Downcast black man

Sometime ago something happened that got me thinking for days. I have a friend that graduated from university the same year.  We lived in the same city. It was about four we left school he came to me. He had called me requesting that we see. So eventually we met and discussed. He told me that he needed a loan and I asked him how much, he told me. He wanted me to use my contact and make things easier for him. I obliged but when I asked what he needed the money for, he gave me an answer that got me thinking. The money was for business quite alright. He had no job yet, that was why the bank did not want to give him a loan quickly, besides, it was January. But he said ‘Marvin(For he calls me by that name), let me tell you something, I was unable to meet my personal target for last year and this year I’ll need capital in order to start early’ My spirit stirred in me unto reality. Here is a young man who owns properties in Abuja and Lagos valued at hundreds of millions of Naira, collecting millions of Naira in rent and he still has targets that he would struggle and abandon comfort to achieve. Here was I, I had secured a job in which I worked as a customer service professional in one of the major telecom firms. The previous year, I had had dreams, I HAD TARGETS but almost did not meet any one. I was supposed to start my consulting firm but I didn’t. I was supposed to have finished and published a book I started writing a year earlier but I didn’t. I didn’t register my consulting firm not because I didn’t have money but because somehow I had become carried away by this job that I have so much so that I somehow had lost touch with focus. My father had not left me any property to inherit but I lived just for the moment.

So are the lives of a million and one people out there. They are on auto mode. They take life as it comes forgetting that there will be a tomorrow. It is so very easy to go with the flow of comfort and be easily carried away by its luxury only to wake up to the painful sting of reality, should the supply be cut off.

I want to ask you what your dreams are. When was the last time you did something about them? Of the goals you set in the previous year, how many did of them did you achieve? Time is stealing February away from us, have you sat down for minute to examine how you spent January? What has happened to your goals of 2013?

I met a man recently who by my estimate is in his sixties. He had dreams just like every other young person and had his fair share of comfort and luxury. He said something I would never forget in a hurry. Some things haunted him. It was his regret. He had gone to school in the UK and had always wanted to start a business but even in his sixties, his dreams were still as far as the skies. A thousand yesterdays were his opportunity to become the man of his dreams. I wondered how he would feel each time the small voice of his conscience begins to tell him, ‘You should have done something when you were young. You had all the opportunity. Now you are old and poor while others are old, rich and confortable and you are still working so hard to manage to make ends meet’ I tried to imagine how he would feel when he comes across his mates, who were in the same circumstances with him but made the best out of it. Will he be able to show his kids people who he grew up together with, who managed their time well and be proud of himself?

Success has a twin-brother called comfort. Have you ever paused to ask yourself why pensioners are so miserable? Could it be that they were so drenched in the rain of comfort that they forgot that a day will come when they will not receive salary anymore? Could it be that the mind is easily carried away by luxury far away from focus?

Why is that about seventy percent of American retirees commit suicide? Why do they have a remarkably high rate of heart and blood pressure related diseases?

Have you wondered if you will survive if you lost your present job? Have you ever paused for a second to wonder how your life, your kids’ lives will be in six months’ time had you lost your job? I know what just crossed your mind: God forbid, I will not lose my job. Some people have been motivated over and over again until motivation doesn’t move them no more, but the only thing they have successfully done is nothing. I know of a bank manager who’s live nosedived to near street life after losing his very high-paid job.

So once again I ask you: What is your goal? What have you done this far to achieve it? Have you been altogether sidetracked? What is it that’s stopping you? Let me end with this story.

Cobbett was one man whose obstacle to success was almost existence itself. He was a complete illiterate private soldier who had not table to read with, not even a seat to study in. So poor was this soldier whose pay was six pence a day that he could not afford to buy a pen except he would have to do without some part of his meal, or even afford candle with which to study and so had to resort to the red glow of the fire for light when by any chance he is free. Cobbett eventually learnt to read among his fellow solders while laughing and talking.

But Cobbett successfully transformed his poverty and difficulties into an all-absorbing desire for knowledge and success. After an enduring long period of time, Cobbett educated himself and eventually worked hard till he became rich and successful. During an interview he asked a very troubling question: “If I under such circumstances could encounter and overcome this task, is there, can there be in the whole world, a youth to find any excuse for its non-performance?’

Do you still think that what is stopping you from presently achieving your goal would hold sway when placed side by side with the stories of people like Cobbett?

Once again, what is stopping you? At what point did you lose you dream?

Tweet Share