Battling Someone Else’s Fires
Cooler heads prevail. If there was ever a time to keep our cool, it is now. Obviously change is abound. Things are shifting like the tectonic plates under the sea. It seems as if there is an earthquake, hurricane, tornado and drought all at the same time … AND we are standing in quick sand. Where do we go for security? Climb a tree maybe? I’m pretty sure there is no escape from change.
This is a time of innovation. In our business and personal lives this is a time of heightened creativity. A time to get our game on. Time to motivate ourselves to figure IT out. Many societal innovations were created during crisis and brought about by the needs of the time.
As I write this I think about the compelling Imax movie Fires of Kuwait (which I saw on a five story Imax screen). Imax director David Douglas was originally sent to Kuwait in 1992 to get footage from a different picture but ended up covering the horrific destruction that happened in Kuwait after the Gulf War when the oil wells were destroyed. The destruction left the landscape populated with towering infernos, as the oil kept burning.
It was rumored that if left alone the wells would burn for at least 100 years. I remember estimates on the news at the time, it would take many years to put out the blazes.
This is an intensely graphic story of how more than 10,000 firefighters battle against 607 burning oil wells in an attempt to save precious natural resources and damage to the environment. It was such a compelling film it was nominated for an academy award and fifteen years later I remember it vividly.
Courageous engineers and innovators from all over the world flocked to the deserts of Kuwait to weave through active land mines left behind (from the recently ended Persian Gulf War) to battle poisonous gas, thick black smoke and heat so intense it was unapproachable by humans. Together they used jet engines, rushing streams of water and metal rods jammed down well shafts to extinguish all the fires within nine months.
I will say wall street crumbling, the auto industry on the brink of collapse and unemployment at an all time high, these are our fires of Kuwait. So let us all gather together as innovators. Let’s share our ideas and inventions and engineer new groups and businesses. Let’s focus not on consumerism or what is in it for me but what will be positively contributory and constructive for our cities, states and countries of the world.
