Ideas come in a flash but take an eternity.
What do you see when you look at people? You see how they look, how they behave, or their peculiar body language?
I see something different. I see years of preconditioning. I see imposed cultural behaviors and thought processes. I see the influence that influenced them. I can also take a good guess on where they are coming from and heading to.
It’s rare to see people who’ve built themselves up largely. To come across people who’ve unlearned everything, who can witness the influence upon them and selectively take it forward. It’s also rare because not everyone can see and understand it.
But such people, are often easily spotted out there. There’s just something different about them, you may never be able to define or point out what’s clearly different, but you know the underlying feeling as I’m talking about it now, don’t you?
If you often read about Ideas and how the geniuses arrived at it, you already know that ideas come at the most unlikely times. During shower, driving, walking, or sitting under an apple tree, mostly when you least expect it. You suddenly happen to realize something that’s always been right in front of you, as if hidden in plain sight.
I think one of the worst questions to ask a creator is “Where do you get your ideas from?” That’s because I think there’s no definite answer to this.
I believe, Ideas are a result of deliberate conditioning. You can’t just sit and except ideas to rain. But you also can’t fill a full container. That’s where unlearning plays a key role.
Self-awareness is a way to modestly question, analyze and understand the years of conditioning that we’ve been through. Once we understand the direction we want to head to, we’ll begin to learn the conditioning required for it and that’s what we’ve to consume.
The other way is if you’re just absolutely fed-up and bored with your life to the point where your brain is uncomfortable with it’s own comfort zones, you may shake things up. But what are the chances?
It won’t be easy. Unlearning in itself is a mammoth task and you can never fully unlearn. Adding fresh water every time you take some filthy water out won’t clean the whole container. That’s how unlearning and re-learning works.
Every drop of water added definitely helps, but it has to be consistent and you, persistent. If you manage to do this until you reach a point where all the conditioning left if necessary, and the filth is no longer a concern, ideas shall rain.
In fact, conditioning impacts not just ideas, but how one leads a life. A person’s entire perception is based on the preconditioning.
This is why some cultures are struggling to get their people vaccinated. This is why some cultures remain poor despite flushing millions of dollars into the community. This is why rich families usually manage to stay rich for generations. This is why people never do what they really want to or can never reach their goal. Conditioning, more often than not, can be one of the largest deciding factors in Life as a whole, because it shapes the way we think about everything.
All of this adds up to enable us to discover ideas. Here, by idea, I mean a conscious, deliberate thought, not necessarily something that is different, unique, never before, or ground-breaking, but as simple as trying to learn a new language, to switch a career, or rather quit the job, to love a little more and show it in your actions, or to just try something new.
This is why I believe that Ideas take an eternity to be discovered.
So, what’s the conditioning you’d love to have? Do you want to live in a land of drought, or a land of abundance? But you gotta sow the seeds okay! For abundance you will have to, for drought the weeds are usually there.
And most importantly, you have to begin right now. Right Now.
