On the 100th anniversary of the first flight by the Wright brothers, 35,000 people gathered at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to watch a replica of the famous first plane take to the air. Nothing had been left to chance: the $1.2 million reproduction was exact in every detail, right down to the thread count in the muslin that covered the wing struts. Yet the weather was failing to cooperate. When the hallowed moment came, it was raining—and worse, almost completely windless. At last the drizzle subsided. With the help of some of Orville and Wilbur’s descendents, the craft was maneuvered onto its launching rail. The pilot throttled the engine up to its maximum 12 horsepower and the replica Flyer set off down the 200 foot track. It didn’t get very far. Rearing up, it climbed about six inches off the ground and then slumped ignominiously into a puddle.
As 35,000 people learned firsthand that day, the Wrights’ “first airplane” was such a poor flyer that it barely qualified to be called an airplane at all. It only managed to get off the ground back in 1903 because there happened to be a strong wind that day. In retrospect we now understand that the Wright brothers made many wrong guesses in configuring their design. The propellers were in the back, instead of the front; the elevator was in the front, instead of the back; the wings angled downward, instead of upward. The plane was barely controllable.
Does that mean that the brothers’ first 12-second hop was an historical irrelevance? Not at all. The brothers did accomplish something epochal that day. Until that moment of quasi-flight, no one really knew whether a heavier-than-air flying machine lay within the realm of possibility. After Kitty Hawk, they knew. The Wright brothers may not have had all the details worked out, but they had one foot through the doorway.
Time and again, similar moments have changed the course of history – achievements less important for what they actually accomplish, than in what they reveal to be possible. Before Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954, it was a goal that lay in the far fringes of plausibility; today, it’s a baseline for any competitive middle-distance runner. Before Edmund Hillary climbed Everest, no one knew if the human body could endure such punishing conditions; today, it’s an obligatory feat in the resume of every ambitious adventurer.
When reports of the Wrights’ achievement leaked out, they electrified a group of European engineers and inventors who had been working for years to solve the problem of flight. They had no details about how the Flyer worked—the Wright Brothers were legendarily secretive, and didn’t display the planes in public until 1908—but knowing that what they were tackling was definitely possible, they redoubled their efforts. On October 23, 1906, a Brazilian-born inventor named Alberto Santos-Dumont took to the air in a craft he called “14-bis.”
A similar dynamic holds true for us as individuals. We each live a life bounded by a sense of what we know to be possible for ourselves. Everything else lies beyond, in the realm of Things That We Might Not Be Able to Do. And then, one day, we cross over the line, and our personal domain is forever enlarged.
Personally, I loved writing when I was growing up, but never dared to imagine I could make a living at it. Then I fell in with a group of young men at college who had grown up in New York City, knew people in the publishing industry, and were fully confident that they themselves would get jobs in the business. Hearing that, I felt what I imagine Alberto Santos-Dumont must have felt when he heard the rumors about Kitty Hawk. He didn’t know the Wrights’ secret, but he understood that what he dreamed of could be done. And less than three years after Kitty Hawk, he was airborne.
In America, we tend to obsess about the square footage of our houses, but maybe we should worry more about a different kind of real estate: the scope of our own sense of the possible. Every day, we can make a habit of doing something we’ve never done before. It can be big or small. Try a new kind of food; book a flight to Kathmandu; take a jazz dance class at the gym. Whatever we try, it’s not important that we do it skillfully or well. We can even do it so poorly – as the Wright Brothers did in 1903 – that there’s some question as to whether we’ve really done it at all. What’s important is that the precedent will have been set. The doorway will be open. And for us, the world will be just that much bigger.
“…maybe we should worry more about a different kind of real estate: the scope of our own sense of the possible. Every day, we can make a habit of doing something we’ve never done before…”
Such a brilliant quote, from a superb post, Jeff! It couldn’t possibly fail to open even the most distracted and narrow mind.
Thank you Sir, for making my day by reminding me that, too often these days, we fail to capitalize on that which matters most, fulfillment.
Jeff, as always you displayed the strength of your writing. Your few words in the email were enough to support me. Now this article has filled me with encouragement.
Thank you very much! You are an amazing writer. I am still on the book. Which is one more example of your great writing skills.
Thank you again! I will buy you lunch when I am in US this year.