Un-Desiring The Desirables

During an interaction with a pretty young lady, she intimated that it was her dream to become a journalist. She spoke so passionately about her dream and desire that I got sold. The motivational genius in me got kindled and what happened in the subsequent minutes could best be described as an amazing inspirational moment on how to be a journalist of global repute by pushing hard the wheels of destiny, making integrity one’s best friend and having the collective good of society at heart.

But then, there seem to be a valley in this young lady’s life that must be conquered – her results from the West African Senior Secondary School Exams (WASSSCE) were bad and needed to be worked on. This appears to be the immediate barrier to her enrolment in a journalism course to sow the seeds of a burgeoning career. It was John Borroughs who said that “a man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else”. I sounded this timeless yet timely counsel from Borroughs into the ears of this fine lady to inspire her to pick herself up, dust herself off and begin with a new sense of purpose, determination and tenacity to rewrite and pass her exams.

Her face lit up with hope and joy about the possibilities that lie ahead. Within me, I was happy to have fulfilled my calling as an inspirational speaker. To test my hypothesis of successfully inspiring this lady, I proceeded to set some questions in Math for her to solve. She was to solve the questions and send her answers to me via whatsapp. She nodded in the affirmative. Happiness really engulfed me that fine afternoon.

The next day came and I got no messages from her. To bring an end to this story, I can confidently say that as at the time of writing this article, I have not yet received the solutions to the questions; in fact, she hasn’t even attempted them and it’s been a little over two weeks. I then received a confirmation of one of my long-held views that, people desire good and nice things in life, but they don’t really want it bad enough to labour for them. This is the bane of our progress and development as individuals. Hmmm, empty desires with no planned action for achievement.

The case of this young lady unfortunately is the case of most people in the world today. We dream, have visions, generate great and lofty ideas capable of engineering remarkable progress in the world, but don’t summon the energy to start out or sow the seeds that ensure the realization of our desires or visions. In effect, we un-desire our desires!

Success doesn’t occur by happenstance – it takes conscious, deliberate determined efforts. One thing I can assure you of, is that, unless this lady in question decides to kick her indolence away and summon disciplined action of working actively towards rewriting her papers, she would be marking time in that position for a long time. Then unfortunately, frustration might creep in, and who knows what the resultant or end effect will be?

In life, it is garbage in, garbage out. There must be an input before an expected output. If you input zero, you are sure to receive an output of zero. Even the holy Book, the Bible says in James 2:17 that faith, if not accompanied by action, is dead. This is a time for all of us who are sleeping to wake up from our slumber and pursue our dreams with dogged determination and stubborn perseverance.

Residing in you is an inexhaustible well of greatness. God has endowed you with great abilities, talents and gifts that need to be manifested to the world to see, to the glory of God. You cannot afford to fail your generation and future ones. Instead, people should be able to say of you, that, even in the face of stupendous odds, trials, tribulations, difficulties and challenges, you exerted your energy on life; deciding never to give up and that you summoned your inner drive and strength to achieve something worthwhile for yourself, family, community and world at large.

However, this won’t happen with your lethargic approach to life. Wake up and start running!

Paul Edem Kuenyefu is an itinerant international inspirational speaker and writer. An avid follower of climate change, he desires to see this negative occurrence rolled back. Edem is a development enthusiast and the author of two books, TO THE ZENITH and CRITICAL LENSES.