In a fascinating way, the people we meet can naturally be divided into circles: I may have a couple of hundreds of followers on Twitter, a part of whom engage in my tweets, some come so close that they actually go beyond Twitter and start reading here, and a few go so far as to actively react on what I have written.
Thus I was inspired to write this post by Bojosi Gamontle, who had come to the innermost of these circles, and after reading the post about the tower that did not lean at Osborg asked whether there is room in our daily lives though to say, "maybe the tower can lean a little today"?
Such a question is a bit too complex to respond to via Twitter - even after we have been given twice as many characters per tweet - but on the other hand it's too good a question not to be answered. And therefore it ended up as a post here instead.
Funny enough, it's a question that I have also debated (in a slightly different disguise, though) with a close colleague: should we be afraid to fail as a result of trying to do things in a new way? My good colleague thinks we should be afraid. If the things we create are released to the customers and malfunction, people could get physically hurt. Period. I am however of the opinion that there is a time to fail and a time to be careful: the things that are released to the customers must of course be okay - but on the way towards the finished, tested and functioning result we should allow ourselves to be as innovative as possible and fail as quickly as possible, otherwise we will never become smarter and better.
The same applies to the master builder of Osborg. I have no doubt that he had been in situations along his way, where the things he tried to build had crumbled to pieces in spectacular ways - that is what it takes to eventually be able to stand tall as a master builder. And in the same way, we must also allow ourselves to be imperfect, embrace our failures, admit to our vulnerability and be able to assess where it is necessary that we deliver our best. We, too, need to try things that fail in order to learn what works and what doesn't - and in the end we may in certain ways be like the builder who stood impassive when he was accused of having made mistakes, while we know very well that we have many other things to polish when we return to our studies. So yes, there are plenty of times when the tower may lean a little. We may even say that there are times when the tower by all means should lean - because otherwise, we have not challenged ourselves and have not escaped far enough from our comfort zone to build even higher towers of the future without fear of having them crash to the ground.
(Translated from Når tårne hælder en smule)