on things as he had a hard job. We pretty much studied every day together for 3 years.
The job had the promise of international travel after gaining a bit of experience but there was a 3 year training program. At year 2 they laid off most of the people in this program, I was asked if I wanted the last seat on the travel program.
I traveled to Chile and Sardinia, but always wanted to go to China a friend from grad school worked at the same company and said she was going to china. I joked with my boss that I was jealous, he said he had one more slot for the crew there and I could fly out any time in the next week. I had to see my doctor so I took an extra two days because of a sinus infection but all of this lead me to be in the north of china at a refinery on the rare evening that my current wife was working on site she had a very different schedule than me. We discussed love of spicy food which lead to a no stress date, I had just enough time to get to know her, take all my vacation and get engaged.
Now in this story, how smart am I was not as significant as how lucky was. I landed where I landed because of whims, advice, off the cuff discussions, friends having my back, and a bit of risk taking. Yes, I was able to leverage my opportunities but had one of these many been negated, I would have never met my wife. (The best piece of luck I have had in both good times and bad). I was discussing IQ with a friend, and I see more could be achieved by taking critical opportunities than raw brain power. I have worked for opportunities and found time and will invested often overwhelms shear raw intelligence, if there is even a way to really have a valuable means of teasing out what it is to be intelligent.
I saw that people like Lincoln, and Churchill were often very wrong often wrong about important things but their very few things they got right were big lottery wins that had such huge payouts that their folly in quantity was dwarfed rewards of being right a few times.
I have had countless NOs and F*** NOs in my life. And lest we forget self sabotage and the internal NO, I almost didn't ask my boss to pay for grad school & I almost didn't hand in the application for grad school.
I learned to get over rejection by woman, I had dates on my travels because I learned to take rejection in Chicago. I learned a talk to woman and approach meetings as a conversation instead of a must fall in love on first sight. I found that many times rejections were pretty much a win since it didn’t waste a lot of my time and didn’t have high expectations on first meetings, or second dates. I learned NO may not be necessarily even bad, sometimes it frees you for better yeses.
If you don’t risk getting no for an answer you will have less opportunities and less good luck.