Knowing your worth
The past months have been very ineteresting to me and not even the metaphor of rollercoaster can summarise them.
In a relatively short period of time I have been through the ecstasy of fatherhood, the self importantly exhilirating feeling of being a role model as well as the confidence and esteem that comes with your views being published in a major paper. Now what that has taught me is that while I sometimes am hard on myself, it wouldn't be a mistake to look to myself for inspiration.
Put in perspective, I was invited to deliver a motivation talk to pupils at Ndola girls Technical High School. Admittedly this came as a surprise. I had never ever thought of myself as someone who could motivate anyone let alone such critical minds as those of high school girls.
I had no significant achievements to write home about, I regard myself as boring as a catholic priest and worst of all my job is about as exciting as.. well you guessed it, a priest. Though I am sure even a priest's gets exciting when it comes to listening to those saucy and sometimes lurid confessions.
Immediately I realised that the guy who had called me to convey the invitation was dead serious, my mind began to swarm with stories and quotes I was going to use to not only bedazzle my audience but also motivate them beyond anything on two legs. To my surprise even long forgotten quotations from my university days from the likes of Wole Soyinka, Charles Dickens, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchil, Machiavelli etc were chasing each other in my mind like Japanese electric trains.
On the day of the presentation, wearing my best suit I strolled into the school at a leisurely and self important pace. In my minds eye I had seen the approach to the school being lined with pupils waving welcome placards.
What greeted me was a very silent school with a doting of busy pupils totally oblivious to my presence. 'they have probably saved the welcome for the school hall' I comforted myself.
Upon reaching the corridor leading to the administration, I rushed to the nearest notice board hoping to find at the very least a black and white poster advertising my presentation. All I saw were the usuall school announcemnts regarding exams, prep etc. By then it had painfully dawned on my ego, 'I just wasn't that important.'
When finally I was called upon to make the presentation cruel reality had settled in and the following changes had taken place.
Just as I was about to take the lamenting in my heart to another level, I had another of those moments when a single thought simply changes your outlook. I looked again at the audience and saw young minds that had decided to forgo studying just for a chance to listen to me. All of them knew absolutely nothing about me but had stuck around just to hear me speak.
When I put this in perspective, my knees began to quake, not because of fear but because of the dawning of my thoughts' implications. Imagine there are people who have died without so much as having a chance to address an audience, deliberately influence minds, let alone whose opinions and standing in society being considered worthy of emulation by the next generation of leaders. I should have been considering myself previleged!
Probably those pupils will be the best to judge on the efficacy of my presentation. All I can say is that if there is one or two things they learnt from me, I invaluably learnt a great life lesson. True worth is not measured in numbers, it is not about how many people sing your praises, its never about the crowds that you pull, its not even about how many posters line the streets to trumpet your virtues, not about how many praise singers you employ or how fat your bank account is. It is about knowing in your heart that you have done your best for this one person, two people or even a nation.
It gives you that glowing feeling in your chest that is beyond description and defies logic. In the end you can't ask for anything better.
In a relatively short period of time I have been through the ecstasy of fatherhood, the self importantly exhilirating feeling of being a role model as well as the confidence and esteem that comes with your views being published in a major paper. Now what that has taught me is that while I sometimes am hard on myself, it wouldn't be a mistake to look to myself for inspiration.
Put in perspective, I was invited to deliver a motivation talk to pupils at Ndola girls Technical High School. Admittedly this came as a surprise. I had never ever thought of myself as someone who could motivate anyone let alone such critical minds as those of high school girls.
I had no significant achievements to write home about, I regard myself as boring as a catholic priest and worst of all my job is about as exciting as.. well you guessed it, a priest. Though I am sure even a priest's gets exciting when it comes to listening to those saucy and sometimes lurid confessions.
Immediately I realised that the guy who had called me to convey the invitation was dead serious, my mind began to swarm with stories and quotes I was going to use to not only bedazzle my audience but also motivate them beyond anything on two legs. To my surprise even long forgotten quotations from my university days from the likes of Wole Soyinka, Charles Dickens, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchil, Machiavelli etc were chasing each other in my mind like Japanese electric trains.
On the day of the presentation, wearing my best suit I strolled into the school at a leisurely and self important pace. In my minds eye I had seen the approach to the school being lined with pupils waving welcome placards.
What greeted me was a very silent school with a doting of busy pupils totally oblivious to my presence. 'they have probably saved the welcome for the school hall' I comforted myself.
Upon reaching the corridor leading to the administration, I rushed to the nearest notice board hoping to find at the very least a black and white poster advertising my presentation. All I saw were the usuall school announcemnts regarding exams, prep etc. By then it had painfully dawned on my ego, 'I just wasn't that important.'
When finally I was called upon to make the presentation cruel reality had settled in and the following changes had taken place.
- The school hall had transformed into a small classroom and the hundreds of cheering students had been replacemnt by about fifteen pupils curiously staring at me.
- Somehow the state of the art P.A sytem and the projector for which I had spent sleepless nights preparing my powerpoint presentation had disappeared into thin air.
- The headteacher and his throng of admisring members of staff had been inexplicably replaced by only one teacher. It was just me, my laptop, fifteen students and a very good friend of mine teacher.
Just as I was about to take the lamenting in my heart to another level, I had another of those moments when a single thought simply changes your outlook. I looked again at the audience and saw young minds that had decided to forgo studying just for a chance to listen to me. All of them knew absolutely nothing about me but had stuck around just to hear me speak.
When I put this in perspective, my knees began to quake, not because of fear but because of the dawning of my thoughts' implications. Imagine there are people who have died without so much as having a chance to address an audience, deliberately influence minds, let alone whose opinions and standing in society being considered worthy of emulation by the next generation of leaders. I should have been considering myself previleged!
Probably those pupils will be the best to judge on the efficacy of my presentation. All I can say is that if there is one or two things they learnt from me, I invaluably learnt a great life lesson. True worth is not measured in numbers, it is not about how many people sing your praises, its never about the crowds that you pull, its not even about how many posters line the streets to trumpet your virtues, not about how many praise singers you employ or how fat your bank account is. It is about knowing in your heart that you have done your best for this one person, two people or even a nation.
It gives you that glowing feeling in your chest that is beyond description and defies logic. In the end you can't ask for anything better.
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