How do you make your voice heard in the midst of such a
noisy crowd? How can your talent be handpicked from a field of talents? What do
you give to a humanity that has already been given everything?
History tells of great men and women that have shaped the
world. Civilisation after civilisation, thinkers, dreamers, writers and
researchers have laid the foundations for every aspect of our lives. Darwin,
Einstein, Plato, Dicey, De Gaulle, Durkheim, Marx, Nietzsche, de Beauvoir, Shakespeare,
Shelley, Dickinson, Voltaire, Moliere are some of the names we all have to hear
about at some point in our life. There is an endless list of absolutely genius
minds that have existed and have changed the course of history.
Human beings with
flesh and blood, unsatisfied with their social, cultural, economic and
political realities brought about the changes that we look on with amazement
today. From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, from the English civil wars
to the French and Russian revolutions, the world has undergone serious changes
and it feels like everything that had to be done in this world has already been
done.
What can we create that will be new? The industrial
revolution and modernisation are no strange terms. What can man make today that
will truly amaze the world? Planes, cars, printing machines, phones, all sorts
of technologies already exist. From
farming to medicine and beyond, there is absolutely no area that has been left
untouched.
There won’t be any more Benjamin Franklin or Alexander Graham Bell.
Any scientific discovery today will only build upon what has already been
established. Literary genres have been well established. Political ideologies
are now well defined. Religious beliefs are well founded. Anything that will be
done today will only be an all-too-common realisation, a replica of what we are
already accustomed to, if not a disgraced exception to mainstream acceptance.
In the twenty-first century, we therefore have a set of
‘acquis’. There is no need to risk creating another political ideology when
socialism, conservatism and democracy are rooted in our system. Why should we
find a better cure for headache when paracetamol has done the trick all these
years? What other way is there to instantly communicate from a distance apart
from our telephones and computers?
There is nobody to rise and act in the face
of the Migration Crisis that is hitting Europe. There won’t be any more men who
will fight to blood for the political and economic freedom of African lands.
Every country in Africa has their independence day so what more can we ask for?
The last genius died when the last person to invent
something original and new on earth died. We can’t find solutions to global
catastrophes that are challenging us today. There aren’t enough brains to come
up with effective solutions to terror and epidemic and poverty today. They do
not make thinking brains anymore.
That is our attitude today and every one of us is guilty. We
silently watch our world decay. We accept that creativity died with our
forefathers. We assume that we have nothing left to do. We like to think that
the world has already reached its final destination. No more dream. No visions
left. Youth is but a wasted time spent on unnecessary social media esclavagism,
and life is but a routine of already existing customs.
But it mustn’t be the case. We have been taught wrongly. We
have been led to assume that the world is composed of America and Europe only.
We believe our reality is the reality everywhere else in the planet. And we
forget just how many places on earth need development and attention.
I was intrigued when someone said to me: “I don’t even know
what to do because it feels like everything has already been done on this
earth”. As much as I was thinking to write this article, I had not realised
just how serious the issue is. So I began to wonder. I asked myself why there
was such a strong need in men to be the first in something. And I came to the
conclusion that egocentrism and the need to be famous is the primary reason for
uselessness and total failure today.
We do not have to be the first to invent something new. We
do not have to come up with computers that physically transports people from
Asia to Africa in a second. We really don’t have to be wearing bright yellow
socks in winter when everybody else is in black. All we need to do is wear the
same black socks our own way. It makes the difference.
We are in 2016. Two thousand and sixteen years have already
passed. If you are 22, the world had already been existing 1994 years before
you were born. Why do you want to be the first to come up with something new?
Did you expect the world to be shapeless and dark until your birth so you could
come and change it? Why do you hide your laziness behind the fact that there is
nothing left to do? Is it better to do as others have already done and bring
your stone to the building of this edifice or is it better to sit in your room
and do nothing because you wouldn’t be the first to do it anyways?
It was written nowhere that being successful means inventing
the first flying car or the first singing pillows. If you allow yourself to be
lazy and a failure, you shouldn’t blame it on the fact that it is hard to shine
in this world because too many people shine already. Does a star worry about
shining its light in the sky because too many stars are already shining?
The world is a very vast place and as much as advances in
all aspects of life have been made in ‘developed’ countries, there are still
plenty of places where you bringing the means to secure a more constant and stable
power supply will put you almost on the same footing as the first man to have discovered
electricity on earth.
We might be short on ideas as to what non-existent thing
there is still to be created but we will never run out of reasons to make sure
what has already been made is distributed across the globe to ensure a much
fairer humanity.
And to be realistic, to think that everything has already
been done is like being forty-five and still believing Santa Claus is real. Everything
that has been achieved was but a foundation, an example, a stepping stone in
the progress of humanity. It was never intended that man should stop thinking
of more appropriate solutions to the challenges of today. It should not have
become the case that any subsequent idea is automatically classified as ‘exception
to the norm’. Humanity should have already learnt by now that a work already
done is a message that more such works must be carried.
We will not be the first person to have set up a NGO, we
will never be the first genius in farming, we will never be the first president
to have led his country to stability, but we all have a legacy unique to us
even though we might be doing a job already done. What is important is not so
much how new is what we are about to do. What matters is how original we are.
Two absolutely great singers might sing the very same song at a competition,
one will outwin the other not because he sang something new but because he was
original in a common platform.
All might have already been done but none of it has already
been extended to the faraway lands in need. There might have already been great
political leaders that have shaken the world and left a name, but we can chose
to shake the world more positively and not leave behind catastrophe like Hitler
and every leader coming under his category.
In a world so big, we cannot
possibly run out of opportunities to show away our uniqueness. The principle is
simple: personal vision and a legacy well-founded. The justification is simply:
time and space are two great opportunity givers. If your light is but that of
one star above dark skies in 2016 France, it might be the sun in 2016 Malesia. There
might be no room left for novelty but last time I checked, originality still
takes the voice of a child way loud and above that of a multitude.
