April 7, 2020

Bit by bit

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest building in the world – 163 floors, 800m tall. Setting out to build the tallest building in the world sounds hard. There’s so much that could go wrong because it’s never been done before.

But before the Burj Khalifa, there was Tapei 101 – 508 metres, 101 floors. At the time, that had also never been done before. And before Tapei 101 there was the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur with 88 floors, also uniquely innovative for its time.

If you go back far enough, you end up with a neolithic, underground single-story dwelling – the type found in the Orkney Islands in Scotland. There was a point in history when even that had never been done before. There was so much that could’ve gone wrong.

But bit-by-bit, time-after-time, there was a human who thought it should be done. That it could be done. And while it’s taken us about 12,000 years, we’ve gone from a sub-zero dwelling underground to the 163rd floor of the Burj Khalifa. Floor-by-floor, bit-by-bit, year-by-year.

Building the tallest building in the world sounds hard, but if all we need to do is add another floor – a 164th one – perhaps that’s doable. Becoming an artist also sounds hard. Maybe you’ve never done it before. There’s so much that could go wrong. But bit-by-bit, drawing-by-drawing. Start a level 0, and work your way up. Just like we humans always have. Anything is possible.

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