19: Eventually

When strength is applied unto any given task, success is almost assured. It is therefore very important that we know exactly what it is we hope to achieve before we begin any activity.

I have noticed the care and precision bordering on the magical that some people apply to the preparation of a one-off event say a party, convention, wedding, sports competition or anything of that mold.

They begin to gather resources together, mobilize men and women to come to their aid and apologize for past wrongs in order to make a success of this one off event. This to my mind is all well and good. My only issue is when this is done with a short term perspective.

I’m talking about preparing for an event without preparing for ‘eventually’. What is ‘eventually’? Eventually represents every thing that should follow after an event. The institutions and systems that should make the one-off event have continuous significance.
The pillars and foundations that had been sunk into the ground before the event to ensure your efforts will not have been in vain.

Whenever Nigeria has hosted a major sporting tournament, we build a new stadium or refurbish the old ones. We buy buses and other sporting equipment only to let them all rust after the tournament. The care that was taken to plan the event is not applied to preserving the investments made.

The same can be said of weddings, when people take especially great care to prepare for a wedding and do not spend as much time and attention to planning the marriage that should follow the wedding. You see a heavy budget wedding leading to a very unhappy marriage. Sad don’t you think?

How about the last primaries of the political parties? We saw heavy expenditure applied to producing ‘candidates’ for different positions. In the process of picking them, many members have become aggrieved and are already plotting the destabilization of the campaigns of the ‘victors’.

My concern is that in all the things we do going forward; we should give a thought to how our efforts will be sustained. The last thing I want for myself or for anyone I know is to be a ‘has been’, a flash in the pan or a one night wonder.

That your every effort may be sustained and yield success for you and countless generations is my sincere prayer. May your every effort yield fruit that will last, God bless and have a great year ahead.

18: Let Speedy Racer Be

One of my earliest thoughts of childhood was a day I returned from school and made a straight beeline for the TV. My mother quickly derailed that journey and herded me to the room to change and do my homework.

The assignment was of all things, Mathematics! I was more than annoyed. I felt like a huge lion that was trapped in a small cage, pacing the cage…constantly looking for some weak part of it that I could tear through to freedom. I wanted to attend to more important matters of life like the ‘Speedy Racer’ cartoon that I knew would be showing at that time. In my small head I was pissed off that Nnamdi, my best friend at the time would have to tell me again what happened tomorrow.

My mom did all she could to get my mind to focus on the homework but I was just coasting, waiting for her to get fed up and let me be. She soon got fed up as always but then said a few words she had never said before. Those words have become a template for me in making choices about my life ever since.

She looked at me with weary eyes and asked “if you don’t learn this mathematics how do you want to count all your millions when you grow up? Do you want people to cheat you because they know maths and you don’t?” it was one of those defining moments in a young idiots life that cartoons dramatize with a light bulb lighting up beside the cartoon characters head.

I saw into the future with as much clarity as was possible for a 6/7 year old. Watching ‘Speedy racer’ didn’t seem so much of a wise decision anymore. My desire to watch it seemed to melt like ice. I was prepared to learn this horrible mathematics if it would ensure I wasn’t cheated of my very prosperous future as painted by mother. She didn’t speculate about ‘if’ I would have millions, she only expressed worries about my being cheated!

There are several life lessons I have taken away from this encounter which it pleased God to leave as a vivid memory of childhood (I really don’t have a very strong memory). At this time I would just like to zero in on two of them.

Firstly, that encounter forever etched in my subconscious the need to evaluate every decision based on its implications on where I wanted to go and the person I wanted to become. I could never afford to be so unserious that I left the things that would ensure my future success in jeopardy and pay attention to less important things.

Setting priorities has thus become the broken record I sing to everyone who asks for my help in navigating through life and overcoming failure. I have noticed how people say they want to do X or achieve Y or become a Z kind of person yet the way they spend their time and resources does not give priority to that desire. When I speak to a student who is not doing as well in school as he/she wants, I do a serious life audit of how they spend their time and ask them to rank what they say is important to them and how they actually spend their time and resources. For those who quickly ‘get it’, they see that how they live will never get them to where they say they want to be.

This principle cannot be broken. You cannot say that your spouse is more important to you than your friends yet you spend more of your time and resources on your friends than on your spouse. That is a recipe for failure. It’s a principle that runs through every endeavor. I have seen people achieve incredible success in their academics after I shared this story and worked through its application with them.

If I claim to have always used this principle I would be a major liar. I have floundered here and there but I always return to it when I miss my way.

Secondly, I learnt that one must stay true to him or herself. I wanted to watch Speedy Racer not only for its entertainment value but also to be able to discuss weighty cartoon matters with my friends in school. This in and of itself is not a bad thing; we are made for interaction and relationship. However I see that sometimes our need to ‘fit in’ can make us take wrong turns and major on minors, not staying true to who we are and what we can do. My best friend Nnamdi was a natural with maths, I on the other hand have had a running battle with maths. If I built my study model around him I would have failed permanently.

This principle came to my rescue in secondary school as well. When in SS1 all my friends were choosing to become science students I was sorely tempted to follow them. But then I searched deep within and found that my strengths were not in any of those areas. It was almost blasphemous then for people perceived to be brilliant to do Arts subjects but I carried my cross firmly and without shame. Many of my friends ended up failing their science courses consistently but I had a smooth sail in my area of competence.

You may seem stupid or headstrong when you follow this principle properly. This is because it goes against the general human instinct to go with the crowd. He that has not learnt how to be totally alone is not yet ready to enjoy success. Sometimes you must place your bets on a ‘dark horse’ that everyone is avoiding to make impact.

This doesn’t mean life must be joyless and watching cartoons is bad, it just says that we must place the horse before the cart and not the other way around. Staying true is all that’s left when we set the proper priorities.

Both of these principles I learnt from my mother. She never knew the impact of that encounter would have but heaven only knows its impact on my life and on those I have shared them with it. This is a birthday tribute to her. Today is her day...