Dictionary.com defines inspiration as an
inspiring or animating action or influence. But, as I would argue, does not
that one word, the word that governs the majority of our lives, the word that
creates heroes and villains whose deeds either good or bad live on for eternity
and the one word that can mean the difference between success and failure in
the never-ending script of life mean so much more?
It is the glue behind our lives and the
reason why we are as we are today. Let me take you step by step through just
one of your, what seem to be at first glance, ordinary weekdays. You wake up in
a bed, a piece of furniture only there because of two friends, Sada Dosidingler
and Chimmy Blackenbutler, from the Caribou Island who lay on goat skin calling
it a bed. You then walk downstairs and are greeted by the soothing smell of hot
chocolate, a beverage discovered by Spanish Conquistador Hernando Cortez who after
trekking through the jungles of what would later become Mexico and Central
America, had an audience with king of the Aztecs who presented him with a
thick, frothy, brown drink which they called xocoatl, or as the conquistadors
pronounced it “chocalatl.”. After having eaten, a walk to the bus, a bus which
was once the prized creation of Blaise Pascal in 1662, granted at that time it
was powered by horses. Upon arrival at school, you are transported into a world
of achievements, productions and many peoples life work. Whether it be the famous
equation of E=mc2 from Albert Einstein, the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prime factorisation thought
of by Eratosthenes in 240 BCE or
the theory of evolution formed by Charles Darwin.
That is average day in the life of
most of you (minus a few things, all of which I could argue are have been
developed by someone else) and yet this is my question to you; How do you not
realise the seven simple revelations you come across in that average day? All these advancements in our society, all
these upgrades, all these motions thought of to progress the world we live in
are only here because the people who invented, conceived or constructed them
were inspired.
“You can't
wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
This is a quote from Jack London, an
American author who knew what power inspiration holds. Do you think Black
Americans would have got the vote, that women would have become equal or that
Jews would have been able to bounce back from the holocaust and gain a state if
they had not gone out looking for inspiration? Inspiration is powerful, people
are powerful, where a large yet demoralised group won’t make a difference, one
man who has a vision and an idea might. The Jewish community, the suffragettes
and Martin Luther King Jr all realised this and look at the changes and
advances they made to the lives of everyone.
Inspiration has made it possible for
the human race to move forward and amend its ideas. Without inspiration the
primitive humans who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago would not have
survived to populate the earth and we would not be here. So my message to you
is that when you wake up in your bed or drink your favourite morning
refreshment be thankful of those people who went out exploring and be aware
that you can also make a difference as long as you grab life with two hands and
never let it go until it gives you what you want.
