When most people hear the platitude that "anything in possible", they normally nod their heads in sober agreement. I imagine you think anything is possible, don't you? But I doubt you really do.
Most folks put a very narrow band around what they think is going to happen in the future. Think of the most lunatic notion that you can – – – that Bill Clinton will be the premier of China, or that Poland will be the first country to land a man on Mars, or that Anarctica will be the center of a massive worldwide war – – anything – – and you'll (probably correctly) dismiss it as folly.
But I live in a place where facts change at breathtaking speed, and anything is, indeed, possible.
Try very hard to imagine yourself in 1999, standing on top of a soapbox in the middle courtyard of this giant office complex:
You probably don't recognize it, so I'll tell you that it is the world headquarters for Sun Microsystems, one of the largest companies on the planet, and one of the darlings of the stock market.
You grab your bullhorn and announce to the countless thousands of employees: "Attention! Attention! I want all of you to know that there's a kid just entering puberty right now that is going to make a web site by himself in a dorm room a few years from now! He is going to take over this entire campus with that web site. Oh, and by the way, Sun isn't going to exist anymore at all. Thanks! Have a nice day!"
After they stopped laughing, they would arrest you. And, yes, now that you live in 2011 and know that Facebook does indeed occupy the entire "Sun Quentin" complex, and that SUNW went down in a complete flameout, it all seems oh-so-sensible and logical. But you're fooling yourself if you tell yourself you would given even a 1% chance to the likelihood of the aforementioned announcement even taking place. Your expectations are far more narrow than you think.
This all occurred to me as I passed by Facebook's headquarters yesterday morning and thought about the now-dead Sun.
Anything is possible. The Euro may be gone in six months. Germany and France may merge into a new country called Merkelvania. Slope of Hope could go public. There is nothing – nothing at all – in this world that can't happen.
Please. Accept the mystery.
