‘The reason for careless living is a dreamless
life’-David Oyedepo
I can recall somewhere inside my small skull about those memories back then in
school, especially when I was still growing up as a kid, when my teacher will
face the class with a long stick on her hands and inquire of the class ‘What do
you want to become when you grow up’. I can remember vividly how many of my
school friends though young will scream ‘Aunty, I…I…want to become a doctor’
others will say ‘I want to become a teacher’ and the list can go on. I must
confess that those moments are one of my delightful moments I cherish as a child. You
need to see the joy and expression on our young faces just because someday we
wished we would grow up and becomesomething we never fully fathomed.
We can even go all the way as telling our
parents about the wonderful experiences we had at school and I can still catch a
glimpse of a particular evening when my mother tapped me on my head and spoke
those wonderful words into my memory. She said ‘God will help you become
whatever you have chosen to become’ .You see my friends though we never had a fuller picture of our desires I strongly revere that well of deep desire. Though as little as we were, when it comes to dreaming, fantasing, desiring we were as powerful as anything you can describe! As I grew up, like the prolific writer Chinua Achebe wrote 'things began to fall apart';
things seemed to turn out differently. I discovered along the way that things
have really changed which forced me to writing this little article. Who has stolen our dreams? For over seven years now
I had been holding this question pent up inside my mind ‘What has happened to our
wildest dreams?’
In 2009, I graduated from the Secondary School System
and my questions increased even more. ‘What is wrong? What is going on? But
this was not the kind of people we dreamt of becoming?’ This was not the desires that fueled our passions. Many of my female
friends have been put in the family way, getting themselves into marriages they never
envisioned or planned. Many of my male friends had become Fathers overnight;
many had grown robust in size, moutchace and bush of beards had decorated their faces. And my questions increased even more. Where are
the dreams we held until we grew up? What has happened to them? And I pass these
seemingly unanswerable questions to you. I am sure you perhaps might be unable
to explain what happened along the way.
I boarded a bus one Saturday heading for a program and to my
greatest amazement, the bus conductor was once my class mate in
Secondary School. In fact we were very close and he was very kind to me back
then. I became afraid, so many thoughts surged in and out of my mind ‘Will I
end up like this’ ‘Will my parents have to suffer again after all they had
already and are still suffering to see the best I can become? Many and more
questions troubled me. But I also realized actually that not all ended up their
lives that way; the ones who did were very few.
What might have been the cause
of this roomy difference? Why have many stopped dreaming and very few still
dreaming? Why have few chosen to keep thinking and the rest have are just
somewhere stinking? Life after school has been a challenge for two many people
and for reasons best known to God. In my closet I keep asking myself what will become of these dream I have held up to myself several years ago? The funny
thing about the issue is that I am not feeling well myself. My 'dreaming' room is on the verge of shutting. The passions and aspirations are almost slipping away! But while I reconciled with the great teacher, presenting my fears and challenges, he never said anything more that to charge me 'Wake up! Time is running out break free from the fetters that have held you bound! Don't shattered that dream that I gave you in exchange of my life!. But God helped me by letting a light of understanding dispel my obliviousness. He warned me to be more careful or I lose it all.
"Dreams are like eggs
if not well protected will shatter"
The great teacher reminded me that Life is all about choices
and decisions. The choices we chose to make today will definitely affect our
results in the future. The quality of our decisions will tell us the quality of
our lives tomorrow that is why we should always make right choices and
decisions. The funny thing is this: ‘We are in control of our actions but we
are not in control of the consequences of those actions’. What actions and
decisions are we taking today to fulfill our dreams of tomorrow? Like Abraham
Lincoln allow me paraphrase his words when he said ‘All that I am, all that I hope to be I owe to my mother’. My
parents especially my mother has been a turning point in my life.
She
encourages me to keep pushing and protecting my dreams. ‘Be prayerful, work
very hard and God will see you through’ she has always said to me. At some
other time she will always speak in a calm voice ‘Be good, keep from evil, be
generous and the LORD will shower His blessings upon you all’. Back then it
never sounded as if she was actually talking to a living soul, but now I can
hear it reverberating very loud and clear where ever I go.
Throughout my life I
noticed she had always stressed on just two words ‘ Prayer and
hardwork’, sure these are the two bedrock principle upon which our dreams,
visions, goals and aspirations rests upon. Like my mother and the great teacher I will encourage you to glean from
this little wisdom if you want to protect you dreams.
Prayers will allow God and others do their part while hard work will allow you
do your part. Someone once said ‘when you do what you can, God will do what you
can’t’. Keep protecting that dream, keep praying, and keep working and one day
we shall all rejoice!
Cyprian Henry
08088733350
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