IT IS SO HAD TO SAY GOODBYE, BUT I AM HUGGING MY FUTURE

HUGGING THE FUTURE

…we have stayed too long, hanging our lives on the pendulum of guilt and contrition. Even people that are supposed to ignite us back to track with a better hope in our purpose have allowed their exaggerations of our pasts sink and immure us under the tents of complacencies. They have kept us in the dark with the darkness of our pasts, darker than ten thousand nights, so much that we fear to come out.

If it were with us for us to decide to attempt, we would have tended to want to, or perhaps we might have gathered our broken tiny bits and pieces; we would have dusted ourselves from the filths and dirt of our pasts to embrace our new found hope; our faith in a future, in our future, that our ‘Jacob’ can still be called ‘Israel’, that our ‘Simon’ can still be called ‘Peter’.

Oh! You declaim, ‘Asirvo, you don’t know what and who I have been, you don’t know what I have done… if you knew, you will know that I don’t deserve God’s mercy… that I don’t deserve a future, that I don’t deserve a second chance’.

I understand you or rather, let me say I empathize, I know that our ‘so-called-beloveds’ have made us conclude that we are not too good to deserve a better future… that we just very much replicating the devil…

I tell you not to believe this-why?

I have been there… I have made mistakes, I have once fumbled… I have done things that I am not proud of, but I had to stand up again and make a dare… god help me, I want to keep standing. The real tragedy of our lives is not in falling, it is in not standing when we fall.

I can, like an high priest, who has borne the same flesh of infirmities accept that you are human when you fall, but it is important that you pick up divinity, stand and refuse to fall again. We all fall sometimes, but we must get up again. Even if the righteous falls seven times, he will stand!

Kid! Man-up and stand again!

This is my announcement! Your future is a new sheet which you can re-write your purpose on. It is blank and you can fill it with the new ink of this renewed you: your new ink of purpose.

God, is still in the in the business of making the best out of your worst. He can make your Rahab fall into the lineage of the Saviour. You are valuable. Close your eyes and let the soothing breeze of God’s caress you with a peace that surpasses understanding as you embrace your future with this hug of faith… this leap of faith that you are better than this.

…and if you desire to make a friend, I can introduce you to God who has actually sent his proposal to you for years to become your friend.

Accept Jesus Christ today!

NAKED TRUTH 2

STRAIGHT FROM MY HEART

FROM THE OTHER SIDE 2

Writing this piece does not just excite me, it arouses bubbles both in my heart and belly that I just cannot but express my exhilaration. It is like remembering my favourite songs and having goose pimples lavished all over my skin. This piece affords me the opportunity to go through a momentary déjàvu of my days in secondary school and I can still re-create and re-paint this scene-it is so funny that the expressions of people into our lives, (the words they speak) often times do go a long way in forming our lives, save we are able to live beyond the indelible impressions of their words in our minds.

‘Like a replayed scene of an episodic film, it was one of the week days during school hours, that I had approached class-mate in my noble Arts Department. I was in SS2 then-this young class-mate of mine was reputed to be the best Literature in Student and I had written a poem waiting for this young boy to affirm me-I staggered towards his desk that day, hoping that I can find a positive affirmation from the reputed ‘Literature in English Legend’. It was like my life, my confidence, and the essence of who I was depended on whatever he ‘says’. I got to his desk, shuddering, stammering and lisping some few words: ‘…this is my poem, will you please rate me?’ my heart raced faster like I had just finished running some miles. I kept praying that he will affirm me-did he? He paused for a moment and gave a sneer. Sincerely, I had actually written the ‘best of me’. Sweats dropped profusely from my armpits, soaking my white shirt as I anticipated my fate from his words. (I had concluded that he had the final say on all of my academic life).

