Monday, May 22, 2017
VISION AND PASSION
MATTERS ALOT
The venomous thorns that crowd most people’s path to success
is the tendency of looking down upon themselves on the basis of the
circumstances they have gone through, the pains they have endured in the past
and the hopelessness lived through. That deters them from soldering on. But any
circumstance has nothing to do with what we can be or what we cannot be. We can
only become what we think and really wish to be. There is no empirical formula
that proves that if you are born from a poor family you will die poor, that if
your parents are illiterate then you will die an illiterate. The world is awash
with a litany of success stories that defied circumstances.
Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of Virgin, Virgin
Records, Virgin Airlines and many more dropped out of high school at the age of
16 and used to suffer from dyslexia. Macdonald’s founder Ray Kroc dropped out
of high school at 15 yet when he died he was worth 500 million United States
dollars. The famous Steve Jobs was adopted as a child. He dropped out of
college yet is the founder of Apple, NeXT and Pixar. The amazing Nick Vujicic
was born without arms and legs but is one of the world’s most sought after
successful international inspirational speakers.
Many people have defied circumstances, pain, anguish and
tears to make a new order in life, to prove to the world that the past is
nothing but dreams and vision matter. The world’s most celebrated talk show
host Oprah Winfrey was born to a single teenage mum. As a young girl she was
sexually abused. She grew up in a poor background and neighbourhood. She was
even demoted from her job as a news anchor because ‘she wasn’t fit for
television.’ Oprah defied such a background to become the admired talk show
host the world has ever celebrated. She is among the most successful women in
America worth billions
Consider Frank Lloyd Wright who distinguished writers say is
undoubtedly the most influential architect of the twentieth century. The
amazing fact is that, he never attended high school.
According to Your Success Horizons it is pretty obvious to
anyone that a good education and background are not sacrosanct to being
successful…a lack of education, or a poor and difficult situation should not be
seen as necessarily life defining.
Successful people ride above the harsh waves of the circumstances
they may have lived through. They are driven by passion for success; they have
the great hunger for success and are visionary. They do not walk in the path
that all people walk, they take roads least taken and that makes a difference.
It is courage that see them flourishing. Courage is greatly
the ability to stand in the line of fire without fear of being burnt, the drive
to fight a lion with bare hands, the instinct to be ready to die for a cause.
Successful people do the unthinkable because they are ready to lose anything
for their dream. Courage is forgetting oneself through immersing all your
thoughts and success in the mission to be achieved. A successful soldier is the
one who while on the battle front, when other colleagues are retreating, he
runs towards the firing line to carry on his shoulders a wounded soldier. It is
for such bravery and courage that such soldiers are honoured.
The developmental scope of Malawi has nothing to do with
circumstances that we have passed through. If anything, all the pains ever
encountered are the best lessons and earth moving machines that prepare a best
path to our dreams. The cashgate plundered the Malawi economy but it is time we
think of remedying the situation and kick starting our economy than groaning
over billions of money that were lost. Let the courts deal with that as the
country has to move on.
We may have had floods that resulted on one of the worst
hunger crisis we experienced as a country. Other schools of thought groan that
we can never become the bread basket of Africa. These are those that are
carried away by circumstances. The hunger we experienced must give us the drive
and courage to embark on agriculture seriously, to utilise any piece of land
even through irrigation. There is nothing that we cannot achieve, the only
thing that deters us from achieving is that we put limitations on ourselves.
And because we put limitations we stop thinking beyond the boundaries of the
limitations. 50 years ago China was as poorer as Malawi is at present. If China
were to be contented with its past circumstances, China could not have been a
rich and super power now. Forget circumstances, it is vision, passion and
hardwork that matters.
