Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don’t let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?
Joseph Stalin
Sometimes darkness offers us great insights, if we aren’t scared to receive them, and so Ioseb, the twentieth centuries notorious mass murderer, in his own way has much to teach us about the power of ideas.
Your thoughts and ideas are powerful. Far more powerful than you give them credit and it’s times to stop disrespecting your own worth, your inner most thoughts, and your innate abilities.
Many people look at the world around them and see it as some kind of magic. They marvel at this accomplishment or that achievement. They envy this creative person or that one. They have become habitually manipulated by very excellent and deliberate advertising campaigns. They follow other people’s ideas like a gentle little lamb, but when it comes to their own dreams, they question their own strength and capability. They give up the right to their own ideas. They numb themselves with observing the world, instead of creating, thinking, and imagining.
Ioseb was no fool.
He is the reason my father was put in prison and why I make my home in a foreign land. He was no fool but it would be foolish not to take our ideas back.
You see, the people under his rule had no choice. They would disappear, be falsely tried and end up dead in a gulag. Painfully, miserably, and far away from their families. That was their fate, but we are not them, and our land is not the Soviet Union.
Why should we let them have ideas? They shouldn’t and they didn’t, but you have a responsibility to take back the way you think. You have a right to your own ideas. You have a God given mission to think out loud, dream big, and make an impact in whatever way you can.
Ideas aren’t given to you. It is something you already have, and you live in a country that treasures the spread and worth of those ideas, but nobody is going to do that for you. No one is going to see that you are not living your life to the fullest. No one is going to stop other people profiting by making you their little lamb.
But you are not a lamb. You are a lion, if you want to be one, or a lioness; beautiful, strong, and proud. You have great ideas, great dreams, and deep rooted passion. Don’t suppress it. Don’t hide it any longer. Let those ideas out. Let other people help you build your dreams, because your dreams include them. They make the world a better place. You are able to be fully human by connecting with others and making them better people too.
Don’t take your ideas for granted. They are deeply powerful and dangerous for those who wish to manipulate and profit from your life. Strong, determined people are an imminent threat but they are everywhere. They can’t be stopped. They won’t be stopped.
Their ideas will spread and you are counted among them.
