Idea 5: Capability

There is unmapped territory in all of us.

Swedish proverb

We are not in fact bundles of fixed assets – interests, aptitudes, personality – independent of our environment. We are not round pegs looking for round holes. The reality is very different.

There is, in fact, a dynamic relationship between a person and their environment. Einstein gives us a simple definition of the latter:

The environment is everything that isn't me.

The equation between your talent – all that you have to offer – and this changing environment is what the Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle was the first to call your capability:

To each of us is given a certain inward talent, a certain outward environment of fortune; to each, by wisest combination of ...

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