I assure you I won't be spoiling anything in this entry, but I will be talking about Batman and why his thought process and journey to becoming "The Bat" are no different from that of any aspiring entrepreneur.
A lot of people I know seem to misunderstand exactly what an "entrepreneur" is.
"Entrepreneur" is not synonymous with "business founder" or "small-business owner." Opening your own restaurant means you own your own business but it does not make you an "entrepreneur" per se.
There is no single, universally agreed-upon definition for the term "entrepreneur," but in my mind a true "entrepreneur" is someone who is extremely dissatisfied with the way things are in the world, has a compelling vision for how that world could be made better, and dedicates his/her life to trying to make that vision a reality, while taking on huge risk and making many personal sacrifices in the process.
And that is what Bruce Wayne did.
In "Batman Begins," Gotham City, the city that Bruce Wayne had grown up in and called home, had been completely overrun by corruption and injustice. Criminals were running the city, and the very people who were supposed to be fighting these criminals (cops, lawyers, etc.) were accepting handsome bribes from them to stay quiet so that the criminals could stay in power.
Bruce Wayne became Batman because he hated what Gotham City had become, and he hated the fact that no one was willing to do anything about it. No one was willing to take a stand, and everyone was too scared of what might become of them if they did so.
By becoming Batman and becoming a symbol of strength and defiance against injustice, Batman was able to bring hope to Gotham City - hope that there was indeed light at the end of the tunnel and that the darkness that had enshrouded the city for so long may one day eventually pass.
And by being the one person bold enough to openly fight injustice, he was also able to inspire others to be like him, and inspire others like him to join him in the fight against criminals and the corrupt. He showed the people of Gotham that by joining together and fighting together, that a better world was indeed possible and that they (and not some "future generation") could be a part of it.
That is a big reason why I want to become an entrepreneur, and why I want to continuously document my journey via this blog.
This is how *I* see the world -
I see a world where too many young people around me choose to ignore their passions and neglect their god-given talents in favor of a steadier, more well-paying life. This, despite every research study on happiness consistently showing that prioritizing money in one's career is a one-way street to dissatisfaction and regret later in life.
I believe young people aren't meant to pursue stability and money while they are young. That is for when you are in your 40s and 50s and you have a spouse and kids that you need to provide for. Your 20s and 30s should be a time of adventure and discovery and taking crazy risks, but I see so many young people around me skipping over this stage of life and going straight to a middle-age mindset.
I see a world where many people want to pursue their dreams and want to try something new and exciting that could make an impact on the world, but find themselves unable to take the necessary risks and make the necessary sacrifices to do so.
I believe that entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial spirit is an amazing force which is the lifeblood of a healthy society, and I believe that the more entrepreneurs there are in the world (especially compared to now), the better off our society will be.
But the problem is that becoming an entrepreneur is one of the riskiest and most difficult things you could ever do. It's a known fact that more than 95% of all entrepreneurs ultimately end up failing and are forced to dissolve their venture, or sell it for pennies on the dollar if they are so "lucky."
And it's also a known fact that entrepreneurship and successful tech companies are dominated by engineers and computer science majors, to the point that people like me who come from a humanities background and have zero technical background are told from the get-go that we have basically have no chance of ever making it in "their world."
But I want to show that it is possible.
I want to show others like me, others who have always wanted to make an impact on the world but lack the requisite skills and/or feel like it's "too late" and they're "too old" now to give it a shot, that it is indeed possible and it's never too late to do what you love. To do what you were MEANT to do.
If I could rewind my life, I would have taken more computer science courses as a kid and learned to appreciate earlier on the amazing work that goes into creating all the amazing devices and software that have become so ubiquitous in every facet of our lives. I WISH now that I had become a computer geek who knew how to build my own applications and my own websites from scratch, and who could drop out of college to start my own company in my early 20s.
But the fact is that that's not the case. Instead, I am nearing 30 years of age, I come from a humanities background, I've been working in an industry (banking) for the past 4+ years that I see no future for myself in, and I have ZERO prior knowledge of computers and how technology really works.
But I've fallen in love with technology (particularly the web) and its amazing potential to change the world for the better.
And I want to give this entrepreneurship thing a try, even if there's a greater-than 99% chance that I'm going to fail.
So I'm going to train myself. I'm going to learn coding and programming from scratch and study this stuff like my life depends on it, until it becomes all I can ever think about.
And I'm going to move back to the US and live poor and unglamourously for the next several years of my life, as I work to make ends meet during the day and then in my free time network tirelessly with other aspiring entrepreneurs as I slowly but surely work towards building my own tech product that could possibly change the world.
It's not going to be easy. In fact, it's probably going to be the hardest and most hopeless thing I've ever attempted to do in my life.
But I want to give it a shot.
Because even if I don't make it, even if I fail, even if I never end up making the type of impact on society that I had hoped...
...maybe I'll be able to inspire someone else out there, someone like me and who had the same thoughts and concerns as me. Maybe my example could be the "push" that that person needed to take the plunge and follow their dreams, and maybe that guy or girl will be the one who ends up changing the world.
Even if I couldn't...
Thanks for reading, and I hope you can join me on my journey :)
