Eyes on Success But on Your own trail

In childhood, we begin to aspire and admire. We get vivid ideas about who we wish to be when we grow up. A favorite question used by many for interaction with the youngsters, “what would like to be when you grow up?" The answers to this questions change as technology evolves and as centuries advance. A few years ago, anything suggesting art, was a no gone zone for a future career aspiration. Now thanks to the success either painted or present through the media of various artists, it is slowly being accepted in the career booklet. Mentors are embraced early and watched to draw a path for those that term them as head light. Kids will work hard maintaining a nest in their thoughts for their mentors. The mentors’ success footprints become their success trail. They share in their moment of glory at heart and master their biographies in mind.

All this is good and maybe necessary in life but only to some extent. The shining part of all these mentors is the only part posted for the public eye to catch, the mind to envy and the hearts to feel. However, the dark and ugly, the hitches along the way, the constant failures and the lessons learned are not aired. I think that this is the most important side of the story because success is the end of the sentence which one can’t get to before writing the beginning and the middle.

What happened to the fact that every person is unique? A personality that may only be similar to another but not entirely alike, a mind that almost chooses thoughts like another but different still even if just slightly, a heart that experiences similar emotions to many others but treats them in a somehow different way unlike many. With this in mind, although we admire certain personalities in life and wish to take their chosen path of life, we can not entirely turn out just like them. We may want to fellowship in their career path, want to mingle with their social responsibilities and even lift the same crowns of success that they do and sit on the thrones of heroes just like them, but we have to define our own trail.

They should or can be our inspiration so that when we look at their achievement during our journey to our discoveries, we strive on. If we cave ourselves in only on them and theirs, we may actually limit ourselves. We could probably achieve more if we focus on beyond what our mentors did, are doing or would do. Within us is unique potential, granted in a skillful way to every individual. The feeble and impatient hardly get to discover this because they live through life looking for short cuts. The imitators sit on potential through life they would rather what is already found, cleaned and displayed. Only the strong willed, focused and tolerant live to behold their full potential and at sun set, theirs is called a full life. These live to graduate to mentors. But no mentor is exactly like any other. They may have similar success stories but with different trails.

Appoint a mentor to your mind and heart, admire them and aspire to be like them. Let them encourage you with their achievements; remember to read into their challenges and failures too. But most of all, remember to define your own trail and you will get there eventually.

Time to wake up

We are what we think about. Thoughts are deliberate and although there maybe external influence on our thoughts, what we decide to nest in our minds depends on us. Who we become maybe inspired by our environment we mostly mingle with: the neighbors we grow with and around, the schools we go to, the experiences we go through and maybe more but potentially it is who we choose to be. There are many things in life and the world that we can not control but there is one thing which we have absolute control over. Our will, a weapon, an instrument, a vessel and much more at our disposal. It is our will that decides on the choices to take and decisions to make.

Our environment is changing fast. Greed has taken over and the other one is never in mind. Its a self centered, everybody for himself and God for us all pace. Gain is everyone's goal and the consequences are a bridge we choose to cross when we get there. With this in mind, what sells fast is what is put out in the market. Take the media for instance. There is a variety of radio and T.V stations available. They all have a wide variety of products. The recent soap opera seems to be doing very well in the market. A fairy tale display of love. Perfect sacrificial love, offered by a perfect handsome gentleman to a woman well endowed by nature. This is only a fairy tale would only happen in an ideal world but ours world is not an ideal one.

Then there are the topics, very interesting to the ears, that are aired. They truly do achieve their goal because a number of people do listen and laugh their way to work. After all it is just entertainment so why not. Unfortunately, this is a plate of food which we constantly feed to our minds therefore inspiring thoughts. These slowly effect change in us even without us being aware of it.We start perceiving things differently. We build different attitudes around the things and situations.

Today the victims to this among others are love and relationships, and marriages.The sad fact still is that these same discussions are heard by the young minds, still trying to define the world and life. Unfortunately they are not given the chance to decide what is real and what is not because the very persuasive "facts" served to the audience drop into their ears with too big a bang for them to review the truth in them.I have heard several young people talk negatively about marriage drawing examples from the situations described during the discussions they have listened to.There fears cemented by the "confessions or experiences" that people voice out.

My concern is, if all these have such a huge impact on the 20+yrs, how much more will it affect the young adults' life's perspective, whose parents unfortunately are too busy making money to fuel their academic trains to success, to afford a little time to sit and just talk to them.(Topic for another day). We maybe be civilized now and the old moral register too old fashioned to check, but the new is not only rotting away our morals but also our identity. The safe shelter, the family, where we all knew we could nest and rest confidently in is slowly getting drowned.

We have become a dust bin, welcoming all and any. In the rush to equal with the west, a culture we only woke up to a few decades ago while they have been living it for centuries.And yet we sing the freedom song flying on our fantasy liberated perception.Fear arrests me when i think of the growing generations into the future and am tempted to utter a wish that my eyes may not open up to that futures' morning.But then, this would be taking a coward's bus.

We need to wake up and deal with this now because the all familiar "i wish i knew" melody is not one we will want to sing along to in national unity. Good news the solutions are within us if only we halt the haste, think then act.