Do you (or did you, as the case may be) know that you’re a nation, a world in our world? Therefore, you have natural resources called talents within you. However, they might be hidden like crude oil under the waters of the sea in Nigeria or under the sands of the desert as we have in Arab nations.
If mankind was lazy, crude oil, gold, diamond and other resources wouldn’t have been discovered. So you’ve got to be hard-working, sensitive, witty, sagacious, patient and keen to discover your talents. Humans are walking talents! There are general talents which are peculiar to everybody and specific talents unique to individuals.
You study, watch and read about celebrities around you and the world over; yet you refuse to study, watch and read about yourself – the first and only celebrity in your world. You know more about each celebrity more than he or she knows himself or herself. How pitiful! You see thorns in your own garden, but roses in your neighbour’s. To add insult to injury, you blame God for not giving you talent. Note that talents revolve not around movies, music, comedy, sports and literature alone. In fact, one of your talents could be spotting and discovering other talents. Talents are limitless!
Everybody has a mind – from the politician in Abuja to the executive in Lagos, from the scholar in Sokoto to the tourist in Calabar. Our minds can give us health and wealth if we harness the potentials in them. Every man manufactures his mind; conversely his mind manufactures him. In other words, you are your mind and your mind is you.
Create time for meditation. Explore your life. Retrospect. Introspect. Examine your strengths, interests, hobbies and habits. Analyse your weaknesses, frailties, flaws and faults. Review your sexuality and spirituality. Think about your past achievements, study your goals, dreams, desires and passions. Appraise your past and present relationships. Note the good and the bad people say about you and work on them. Sustain the good; abstain from the bad. Improve. Expand. Enlarge. Doing all these on regular basis would make you discover yourself, your calling and know more about God, life and humanity.
There’s abundant success in the garden of diligence, so harvest! Don’t give up! Don’t shut down! Don’t cave in! Don’t peter out! If your heart could be so hard-working, what’s stopping you? God loves you so much that He made you extraordinary, and extraordinarily. He made you complete; don’t make yourself incomplete by narrow thinking and laziness. You’ve got no excuse! If people who had practically nothing could succeed and achieve and become great, then your sun hasn’t and shouldn’t turn to moon.
He’s a fair and just God! He blessed the Arabs with abundant oil, an awesome resource in the deserts which some scientists claim were once seas. Who would think that something so precious like that could be beneath the sands of the desert? Many years ago, perhaps, they had thought, “Oh, God must be unfair, how could He give us lands so bad for farming and animal rearing?”
I see crude oil under that desert in your life.
Notable, remarkable scientists, inventors and explorers discovered themselves before discovering their theories, elements … and lands. Philosophers, artists, artistes … discovered the philosophy, arts, music in them before the world discovered them – before they became famous. Albert Einstein, the genius, comes expressly to mind.
When I see a genius, I ‘see’ hard work, passion – the style in his fashion.
Catch them young. Discover the potentials of your children and ward early in life and make their passion become their profession. This way, they would be fulfilled. Oh, nothing is sweeter, better jeez, prettier!
Ask friends, colleagues, relatives … about the potentials they see in you, if you don’t know any and even if you do. They might see what you’re not seeing. Do you know that you may have talents that have not and may not be expressed in the world, unless you discover that talent, refine and stage it for the world to enjoy? It’s a fact!! You can discover a genre of music hitherto unknown. Set the pace. Blaze the trail.
God made you great, never forget that. It’s not when you become the president of a nation that you become great. In fact, you might be president or the richest in the land and not be great. But you might be relatively unknown in the city and affecting people positively in the country. Then you’ve passed the greatness test! It’s not the man in the position that matters to me, but the position in that man.
Every Tanko, Tayo and Tagbo wants to be great, but he’s not ready to pay the price. Greatness is not a measure of what you have, but who you are! Don’t ever erase or let the society erase that from your mind. Let it live in your conscious mind and it would eventually sink into your subconscious mind. Even if you are 90 and dying next week, it’s never late! You can still make positive impact in a life! Yes, never say never!!
When you affect a life, you impact a world; when you impact a world, you affect our world. You are the best ‘you’ around, the only and original ‘you’! You are a masterpiece; don’t make yourself a counterfeit. Appreciate your human and material possessions.
• Ogunojo is a public/motivational speaker and writer.
joeyem236@gmail.com