First Gentleman with Wilson Orhiunu
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The source and course of the River Niger was a mystery in Europe for many years. Many explorers died in the quest to map out its course. One such was Mungo Park who saw the River Niger in 1796 and wrote about it in his book Travels in the Interior of Africa 1799. He returned to the Niger for a second time and died in present day Kwara State.
Human beings have a strong desire to know where things flow from as knowledge is power. Those not blessed with the risk-taking curiosity that could potentially kill are happy to live on the river banks and explain away things they have no knowledge of with imaginative assumptions and superstitions. The Europeans knew that inland waterways could open up opportunities for future trade while the locals were happy to fish and worship river goddesses who placed no demands on worshipers to build boats and travel the whole length of the rivers. “Why engage in speculative travel when curiosity can be assuaged with colourful myths?” thought the West Africans then.
It appears that since the world began, if a people sat still long enough, some other people on the move are bound to travel to them. Travellers usually come bearing gifts and asking flattering questions that stimulate boastful answers. Notes are taken and the guest bids the hosts farewell only to return with an invading army.
So, where do ideas come from? What makes some people build progressively bigger ships and develop navigational skills? What makes them set sail despite the numerous cases of people being lost at sea? Why do others have “let sleeping dogs lie2 as an ideology. No risky ventures, no experimentation, no hypothesis formulated to be disapproved or validated.
The source of ideas might be harder to explain than the source of the River Niger it seems. I have watched so many interviews of people who have achieved great success in their creative fields. The question of the inspiration behind a work of art always arises. The answers are always impossible to decipher. Many say they are inspired by what they see around them every day. Now, if what we all see around us is the fountain of ideas and inspiration, how come everybody is not bringing great ideas to past?
The same event in the neighbourhood inspires people differently. A man down the street has a windfall and buys a new car and throws a party for friends which has all the neighbours talking. One teenager at No. 6 who offers to wash the new car loved it so much he resolves in his heart to work hard and buy that kind of car as soon as he can afford it. House No. 8 has a guy who knows a lot about the movements of the guy with the new car and the love he has for his daughter decides to get his friends to organise a kidnap of the daughter for a ransom. These are ideas forming in the minds of people based on what they have seen around them. Even among the positive people, the kind of ideas people have from the same inspiration varies. A beautiful girl walks by and the painter reaches for his brush, the tailor grabs his pen and paper and starts to sketch dresses, the sculptor reaches for his marble, the poet babbles creatively, the vocalist pours forth a love song and the love-struck designs and builds a Taj Mahal.
The door-bell to our minds constantly rings as different influences seek to gain entrance and give us ideas. What really matters for an individual is what he has been taught and how he has been conditioned from birth. Family, friends, neighbours, culture, society, faith, willingness to endure hardship years before any material gain is seen, education and mentorship all play a role in how ideas are received, analysed and worked on.
One of the things people waste in life are good ideas. A life of wasted ideas is exemplified by seeing more and more examples of people succeeding today using ideas you had thought about 20 years previously and had not acted upon.
If only we reacted to the ideas that come into our heads with the same zeal as we react to those physiological urges that cannot be ignored. No matter the coldness of the night and the cosy warmth of the blankets, a full bladder enforces the idea of a trip to the toilet on us. Hunger, thirst, sexual urges are all physiological states producing all kinds of ideas that produce actions. I have never heard of anybody ignoring the peristaltic ideas generated by diarrhoea.
Never waste an idea.
Write down every idea that comes to mind in your idea journal.
Expect to have ideas come to you and always have writing materials to hand
Research the ideas you have.
Start to entertain yourself in the areas where your ideas lie. Watch documentaries and films themed on the particular subject of your ideas.
Learn to act on your ideas and start small. Celebrate the successes and learn from the failures.
Describe yourself as a creative person full of new ideas. Write it down next to a picture of yourself.
Ideas have to be good for others to make it worthwhile. Seek to harm no one.
