A Collection of Various Experiences
Written by OKEKE FRANCIS CHUKWUMA.
I remember growing up, I remember having in various occasions interact with my DAD, and he constantly expressed his outlook to life, and at these times he could not help but tell me how he lost all he had acquired as a young merchant during the civil war in Chad. How he sailed back to Nigeria with my Mum whom he had just married about a month with no property to show for all his labours, “am sure Christ would be happy with my Dad if he were to be his apostle because he carried no haversack”. I was immersed in pity for him, I thought of how difficult life was for them as young couple. I remember being startled still of his present financial status, which does not reflect his earlier failed story, and then he told me how he started gradually all over in the village to make ends meet. He was skilled in crafting and so he produced bags, baskets, and mats made of raffia and sold them on market days. He also went into farming to earn money. In him now, I do not see a man who went through difficult times to earn a living. Now the conventional wisdom is, people with such depressing past are always unsuccessful, even if they are not it is seldom and difficult, what NGOZI ADICHIE will call
" THE SINGLE STORY ".
One thing with failure is that it stifles us, it restrains us, it shortens our horizon and they are not long as they ought to be. It flattens our experience to life so that sometimes we think of the occasions we have failed and not the successful times, it closes our minds to every other success story there was and even the ones to come. It creates this strong and recurring stereotype in us which often results to paranoid anxiety every other time even to the most irrelevant issue, and in this case we hear expressions as: is it because I failed my exams that he is saying this to me?, oh! I failed in that public speech I cannot make any good speech again; I failed the quiz, I don’t think am good in maths, I didn’t make the right pass in the game; I don’t think I will qualify for the competition etc. These kinds of impression restrains our propensity and certainly bleaks our “wonderful” prospects. With this I am tempted to assert that failure seems to be more pronounced than success.
.........It sure Continues......... Just Check out for the Next.....
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