As kids of the 1993 generation, I remember when we used to play “kitchen”, “firefighters”, “cow boys”, “husband-wife & kids” and all these games that were spurred by our imagination. I remember when we had no access to technology, and when watching a movie meant we were going to be the characters for the next couple of months. I was Ash from Pokemon, the father in the patriot; I discovered that my Nintendo could actually make me part of the Digimon world. It was all so beautiful. That stayed the case till 9th grade. Then the games just leveled up. I won an Oscar, a Grammy and noble prize all in the walls of my room in front of my mirror and it was announced by my deodorant pack. That beautiful one million deodorant pack was always my companion when I imagined myself singing and reading my poetry aloud. Some-how and even though I was bombarded with all this new technology, I managed to keep my dreams till I graduated university. Once I started my career, social media (what I like to call imagination inhibitors) kicked in.
Last month, one of my partners in Mindfortinc (Ahmad) took us to see his house in a village in Lebanon called “Jeb Jeneen”. It was all greenery and farms. We walked around picking fruits from trees (apples) and isolating ourselves from social media. It was a great experience being able to connect with nature. Somehow I felt like every breeze of air was giving me back my soul again. I felt like young Yahya was back. Lucky for me we spent a night there eating the best food and breathing the real essence of oxygen. Days later, I had the chance to roommate with my roommate when I was back in University (also one of the partners at Mindfortinc “Hamed”). The conversations we had sounded like our old selves. We were dreaming again, we re-set our goals and somehow our vision of our future clarified. It dawned on me here that maybe social media has enough toxicity to overweigh its pros. Maybe we all need to take a step back from social media and isolate ourselves every now and then just to be in-touch with our 5 year old selves so we can remember the taste of imagination.
This brings me to a bigger concern. If our generation is starting to forget what imagination felt like, what about the generation that hasn’t tasted it in the first place? A generation that learned to play with ipads & iphones before they even learned talking. I think it is worthwhile to take a minute and think of how this impacts the future of business & the world. Would Thomas Edison have created the light bulb if there were no imagination? Would Steve jobs create the iphone
? Or Henry Ford create the car?
MindFort Inc. 