MIRAGE

Was it love?
No, it was all a mirage
My feelings speedily washed away
Like vehicles in an entourage
My eyes cried not
Because all along we knew
That our love, misconstrued
An infatuation so crude
Was built on the decency of merciful lies.
We were just too perfect
In our eyes we perceived light
In our flaws we took delight
The late night hugs, the morning kisses,
All gone, now at a loss
To this I was unaccustomed
A situation so unreal.
Reminiscing now, sad
Pen in hand
I accept the blessed relief
That comes with the absence of deceit
I miss though, the mental violation
When at the sight of you
My heart skips a beat.

Sent in by Alle Odhiameh Ayodele

OPPORTUNITIES

I hope it’s not too late to wish you a Happy New Year! Well January felt like a year on its own, just ask salary earners. So Happy New Year! I know people have resolutions or big plans for the New Year. So what are your plans? What steps are you taking to actualize those plans? How feasible are your plans? These are questions you might have asked yourself by now. If you have; good! If you have the answers; better! And if you haven’t; well you can start.

Today i want to talk about something we all want, something we all hope for, and something I think we all need to get by. You must have heard people say “opportunity comes once in a lifetime, if you don't take it now you might never get another one.” IT’S A LIE! There are opportunities around us every day they just come disguised and then we miss them because we can't see what they really are. Sometimes they come disguised as hard work, a punishment, something boring or things beneath you or sometimes as things that interest you or even your hobbies.

But they are always there, every new day you wake up, every breath you take, there are countless opportunities around you YES! Even in Nigeria. It’s left for you to see what's around you as an opportunity and make the best of it. So opportunities will not always come smiling at you like a pretty girl and say Hi! I’m opportunity. Grab me! -Okay girls don’t really do that but you get the picture- An opportunity will not always present itself to you; you have to be able to see the opportunity around you and grab it.

There is a popular saying that while you are complaining about the traffic jam the guy selling gala and lacasera sees an opportunity to make money. We've even heard rumours in Lagos that some of these guys supposedly dig portholes on the road so cars can slow down or cause traffic around them. It's a rumour o! Don't quote me. Now I'm not saying you should do something illegal to create opportunities. But all I'm saying is just because everybody complains about it or they don't see the opportunity in it doesn't mean the opportunity is not there. It’s left for you to see the opportunities in the everyday situation around you and take advantage.

Still on the gala case for example, do you think gala will sell that much if it was just sold in shops rather than in traffic? No! And now we have at least four other types of sausage roll trying to compete with gala. They are obviously making money. There was actually a time they don’t sell gala in traffic. Someone saw the opportunity and now the rest is history.

At about 13 years old Bill Gates' school had a machine you could call a computer and he took a special interest in programming. In fact he spent most of his time on the system that he got excused from maths class. He wrote his first computer program on this system, a tic-tac-toe game. He wasn't the only kid in the school or the only one that had access to the machine but he had a special interest and he saw something other kids didn’t see. Simply put he was fascinated by the machine. He saw an opportunity and he grabbed it.

There is this story about how Bill Gates and 3 other friends were banned from a ‘computer center’ for the summer because they exploited bugs in the operating system to get free computer time. -Trust me I can relate, I went to a café with my friend and the attendant didn't even allow us enter because my friend once hacked their timer- After their ban, Gates and his friends came back to offer their services by helping the center find bugs in their software in exchange for computer time and Gates spent his time studying source codes for various programs. Trust me this guy is smart and he didn't magically become a billionaire. He had it coming. He knew how to take his opportunities. Today you know who Mr. Bill Gates is but he was not born a billionaire.

So start doing something, dream big; its allowed and recognize the opportunities around you. Until next time I leave you with the words of Henry Miller “The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”

DARE TO DREAM

Sometime in the 1920s, David Sarnoff presented a proposal to his company in a lengthy memo driving for investment in radio. His superiors ignored him and their reply was “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” Now that is the big question, who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular? The answer is everybody would, because a message sent to nobody in particular is a message for everybody. That question is the reason radio and television has a huge commercial value today. But David’s superiors didn’t know that and David never gave up on his dream even if it looked impossible back then. Today he is known as being instrumental to the development of radio and television broadcasting.

