Stay hungry, stay foolish

Most times, when seeking inspiration for what to write, I reflect on conversations with people, or on past events. I also surf on the Internet to find out what is generally going on in the world. One of these food-for-thought platforms is the TEDTalks website, with many inspiring articles.I was trawling through the Web once more, and came across a favourite old video. It was a commencement speech at Stanford University given by Steve Jobs. Quoting a particular catalogue, he advised the 2005 graduating class to “stay hungry, and stay foolish.” There have been quite a number of interpretations of this by many, but a common understanding of the late Jobs’ words are that staying hungry meant constantly being curious to learn and achieve more – to not be easily satisfied and always pursue bigger and better.Staying foolish pushed forward the idea of challenging basic assumptions, even when others may consider one’s goals impossible and downright silly. Because at the end of the day, it is the people who stay foolish, who do not assume that they know all – that propel novel concepts and change things for the better.This phrase, incorporated by Jobs in his daily life, saw the emergence of the slim, nanotechnology-based iPod. The story goes that Apple team presented him with the first prototype of the iPod. He looked at it for a while, turned it over and over, weighed it in his hand and then said, “It’s too big.” His team incredulously protested that it was a vision of the future – 1,000 songs packed into such a minute space.Jobs walked over to a small fish aquarium in his office and dropped the prototype into the water. Pointing to the bubbles that floated from it to the surface and said, “That means there’s still some space in it. It’s too big.” It might have been foolish at the time, but his constant need for something better led to what currently constitutes some of the world’s most sought after telecom products.If one were to apply this same phrase to Rwanda, the approach of “staying hungry and foolish” led to a couple of things, such as the policy document Vision 2020, previously termed by some as being overly ambitious and unrealistic.Almost foolish. It also led to the idea that a small, donor-dependent nation could ensure health coverage of over 90 per cent of its population. Perhaps even more telling an illustration of this phrase is the unwillingness of a country to be defined by others. Challenging basic assumptions, this is a country that is changing, influencing and improving its identity.On an individual level, perhaps to stay hungry and to stay foolish is to think differently and embrace the idea that life is there to be molded, made better and have one’s mark made upon it.