I watched the SpaceX bell-ringing ceremony this week. It almost brought me to tears.
It wasn't the valuation or the headlines. It was the moment. A handful of people stood on that podium, having built something most serious people once dismissed. Two decades of being told it wouldn't work — and now it was a bell.
I am not going to pretend I'm chasing what Elon is chasing: he is a different kind of mind, maybe the rarest of this era. But the bell still got me.
The vision is the point, not the arrival
A real goal makes your blood race. Not just a P&L number you'd be comfortable hitting; it's the kind of goal that sounds slightly absurd out loud, the kind you might pour your whole life into and still never reach.
I might not get there. That is not a reason to lower it. It is the reason to keep it. A vision you're guaranteed to reach was never big enough. The chase is not the consolation prize for missing the dream. The chase is the life.
And the chase is the part nobody photographs. There is no ceremony for the years. The bell is one minute. The two decades behind it are the real achievement, and almost no one sees them.
Where this leaves me
If you're in your own middle, here's what I'm telling myself: keep the goal that makes your blood race. Don't trade it for a smaller one just because the smaller one is reachable. The people ringing bells are not a different species. They are further down the same road, and they refused to turn around.
I haven't had my bell. Maybe I never will. But I am still walking, and I am not going to stop.
Congratulations to the SpaceX team. You reminded a lot of us why we started.