He muttered some few words, sighing incessantly as he read the last lines of my poem. His words: ‘you really don’t have the potential to write poems (re-phrased though), this is not a poem, and you really need to learn a lot, your writings are so weak’. God! I shrunk, I melted, I died inside… a death of failure… it was the death of my own esteem of myself. I believed him, taking his words hook line-sinker and I almost concluded that I cannot become the poet I wanted to be. I was wrapped in that smallness for years until…

Thank God I did not believe him forever, because that same poem I wrote in the year 2002 that he wrote off was published in a Sunday Guardian in the year 2008, and many other writings of mine have found their way into many other papers- 6 years after he uttered those words, my poem still had relevance to find a place in a major newspaper in Nigeria-today I have written a book that stands close in comparison with Bishop TD Jakes books(pastor of the Potter’s House, teacher, life-coach, in Dallas, Texas, USA), with four other books ready to be published.

My point?

What people say to you does not matter much like what you say to yourself. The most successful people on earth today are mostly from the other side of the rope, the other side of the river-bank. They are the ones people believe to be the least-likely to succeed, but somehow they make it though and become reputed for greatness, excellence and distinction.

Oh! You say, ‘Asirvo! I don’t believe you!’ no quagmire, do you know that noble laureate, prof. Wole Soyinka finished with a pass, same as late Gani Fawehinmi (SAN)? That Barack  Obama was raised by a single parent with the help of his grandpa? Farah Gray from a poor slum in the city of Chicago became a millionaire at the age of 14 and found his way to having an office in Wall Street as the youngest black?

Ask the legendary Albert Einstein if I lie.

Great, successful and brilliant people are not born, they are made-a genius is a product of consistent hard work and faith in one-self.

Have fun!

NAKED TRUTH 1

STRAIGHT FROM MY HEART.

…FROM THE OTHER SIDE 1

        I have studied through histories and carefully followed patterns of every tide and time and I have discovered that one can step into limelight through consistent and deliberate efforts. men that have moved from mediocrity into excellence have been able to do it through a conscious effort to be better. Though these men are from the other side of life but you will be shocked that most outstanding life results are created by these undermined men from the other side of life.

        The other side is a place where the least-likely, the despised, the weak, the un-believed, the rejected, the ones we have assumed can never excel, the ones we have called dullards, the one we have concluded, on that they will amount to nothing, come from. For them, the other side is there starting point. They could be the last in the class, the ones that are not the teachers’ favourites.

I was like this once…

        The other side of life is not the sweet side. It is side of abuse, of rejection, of despise, of neglect, of fears, of personal, psychological and physical struggles. It is the side of doubts (of one self), it is the side where one has to break off negative words that we have heard from people (who know little of us and judge us by that) and devil- deacons or live with what they have said to us. Like they are our prophets, they say that we are no good, that we do not need to learn, that we can be nothing but average, that our efforts will only result into nothing but failures. They have so said it well that we believe these lies.  

I was like this once…

        Like I remembered sometime while I was in secondary school and I had walked up to the best literature student in my class then, in Saka Tinubu Memorial High School, to show him my writing and hear his opinion of my poem. With great pride, he glanced through my piece and told me that I do not have the potential to be a good poet. He ridiculed my poem and remarked, ‛this is not qualified to be called a poem.’

That was 2002.

        In the year 2008, I started working with the Guardian Newspapers; I submitted this poem to the Sunday Editor of Guardian Newspapers.    

        His remark? ‘This is a great piece we must publish it!’ That was 6 years after somebody discarded it. Need I tell you that I did not edit it? It was as exactly as it was in the year 2002 and I submitted it that same way.

        My point, I know you could be the same person, people might have written you off, and said you cannot amount to anything. Albert Einstein was told same, that his brain was weak, and that anytime he makes an attempt to read, his brain will retard. Yet, you cannot mention the gurus in science world and not mention him.   

Same for Gani Fawehinmi (late), same for Professor Wole Soyinka, they both finished with pass (es), but they are renowned in the world today. Wole Soyinka went further to become the first African to receive the Noble Prize Award in Literature.

Please, don’t give up on you, and let no one conclude on you. You can lead that class by just crossing over from the other side.

The truth about people from the other side (which we belong to) is that, despite the negative words and beliefs of people to and about us, we stand at a point where we have a leverage to defy their beliefs and opinions of us. We stand at a point where we can daze them and re-write our stories.

We can be all we desire, because for us, the other side is the best place to start from.

And I, I was once from the other side….