I’ve been thinking about those words from Steve Jobs lately, the ones that seem to echo in the quiet moments when doubt creeps in. “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world… are the ones who do.” They settle in my chest like a weight I can’t quite shake, heavy with both promise and accusation.
There’s something unsettling about calling them crazy, isn’t there? As if the very act of believing in transformation marks you as fundamentally different, separated from the sensible masses who keep their heads down and their dreams small. I wonder if that’s what it takes—a kind of beautiful madness that allows you to see possibilities where others see only problems.
I watch them sometimes, these world-changers, and I’m struck by how ordinary they look in their extraordinary moments. They’re the ones who stay up too late, scribbling ideas on napkins, their eyes bright with something the rest of us have forgotten how to feel. They’re the ones who hear “impossible” and translate it as “not yet.” They carry themselves with a strange mixture of humility and audacity that makes you want to both follow them and run away.
But here’s what haunts me: the loneliness of it all. To be crazy enough to think you can change the world means living in a space between what is and what could be, a liminal place where most people can’t—or won’t—follow. It means enduring the sideways glances, the patronizing smiles, the well-meaning friends who suggest you be more “realistic.” It means carrying the weight of a vision that exists only in your mind, at least at first.
I’ve felt that weight myself, in smaller ways. That flutter of possibility when an idea first takes shape, followed by the crushing realization of how much stands in its way. The world has a way of teaching us to trim our sails, to settle for incremental improvements rather than radical transformation. We learn to be reasonable, and in learning to be reasonable, we learn to be small.
Yet somewhere out there, in garages and laboratories and coffee shops, someone is refusing to be small. Someone is looking at the insurmountable and seeing it as merely difficult. Someone is crazy enough to believe that the way things are is not the way things have to be.
Maybe that’s the real tragedy—not that some people are crazy enough to think they can change the world, but that the rest of us have convinced ourselves we’re too sane to try. We’ve made sanity synonymous with acceptance, wisdom with resignation. We’ve forgotten that every great leap forward began with someone who was willing to look foolish, to risk everything on a vision that existed nowhere but in their imagination.
I think about the moment when the crazy ones first glimpse their possibility—that electric instant when the impossible suddenly seems inevitable. Do they feel the weight of what they’re about to attempt? Do they pause, just for a moment, and consider the easier path? Or do they simply step forward, driven by something deeper than logic, something that whispers that the world is waiting for exactly what they have to offer?
Tonight, as I write this, I’m wondering which side of that line I’m on. Am I one of the crazy ones, or am I one of the ones who watches from the sidelines, admiring their audacity while nursing my own small dreams? The question sits in my throat like a stone, demanding an answer I’m not sure I’m ready to give.
But perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps the very act of asking the question, of feeling the weight of possibility pressing against the walls of what we think we know, is the first step toward our own beautiful madness. Perhaps we’re all more capable of changing the world than we dare to believe.
Perhaps we’re all a little crazy, if we’re brave enough to admit it.
