Corollary lesson: when you find yourself driven by a yearning for some overarching majestic goal to overcome great challenges at great cost, remember that working hard on something doesn't mean you'll ever get to use that thing. Those woodcutters, metalworkers, shipwrights, artisans, etc. who poured their hearts and souls into building that ship will very likely not sail the vast and endless sea that motivated their labor.
If you yearn for the vast and endless sea enough that you wish to sail it, forget the wood. Become a seaman.
That's one of the awesome things about software. You can have a grand idea for something, actually spew it out into reality, and then actually use it and see lots of other people use it, often for very little cost on your part besides some time and effort. I'm sure many people of long past would be like "shit, you all are so lucky" if they saw what we could do, and I think there's a pretty good chance we'd say the same of our distant future descendants (barring all the standard hypothetical catastrophe caveats).
It's almost like magic, except limited by what software can actually affect. You can't compile "ship.rs" into an actual ship. But in 100 years I think more of the borders between software and hardware/meatware will start to blur.
If you yearn for the vast and endless sea enough that you wish to sail it, forget the wood. Become a seaman.