Atlas Shrugged

It took me 32 years to read the book Atlas Shrugged. While the actual reading of the book only took 4 days, I have spent 32 years looking for what I found in those pages. Who would of thought that a Russian born woman who died three years after I was born would have taught me so much through a work of fiction? Certainly I would have never thought it. I see in those pages the culmination of the ideas about life that have nagged me since I was a child. The idea that we truly are the masters of our own destiny. That, as Sarah Conner said in Terminator, "there is no fate but what we make". While this book is a work of fiction, the meanings of it certainly are not. The characters leap from the pages, larger than life, brashly, egotistically, almost over inflated. But they must be this way, to show the whole picture. To show that people like that did and do exist. People like the Wright Brothers, Gottleib Daimler, James Watt, Thomas Savery, Rudolf Diesel, the list goes on and on and on. These great men sought to do something better than the world had seen so far, to invent something completely new and untested; to break from the norm and do the other things. Not because they were easy, but because they were hard. I had lived my 32 years in the belief that what I had was what I had, and somehow, my station in life was just that, the station where I sat.....waiting for something to happen. Never did I go chasing the thing in my dreams, the ideas I had, the thoughts of new things, not yet heard of before. I sat in my station of my own laziness, of my own apathy created by my acceptance of the world around me, looking at life not through rose colored glasses, but through a fog. A fog made of the thoughtless and irreverent devotion to the status quo. Never once did I act on the ideas for the improvements on existing water treatment equipment, the ideas I had for distributing phone, data, and television through the nations already existent power grid. Would they have worked? Who knows. I never acted on them. I may never know. I accepted the fact that I was powerless to change the world, to improve it, to make my mark. 

There is no difference between me and those great men I listed earlier, save two things: want, and will. As in the book, Henry Rearden had an idea for a metal to beat all metals, and it was aptly named Rearden Metal. He spent ten years of his life devoted to the thought that he could make the worlds best metal. Stronger, lighter, and more corrosion resistant than anything the world had ever seen. But this is fiction right? In one light yes, Henry Rearden is a fictional character, but replace the name Henry Rearden with Rudolf Diesel, and change the name of the invention from Rearden Metal to the Diesel engine, and it's not fiction anymore. It's a reality in all forms. But it's a reality that I didn't see. I thought that the age of great men was over. That I could never be one of those men. But now I see that I can. That whatever I choose to do can be done, if I so choose to do it. But choosing to do something great is not merely making a decision, it is a realization. A realization of the old saying "give me a lever large enough, and Ill move the world" means that the lever is not given, it is created by will, by wanting it, by doing the work to make it happen. Such a simple thing it would seem, this realization. But I can assure you, it is not. It took me 32 years to pay it more than lip service, to go beyond what is told to you as a child, that "of course you can be whatever you want when you grow up. The sky is the limit". For my entire life, I paid merely a pittance of thought to that saying, never actually gave it any more than a fleeting glance. I sat back, apathetic, riding through life waiting for the next train, the train that would take me to where I wanted to go in life. But, I lacked the ticket to actually get on this train. No amount of money could purchase it, it could not be given, bartered, traded, or stolen. It's purchase price must be paid with something more valuable than gold; the will and want, the work. So I was left at the station each time the train would come, and yet I blamed everything else, when the blame lies squarely on my shoulders. I thought that by having great ideas that the rest would just magically fall into place. That each great man who did great things started with an idea; on that account I was right. But I never looked at the rest of the picture. I would have a revelation as I call them, an idea on how to do something better, or make something new. I'd play around for a few minutes, jotting my ideas down on scraps of paper, maybe draw a pretty picture of it, then for whatever reason, I'd let it go. I'd resign this next best thing to the depths of my mind, never to be thought of again. It's a hard realization when you know that in your eyes, you have failed. You have failed where others succeeded, because you were too lazy to put in the work to produce that idea into reality. Henry Rearden wasn't. Neither was Rudolf Diesel. They didn't waste their time trying to circumvent the work to produce their great inventions, they just did it. They worked at it, long hours, sleepless nights, to build the better mouse trap so to speak. I see it clearer now. I see that, maybe one day, I'll have an idea, and I'll go ahead and get my train ticket, and climb aboard.

It is through this work of fiction that opened my eyes to the non fiction, the real life stories of great men who did great things. Who stood up for morality, not a twisted faith based morality, but a morality of reason. A set of rules that guided them to their great inventions and ideas. That what they were doing was the culmination of what they wanted, what they dreamed of. Not their neighbor, wife, children or government. It's what they wanted to be, what they wanted to do with their life. They had dreams of inventing, of problem solving, of getting rich. Because they themselves wanted it. Greatness comes in many forms. Great is the man who produces value, who goes to the brink and brinks back something new. I envy those men. So does everyone else. It is those men who power the motor of the world.

This book, as I have found out since reading it, has changed the minds of many people who have read it. Some have revelations, some just look at life a little differently. The core of Ayn Rand's philosophy was what she called Objectivism. I don't know enough about it to say whether I agree or disagree with it. But I will say this, it surely makes one think about how they view life. No doubt about that. For whatever reason, the ideas propositioned in this book make sense to me.







There are a few things she said that intrigue me greatly:

"I trust that no one will tell me that such men I write about don't exist. That this book has been written - and published - is my proof that they do."

"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone."

And these two are my favorite:

"Show me your achievement, and the knowledge will give me courage for mine."

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours."