A letter to leaders of tomorrow at August meeting season two
By Elliot Ugochukwu-Uko
Dear young person,
The world is your stage and your tomorrow looks pretty. You will surely make it in life, because you are beautifully and wonderfully made. Your future is very bright, though there will be many surmountable challenges.
You will need guidance and tutelage. Seek for worthy mentors and you’ll grow aright and develop your talents.
Some of your great abilities, talents, aptitudes and potentials could be hidden from you right now.
Audacity is important, for no venture, no success. Success is for the bold and the daring.
You’ll make friends and admirers, you’ll also make detractors and enemies.
You need courage, faith in God and confidence to discover your gifts and to plunge in.
You must seek knowledge, acquire skills and expertise to maneuver the complicated journey called life.
Knowledge of God and a genuine relationship with Him, is key.
Humility to learn, dedication to studies, reverence towards all humans, old and young, male and female and respect for other people’s feelings, matter a great deal.
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Public service without expecting reward and placing common good above personal agrandisement and love for equity and justice, remain the master key that opens the door to success and greatness.
Cheating, exploiting and ruthlessly using others, hurt others and hurt you in the end. Taking on huge tasks is commendable, but you must carefully weigh the realities and the challenges.
Education is key, formal and informal. Sincerity of purpose in all you do, cannot be over emphasised. Knowledge, wisdom and understanding, come from two important sources: studying the word of God and reading everything you can lay your hands on. Making out time to read every day, is the top secret.
Read, study and learn.
Your generation is more dynamic than ours. Hi-tech, especially social media has changed the world so much that you must endeavour to keep up with the latest trending technologies.
Patiently listening to others remains a huge source of not only real, positive and usable information, but also helps greatly in carrying others along.
You must remain humble, tolerant and forgiving, no matter what. Adopt these formula and master it, it helps a great deal.
Hard work brings success and success invariably opens the door to envy and temptation to become haughty. Know for a surety that everyone is susceptible and vulnerable to unconsciously falling for the great sin called pride and arrogance.
Be on guard. It is better to look stupid than to look down on others. Never mock anyone, nobody knows tomorrow.
Your country needs your talent and knowledge to rebuild and to grow. Your continent needs you to free her from neo-colonialism and imperialism. Make yourself available. Humanity needs you to help guide others, make yourself available as well.
Because ignorance reigns in the world, you must endure provocations and embarrassment from others.
Respect other people’s faith. Respect other people’s culture and sensibilities. Everyone will not like you. Get used to that.
Trust only tried and tested “friends”.
Anybody can let you down. Anybody can turn against you.
People fight to advance and protect their interests. People can go to frightening lengths to hurt you when they give themselves a reason to do so.
You can offend without knowing, so be careful who you roll with.
Remember the poor always.
Learn to manage promotion, success, fame and new-found wealth through the instruments of humility, tolerance, endurance and forgiveness.
Accept being misunderstood. Everybody is misunderstood. Don’t struggle to explain yourself, there’s no need for that, as there’s really no guarantee they’ll want to understand you, especially when emotions such as envy, jealousy and hate blind them.
Nobody can satisfy the world and no-one is loved by all. Stay on your lane. Trust and depend on God, instead of man. Man will let you down.
And now, don’t worry about those who make themselves adversaries. All the great men you read about, had enemies.
History did not record their haters.
Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, George Washington, William Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Mozart etc, had neighbours, kinsmen, classmates and even family members who hated, despised, resented and back-bit them viciously during their time here. History did not remember their enemies.
Everyone will not love you. Your life will offend some people. They will malign, subvert, undermine, blackmail, sabotage and even attack you, it’s the way of the world. Don’t despair, take it all in your strides rather.
Listen, it’s not true that God is powerless, weak and unhelpful. The opposite is the truth. It isn’t true that some people are more powerful than God, that God must obtain their permission before he hears, helps or blesses you.
It’s not true that some people have the final say about your future, life, and destiny, while God helplessly watches these “great” men who ultimately decides your fate.
It’s not true that someone else will ultimately decide what you become, regardless of God’s interest, plans and purpose for your life.
Be patient, life is turn by turn. Patience is a great virtue.
No man, no matter how influential and powerful, can overrule or cancel God’s grace and purpose over your life.
Respect all men and women, but worship and fear God. Trust also in Him.
Don’t waste your time with people who play God. There are so many of them around. They desire to replace God in your life. They may terrorise and afflict you for a season.
They may take you to the mountain top, show you the glory of the kingdoms of the earth and promise to hand them over to you, if only you’ll bow down and worship them. Respond the same way your Lord and Master responded to their “god”, over two thousand years ago. Tell them that God alone deserves to be worshipped.
They’ll attempt to manipulate you during your vulnerable moment in order to initiate you along the wrong route. Stand strong in the knowledge of God. And the Lord will see you through.
Trials and temptations do not last.
Troubles will come, attacks will come, challenges will seem to overwhelm you.
All those will pass too.
Trust in God always, and remember, no condition is permanent. God will never fail you.
You will be remembered by what you have done with your life.
It is well with you.
Wishing you a great and very successful future.
Cheers.
Evangelist Elliot Ugochukwu-Uko, is the Founder: Igbo Youth Movement (IYM), Secretary: Eastern Consultative Assembly (ECA), Deputy Secretary: Igbo Leaders of Thought (ILT)