The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

August 6From Sitting Still

The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. They felt that people were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness.

Willa Cather—O Pioneers! (1913)

The theme of land runs throughout O Pioneers!. It's present in pretty much every chapter but not simply as a setting—more like a character, perhaps a protagonist meant at times to destroy and at times lift up.

In the same fashion that the characters in the story occupy the land, we as entrepreneurs occupy a market, an industry, a community, a little corner of a dream. In that space, and in conjunction with nature, we are meant to carve out something.

Alexandra Bergson, the superstar farmer in O Pioneers!, admits in the end that she succeeded by bending her will to the will of nature:

The land did it. It had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right; and then, all at once, it worked itself. It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself, and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sitting still.

It is our giving in to our landscape, unforgiving as it may be, moody as it may turn, that will deliver the ultimate prize. You have limited resources, energy, and, let's face it, control over what happens. Sit still ...