It’s about 3.50 am as I leave my bed and sit here at my desk, before my laptop computer and begin to write this piece of blog-post. Why was it important to mention the time and the situation during the initiation of my creativity and the start of this piece of writing? Well, frankly speaking, this might be just as important as how ‘great ideas’ and ‘events’ that changed the world as we see it today once initiated.

Napoleon Bonaparte, the great historical French ruler once said –

“Men of genius are meteors intended to burn to light their century.”

And while today we see men ‘and’ women of genius as meteors that light our century, every prominent human being, from history to the present such as leaders, artists, rockstars, inventors, great minds, entrepreneurs, sport stars, celebrities, writers, film-makers or any such influential role models are in a way shaping the current generation. This although timidly visible now, the future generations will talk of them as to how we today talk of Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Charles Dickens, Nelson Mandela, Bob Marley or any such historical personality who changed the world for us today to admire.

But the tricky part is, these prominent people fall into a category of just 10% of our total population of seven billion on Earth. These ‘10stars’ as I would like to call them, are the people who in all their glory look and appear a lot like the remaining 90%, yet right from their birth to the day they leave this world, they keep sending pulsating signs of being a ‘10stars.’ These people are often loathed and hated by other people and are often the ones who dare to question authority. These ‘10stars’ are usually rebel characters and do not comply and fit into the remaining 90%, who on the other hand call themselves as ‘normal’ and see no complexity following the rules made by society, honor authority or simply be satisfied with the life they are given.

                                         

One of the most important traits of the ‘10stars’ is that these people never feel successful. Although the world sees and admires their accomplishments, to themselves, they often seem as if they have not yet delivered their 100%. They are never fully satisfied. They always strive to be better today than what they were yesterday; to be better tomorrow than what they are today. This is exactly what keeps them going on and on and achieve more and more. Sometimes, these ‘10stars’ feel that their one lifetime is simply not enough for all the talent that they have been gifted to be explored. While it’s easy to mistake them to be selfish and self-absorbed, in reality, all they are doing is following the ‘voice’ in their head which many commonly describe as ‘passion.’ Some also attribute that ‘voice’ in relevance to religion as ‘God’s voice’ intending to do ‘God’s work.’

On his deathbed, Leonardo da Vinci had regretted that his life was wasted as he had left so many unfinished works, which otherwise he felt could have mastered. But truthfully, this is more or less how these genius minds are designed to work. These ‘10stars’ fit into a category where they share similar genes. Their brains are often overflowing an ocean of ideas and creativity, which their lifetime is simply an inadequate bucket that fails to hold the overflow.

But how do these people get the ideas? When Albert Einstein theorized hundred years ago that space-time bends, people literally laughed and thought that he is simply using too much imagination. And now to paraphrase Einstein’s quote – “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” I wonder if his brain had not dared to imagine such outlandish thoughts, had we got the ‘theory of relativity,’ which today any physicist know is one of the pillars that support our understanding of space and the universe.

Imagination, creativity, knowledge, wit, brilliance, wisdom or in simple what some would describe as ‘craziness.’ Most of these ideas come to these ‘10stars’ as visions, which make them proud visionaries.

Visions here I am not referring to the kind of visions the character Gowtham experiences in my book ‘2012 is light years away.’ Any reader would understand that this completely coincides with the story-plot and the theme of the book. But in reality, visions do come to great-minded humans, who simply can visualize and predict the future.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

