LIFE
What is your story?
Many years ago, a very good friend’s mother said to me, “You guys (your generation) are just too sensitive.” She said this as we discussed several issues, one of which was the fact that her son had turned to drugs to help him cope with her divorcing his father. Well, of course, I thought she was being just the opposite-highly insensitive, but my mom, who incidentally was born in the same year as this “Aunty”, agreed with her.
Now, twenty odd years later, I find myself listening to some people’s life story and saying to myself, “oh, just get on with your life.” Have I lived enough to know that dwelling on the negative circumstances that life sometimes dishes up will deprive us of our joys and triumphs ahead or have I simply allowed these old women to scoff out the sensitivity in me? Either way, I am at this point now.
Life doesn’t always work out the way that we plan, and I admit that some people are dealt a better hand than others, but we must make the best of the hand that we are dealt and not dwell on the “if only”, “because of”, and all those other combinations of words that preface our excuses for why we are not achieving or performing up to our potential in life. Instead, we should strive to get to a point where our lives are a testimony to what hard work and determination can achieve and the preface of our life story can be words like “in spite of”, and “that notwithstanding”.
We all start out in life with someone else holding the pen and writing our life stories, but at some point, we must mature and begin to write our stories by ourselves.
Recently, I was invited to speak with inner city youth in Ajegunle, Lagos, and a young girl asked me what to do when you have a goal but are faced with challenges along the way. Do you abandon the goal? For me, our goals are the destination, and how we achieve those goals is the journey. We may chart a course and find detours on the way; we may be driving along and our tyres hit an obstruction and can no longer roll forward, in which case the solution could be as simple as putting the gear in reverse and redirecting the wheels before moving forward again. The destination doesn’t change, only the journey and how long it takes us to get there.
When we are passionate and determined about our goals and we work hard towards those goals, and prepare ourselves to take advantage of opportunities that may come our way, the universe works with us on our journey.
I have a young lawyer friend whom I met when he was a 200 level law student at the University of Lagos. I have watched him grow and assisted him, in my little way, through every stage of his academic life thus far. Upon graduation from the Nigerian Law School, he proceeded to South Africa to pursue an LLM on scholarship. He is not from a well-off family, but he has not allowed that to diminish any of his dreams. Because I see how hard he works, how he does his part in accomplishing his goals, I am encouraged to help him every time he asks for help and I know that I am not the only one helping him. In fact, I do it with joy because although I may get less than a paragraph (or no mention at all) in this story, it is a success story.
It is your life, not your mother’s or father’s or uncle’s or sister’s, so do not let their actions take over the outcome of your story. So please, write a success story instead of a sob story.
