LIVING LIFE : Original Ideas

As awash as the country is with Alphamania, it is important for young ordinary Rwandans to take good lessons from it. Young people must begin to shrug off the supposed inferiority complex that they feel towards the “real” East Africa. When the Project Fame auditions were taking place at UTC Mall, the tables with entry forms were as ordinary as they could come. Many and I personally shunned the whole idea even though when the race got underway, I was one of the very keen observers. Such is man’s nature. Then I thought it was an idea for low people, people who really had no focus in life to start thinking of going for a music competition. But when the tough three Rwandans got going, I began to get captivated by the whole idea and wished for once that I could sing, even as horrible as the “baby girl, baby girl, baby girl” musical misfit who for all his troubles should now be a celebrity. Alpha beat Kenyans, Ugandans and Tanzanians. Why not you? That goes not only in music, but job performance, business etc. Real achievers take huge risks and attempt to go where no one has gone. Alpha, Christian and Nina took their chance at fame and now we all look up to them as heroes. So many of us will try to follow in their footsteps, because it now seems an easy route to fame and success, but the many they come, the tougher it becomes. Like in all types of success, the risk takers who persevere get success, while the copy cats who want to follow the well-beaten path despair quickly when things turn out differently from what they expect. If originality of ideas is crucial in imagining, personifying and eventually achieving a dream, then Alpha is perhaps the personification of an original idea that has come to fruition. Innovators and inventors thrive on challenge while copy cats, in search of a short route to the top look to imitating and have no particular aspiration except fame and money. It is a nice thing to want to be rich but it is very important to do something of benefit to society, which will open the taps of money. Money should be the ultimate aim in life, but the desire to succeed in doing something so much so that money can’t help it but flow towards you is a healthy and achievable goal. Now that Alpha has won himself thirty five million francs, instead of spending all your years thinking of how you are going to win the same amount of money in the same way, think of how you can do something else that no one has done that can put you in the same bracket. There will be no other first Rwandan to win Project Fame. Every first is a fruit of original ideas, and Alpha’s original idea is already history. Every record is a result of self belief in being better than the best. People who are content with being like the rest have no desire to make records. They are satisfied with being like everyone and do not desire to stand out. Look at Usain Bolt, he is big, he is tall but he is fast. He himself knows that it is possible to break his own records. He dreams of running one hundred metres in 9.4 seconds, which right now in scientifically “unthinkable.” He even has his own signature celebration which makes him fodder for money spinning adverts. It is all because he thinks “original.” Have an imaginative-thinking Sunday. kelviod@yahoo.com