With an estimated IQ of 220, Da Vinci is often known to be the highest IQ achieved adult in history; Albert Einstein had an IQ of 160 and Galileo Galilei of about 185. Today few know that with Da Vinci leaving most of his works unpublished and with many of his notes being scattered and lost, humanity and science have actually been slapped with hundreds of years of setback. With his notes and inventions contributing various fields, it could have simply shaped the world much faster if at all it was published and accepted. Did you know he was the first person to study and draw the anatomy; the full skeleton of the human? Some of his predictions and visions about the future world like the hypothesis of plate tectonics, the law of the flow of currents, evolution, astronomy, machine inventions, telescope, the idea of camera, aerodynamics, hydraulics, tribology, gear mechanics for automobile, the idea of helicopter, the parachute, solar power technology, scuba gears, military engineering and many others which compel one to wonder if there was any field at all that he was not a master of? He was also the man who said – “For every action, there is an opposite but equal reaction.” He quoted Newton’s third law 150 years before Newton was even born. These inventions were mostly in a way ‘reinvented’ in the 20th century by other inventors. This was delayed by so many centuries simply because his works remained unpublished. Some believe that if his works were published and implemented, our present world would have been as advanced as what we will be in the year 2273.

People even today misunderstand him as an artistic painter who devoted his life to masterpieces such as the ‘Mona Lisa.’ But the truth is; painting was just a fraction of his life’s works. Without visionaries like him and others in the past, our present world would have lacked inspiration or brainwave which more or less made it possible to invent those revolutionary things like this computer, on which I am typing this post right now.

But with that clearly understood, one must now also understand the magnitude and importance of the visionaries of the ‘present’ who can change the upcoming and the far future.

Did you ever wonder the puzzling, but also customary fact that CEOs and higher management people in companies/organizations are paid a huge ransom as their salary package, for what it appears to just sit in a comfortable office space, staring at their computer screen all day long? Some also claim that the workers who sweat and work all day with very little breaks deserve the big-bucks since they are the ones who appear to be ‘hard-working.’ But the truth is, these higher management people do the kind of work most of the working-class people can not even think of. And I mean it quite literally; because ‘thinking’ is probably the only work sometimes these CEOs and MDs have to do. The leaders of some of the major brands and corporations of the world are those visionaries who just sit and think, think and only think of ‘What it is?’ ‘What it will be?’ and ‘What it can be?’

Without these minds and their planning of how and where their companies stand and will be standing in the future, most of the organizations would not even survive; which in turn would fail to keep your jobs active and salary flowing. Without visionaries like ‘Steve Jobs’, most of you wouldn’t even be holding those iPhones, which is probably facilitating you at the moment to read my blog. Visionaries are important and even more important is recognizing and accepting them as visionaries.

Like the saying goes – “Recognizing someone’s talent itself is a talent.”

When a rockstar or a celebrity singer writes a song, he is visioning things that his brain generates and holds the potential to change the thoughts of his fans. When a writer writes a book, he is visioning elements and story that which holds the potential to change the world. When a physicist or a scientist plans a mission to Mars, he is visioning the potential future of what if humans can inhabit life and live on Mars. Even when a fashion-forecaster or ‘trendsetter’ predict the fashion and the colour-palette for the upcoming season, he/she is potentially visioning the future trend and therefore initiating an explosion of various fashion statements, which would rule the world. Everything you ever see a particular celebrity has every accomplished in his/her life is the fair result of what he or she had once thought of. They visualized things that many dare not to think.

NASA artistic depiction of the proposed manned mission to Mars. 
A few decades ago, this might have looked like a science-fiction comic strip.

Seven years ago, I remember making a small (or maybe big) revolutionary remark to my friends of how I thought a social-networking site called ‘Orkut’ was really gimpy and outdated and people needed to explore a rising cynosure called as ‘Facebook.’ Which I then thought was the future. This was the time when Facebook had just evolved from its old name ‘Thefacebook’ and very few were even aware of this giant which would soon conquer the world. Like most visionary predictions, some of my friends laughed and taunted me for making such remarks and told me how naïve I was. But today, I see the same people literally living in facebook, posting links and shares at the speed of ‘one post per second,’ as if their lives were meaningless without that social network site. I wonder if they even realize that in a way they are living a future, which I had then envisaged.

I now comprehend that although small; I had then made a visionary prediction, which came true.

