Unprepared: Is there anything worse we can say about you and your work? But the word means two things, not just one. There is the unprepared of a final exam, of forgetting your lines, of showing up to a gunfight with a knife—this is the unprepared of the industrial world, the unprepared of being an industrial cog in an industrial system, but a cog that is out-of-whack, disconnected, and poorly maintained. What about the other kind, though? We are unprepared to do something for the first time, always. We are unprepared to create a new kind of beauty, to connect with another human in a way that we've never connected before. We are unprepared for our first bestseller or for a massive failure unlike any we've ever seen before. We are unprepared to fall in love and to be loved. We are unprepared for the reaction when we surprise and delight someone, and we are always unprepared for the next breakthrough. We've been so terrified into believing in the importance of preparation that it's spilled over into that other realm, the realm of life where we have no choice but to be unprepared.