So Dare to Dream, set your goals no matter how high it seems and always keep your eyes on the goal because when you take your eyes off the goal those scary things you see are called obstacles. Some voices can tell you your dreams are too big, those voices may be friends, family, colleagues at work or even within you, but there is no such thing as a dream 'too big'. It’s a dream and the bigger it is the better it gets. Of course there will be obstacles or it might even look impossible right now but as long as you believe in your dream. That's what matters most.

You don't need anyone to believe in your dreams. You only need you to believe in your dreams. If they don't believe in you, keep going, don't stop, and keep working towards it. As far back as the 18th century, someone said “everything that can be invented has been invented.” Now imagine all the things that have been invented since then. So if you are telling yourself right now that nothing more can be invented, you will be surprised at how many problems humanity still has. And those problems need to be solved. Everything that was invented came as a result of the need to solve a particular problem.

I’m not trying to get you to invent anything. No! I just want you to dare to dream and work towards that dream.

It always looks impossible until it is done. And who gets it done? It’s the guy that never gave up on his dreams. It’s the guy that didn’t allow the negativity around him make him stop believing. It’s the guy that fell several times but still rose up several times because at the end of the day, what matters most is how many times you get up not how many times you fall. You will fail and you will be discouraged but make failure and discouragement your stepping stones towards success. Never let your failure define you.

There are some people out there always looking to shoot down your great ideas. You will meet them, they are everywhere. So be prepared, your great ideas will often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.

You may not be the strongest person in the room, you may be labeled as ‘weak’, ‘foolish’, but when everything goes dark, when you feel you are at your lowest and you feel powerless to keep going. Remember courage is not always a roar, sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying "I will try again tomorrow". You keep pushing, you keep dreaming and you keep going and don’t ever give up on your dream.

I leave you with the words of Victor Hugo "There is nothing like a dream to create the future."

START!

“I will start next week’’ “I need more time” “I have not done enough research” “I need to get some things in place first””I can’t do it” any of this ring a bell? Call it procrastination, excuse, fear. Whatever you choose to call it we have all experienced it at one time or the other or maybe you still experience it. But the truth is even if you get all these conditions in place you probably won’t start because there will always be another excuse. Something is always wrong somewhere in the world, nobody is perfect and no condition is perfect, we all have our flaws and the world can’t be perfect. You are just scared of failure, scared of what people will say or you think you are not good enough. But the time is always right to do the right thing, the biggest and hardest step in life is the first step, the moment you take that step you are on your way. Martin Luther King Jr once said ‘Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.’

Most of the successful people you see today have one common regret, they always wish they started earlier. Whatever it is you want to start doing, at some point you will wish you had started earlier and in the words of Dorothy Thompson ‘only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.’ So whatever it is that you have been dreaming of, whatever it is that you have always wanted to do but you are too scared to take the first step or you keep procrastinating and making up excuses telling yourself why you can’t do it yet. I want you to know you are not alive yet. You have to stop been afraid and start living. Just START!

You know how long it took me to start writing this piece, I kept pushing and postponing until I told myself I had to start from somewhere and it didn’t have to be perfect. And that was it, there is nothing wrong with starting small as long as you keep growing. So you start small, grow soon and keep growing. It’s okay to be normal, it’s okay to start small. The President was once a citizen, the vice chancellor of a university was once a student in fact he was once a jambite, the professional was once a learner. So there is nothing wrong with starting. The problem is if you start and don’t grow then you become stagnant, but are you actually stagnant or you are moving backwards.

Let’s picture this, you are No 5 on the chart today, next week same position, and in two weeks time you are not improving so you believe you are in the same position then you say you are stagnant. No! you are not stagnant, in reality you are moving backwards. There are only two options, its either you are moving forward or you are moving backward. Because if you remain in the same position, at some point people will overtake you. Others are working tirelessly to get to the top so why should you stop. Start and don’t ever look back. Don’t you ever stop, just keep moving.

I leave you with the words of Franklin Roosevelt ‘It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.’