Even in my book ‘2012 is light years away,’ I had written about a visionary prediction about the future world and the technology of ‘suspended-animation.’ I recently came across a scientific study of ‘Cryonics’ which is already experimenting on the initial phase of this very technology. I myself, while along exercising my creativity, working on my books, would visualize things that I strongly feel could potentially change the future of the world. Scientists have recently predicted that with the way technology is booming, within a few more decades humans may attain immortality with the help of technology, which could wipe out any disease from the human body.

Writing books according to me is one the best ways to put down your visionary predictions for the future world to contemplate. With many visions, I store in my mind, and while I understand how hopefully the world needs the visionaries to put their ideas forward, I have recently decided to convey my thoughts in any accommodating way, which I think could be applied. And here, right now, as I write this blog-post, I would want to unveil one of the many of my own visionary predictions about the future, which I have in recent years felt strongly about.

With the technology boom bursting everywhere and with the unknown secrets of the universe being discovered day by day, there is one vision that keeps circling my mind every time I think of what the future world would be like. While a few decades ago humans visualized the future world of today as a place filled with flying cars and conveyors, we now know that the current world we are living is not so far-fetched. Although this doesn’t mean the predictions were false. In fact, the present world has evolved much more than flying cars and conveyors in some fields, while maintaining the traditional means in some. It’s like a car brand releasing a flashy yellow, sporty-looking model of the car, which although might draw the attention of a few young drivers, might miss on many other potential buyers. This might be the same reason why we don’t have flying cars or conveyors yet because some people would still prefer a classic BMW to drive to their office, and then take the stairs instead of the elevator to keep them fit. The visionary predictions should be made keeping all the factors and different mindsets in limelight. So here it goes –

"In maybe fifty to hundred years from now, humans will have the choice to live the life they want. More precisely, humans will be able to live between a choice of two lives, or even more. This might sound weird and science-fictional, but in the future, I have thoughts and visions of humans living a real-life and virtual life. Although movies like ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Inception’ have brilliantly portrayed similar concepts, in reality, it would be much more elementary and acceptable. Remember the flashy yellow car concept I mentioned? Humans, with the help of service providers, will have the choice to choose how many of the days they would want to spend in the real-life and virtual life, out of the 365 days a year. What someone can not be in the real world, he/she may simply pay and request the service provider to craft a world where he/she can be. A person may be a simple gardener in real life, but he may also be the ruler of the world in virtual life. People may even be having the choice to choose if they want to marry their partners in real life or virtual life. They may even have two jobs or careers where in a week of seven days, one would work three days in the real-life and three days in the virtual life, earning both the real money and the virtual money, which can be spent in the relevant worlds. A handicapped or a crippled human could also opt for a virtual life, where he/she could potentially become a medal-winning athlete. This whole method of choosing to live the life one would wish could eventually increase the overall happiness and prosperity of future humans, who are sure to suffer from the financial crisis and other worldly debacles that might possibly haunt them. People fully knowing that they are living a virtual life would still crave it, because the ‘feel-good’ factor would become a priority against reality. But of course with such opportunities come such crimes, where the government then will have to establish new laws that would fit into this kind of lifestyle. The laws might include regulations like what one should and should not do when in a virtual life; how many limited days or hours one could be granted to spend in the virtual life, and also the need for customs clearance and special passports required before entering the virtual world."

Sounds outlandish, but has the highest possibility of becoming a reality with the way people are accepting internet and virtual life at the present. But this might also mean that some people may still prefer to live a simple life in the real world the good old fashioned way. And our generation may be old by then, might demur about how we didn’t have all the opportunity of choosing between real and virtual lives, and boast about how we all thrived on making our one real-life a success. – Girish Rathna

P.S. With my motto for the year 2012 – ‘I can, I will,’ and my motto for the year 2013 – ‘Everything or nothing.’ I must tell it worked great wonders. Also, 2013 had indeed proved to be a great year for me. Now, a few days away from the dawn of another new year, my motto for the year 2014 would be – ‘Rebuild, recover and relive.’

Wishing everyone everywhere in the world, moon, mars, space, cosmos and any possible place in the whole universe a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Have a good one! :)