“If your memory is more active than your imagination, then you are an endangered species.” Dr Wale Akinyemi.
These words just pierced my mind like a sharp knife and it pushed me to want to know why Dr Wale said them and him being my mentor, I had to give it extra attention. I set out by looking for the difference in these two words. Memory is basically about past things that have already taken place. This means that for you to think about these things, your mind has to be focusing backwards into history. Imagination on the other hand, is like an express visa and an all expenses paid ticket to explore the world. In the “bucket” of imagination, you only find current and future things. It is the creation center where there are no limitations. It’s here that you find the owners of the future.
It’s on this premise that I realised why the good doctor said that those whose memory is more active are an endangered species. It’s common knowledge that you can only live your life forward not backwards. You cannot plan into the past but into the future. We plan our future today not yesterday. If you are a champion of last year, then you are no champion because nobody holds the monopoly of winning. To remain a champion, you have to keep fighting, you have to keep changing, you have to keep disrupting the conventional way of thinking and doing things. You have To make mediocrity and conforming your enemy. What worked yesterday, doesn’t necessarily work today.
To be relevant today, you have to learn, unlearn and relearn new things. You have to put your mind into innovative gear. Things nowadays are changing at the speed of technology and one has to either keep up or be ahead of things to be relevant. I was going through history of former giants of manufacturing, service delivery and other co-operations on the advice of Dr Wale and I realised many of them are all gone, out of existence or are on the death bed. Reason being, they banked on past success so when new kids with new ideas showed up on the scene, they were blown into oblivion.
This fate has, is and will befall many people as long as we keep thinking and doing things the way we used to do them. The future belongs to those who never cage their imaginations for it is here that great ideas are born. To read more posts by Mwangi, click HERE
