It's Better to Build

Critics are everywhere. Creators are rare. Be rare.

Complaining is the intellectual equivalent of hitting snooze. It’s satisfying in the moment, but it never gets you anywhere. Every day, we face a choice: we can either curse the darkness or strike a match.

Adam Mastroianni likens this to choosing between smirking as the ship sinks or getting busy pumping water. The latter might seem harder, but it’s where the real fun begins. Action connects us with fellow pumpers. In the process of pumping, we forget the naysayers. “Optimism cures pain,” Mastroianni argues. “Pessimism, like painkillers, merely dulls it.”

Mastroianni notes that a musician could spend hours calculating the finite combinations of musical notes, proving the futility of songwriting. After all, original melodies will eventually run out. “Or you can pick up a guitar and play,” he writes.

We all know an Arvy Slinger, that character from Annie Hall who abandons his homework because the universe is expanding and will eventually end. “What’s the point?” they ask.

But history’s builders took a different path. Rather than asking, “Why bother?” they asked, “What can I do?”

The universe may be expanding, but right here, right now, we can expand the circle of light around us.

So grab your matchstick, your bucket, your guitar. The world’s next melody is waiting — and it’s never heard a song quite like yours.