Circumstances and Persistence

                                                       
                                               Thomas Edison

The vast majority of people have enormous potentialities of thinking, far beyond anything ordinarily suspected; but so seldom do the right circumstances by chance surround them to require their actualization that the vast majority die without realizing more than a fraction of their powers.Born millionaires, they live and die in poverty for the lack of favourable circumstances which would have compelled them to convert their credit into cash.  -A.R Orage

Why is thought, being a secretion of the brain, more wonderful than gravity, a property of matter ? - Charles Darwin

Isn't it a shame that we spend years in schools that do not even attempt to teach us about the workings of our minds, that do not provide the circumstances to actualise our potential. So much evidence exists to show that it is often the people who ' fail ' the school system go on to become great inventors.
Take for example Thomas Edison  who was the youngest of seven children,  his teachers said
he was "too stupid to learn anything." He was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive." As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the lightbulb. When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" Edison replied, "I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps."
Edison may have had the ' correct' circumstances to actualise his potential or maybe he created the correct circumstances through his persistence.
It would be nice to think that we could improve the educational system to help children actualise more potential and no doubt the system is better now than it was even twenty years ago. However there is always something , some extra spark that needs to to happen either externally or internally to compel us to push beyond our comfort zone and aim for the stars.
We cannot blame our teachers , our parents , or our circumstances , we live in an age when we have all the resources available , we just need decide our goals,  set our compass to the ' star' and just like Thomas Edison keep  inventing and reinventing until we reach our destination.