Being a Beacon of Hope

There is a feeling that we want to ignite when someone uses our products. It has to be a smile on their face, a sense of security, a feeling of empowerment. It has to be something that feels great. Not many brands give that kind of hope. You would expect them to do so but they don't. How can we make it so?

One of the things that I want to do is do something that matters, something that makes a difference. I want to be different. I want to be the beacon of hope that people look up to in the sky and realise that they can do it too. The boy in the sand. That was me.

This is personal but I think I should share it. It is the thing that drives me now as I write this down. When I was in pre-unit at Riara, I was waiting for my dad to come and pick me from school one day. I was at the playground and I was playing in the sands. I have built a hill sand and imagine it as a great castle. To make it look nice, I added some jacaranda flowers on it and I thought it was good. Out of nowhere some older kids come to playground and started mocking my castle. They even went ahead to kick it and step on it. I was not happy and I wanted to cry. I mentioned that my castle was very tall and they ruined. I wanted to tell on them to a teacher. However, they convinced me that it wasn't even that big and I should stop crying. They didn't want to get into trouble. During all of this, my dad had arrived and I took my bag and walked to him. I was sad. How could they do such a thing? I remember this memory to date and it saddens me.

It is connected to the time when we hiked at Mount Suswa, a long 33km hike that was gruelling. As we walked back to Suswa town, I could see some kids playing at a football pitch in the distance. They seems to be having a great time. However, just before it, I could see a sole boy in a sand pit. He was very focused on what he was doing. He had all manner of buckets and sticks. He was also having a great time. I pointed at the boy and told the person that was next to me that that guy is a future engineer. The person looks at the boy and said that he is a just a nerd. I was quiet for the rest of the walk. I thought about that statement and it rub me off the wrong way. It got me thinking about my own life and I saw myself in that kid. I empathised with him because I am him. He and I are the same person, just in different times.

Doing what I do is about being a beacon of hope to those kids in the sand. The kids with wild imaginations about distant lands and lives that they may never live. The worldly views of success do not suffice. They find solace in the world of fantasy, sci-fi and heroism. They find it inspiring to be like fictional character and barely have any comparables in real life. They are haunted by the eventuality that they may never achieve the dreams they have. They decide to live in their own minds because of the world around them is not the one they want. They think of flying cars, space travel, advanced technologies, world peace, super heroic acts and so on. These are not things that we see in our immediate daily lives. It is only when they get older that they see people doing these things, however, these opportunities to engage in are so out of touch that they lose hope and kill their dreams. They decide to get into the realistic things and live out their creativity and imagination in their own heads.

I want to show these kids that they are actually achieve these things. They have a path, or better yet, they can find one. Through innovation, technology and capitalism, they can find what they seek. It will take years. It will take hard work but it can happen. The dreams that they always had will come into fruition. All they need to do is be themselves, start now and do something that matters. They can make a difference and be different. They can win in this life and bring forth unto the world what they believe is good.