MOTIVATORS INTERNATIONAL

MOTIVATORS INTERNATIONAL
THE ROUNDTABLE

Tuesday 2 February 2016

WHEN WE WERE CHILDREN




When we were children, daddy always bought newspapers. Like many children look forward to Suya and Ice cream, newspapers were an incredible delight. We devoured the content of each day with childish innocence and we would struggle for the fleshy pages, to be the first person to lay hold on this 'encyclopedia everdaynica' that was Daddy's everyday gift.

As a child, I wanted much more. So I began to dream big! Why read a single paper a day when I could own the whole newspapers and then read as much as I wanted. Ladies and gentlemen, this was how I began dreaming of becoming a newspaper vendor. I loved them, with treasures piled up on the head or somewhere around them, they were my momentary heroes. I would look at them with immense love and reverence and fantasize about owning the whole papers and then reading everything from headlines to cartoons to interviews to love stories.

But growing up has changed the colours of the rainbow in my eyes. I have been fed with something stronger than milk. Now, what used to be an incredible delight has gone through an unbelievable demise because I've learnt that ownership is not the same as possession. You can own a phone but not know what to do with it, you can own a laptop and not know what to do with it. You can even have access to the internet and know only of Naijabet. So my drive to become a newspaper vendor waned when I found out that it's not everyone that owns a book that actually knows what's in them.

There were many other things we wanted to be while growing up. One of my friends said he wanted to be an Ice Cream seller, so he can devour as much Ice cream as he wanted because his mum thought Ice cream was a luxury. I don't know what has happened to his passion. How endless imagination and sometimes, ignorance, can circle around the world in in the corners of our teething minds.

But you see, life happens to all of us. Priority changes with time. I remember many many years ago, the day I chyked a girl for the first time, how the world suddenly turned soft and shaky when my proposal was turned down with a staccato of confusing grammar. Certainly a bad day for democracy.

For me as it is for many people, life is stepping on a fast lane. Yet, it is important never to lose the potency of childhood brilliance. How everything was possible, how you could catch a Lion with one hand, how you could snatch a star from the sky, how you could slap a monkey and send it on an errand and it will come jumping back to you with results. Incredible, endless possibilities. Childhood.

Well, even though I did not get to become a newspaper vendor, the NGO I run publishes a magazine, Motivators International Magazine. Dreams can actually come true in bigger dimensions.

So never stop believing in yourself and in the fact that you were born to be amazing, to glow, to make a difference. Never cower because you're old or because you think time is no longer on your side. Childishness may be naivety but it carries with it a catalyst that stirs endless possibilities.

While you think you have no money, some broke ass nigga is winning the war against poverty. While you think you're too old, some older person just started a new business.

Till today, the world is still fresh for the people who will see through the glittering onyx of their minds, that impossible is nothing.

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