I remember back in high school we used to have these motivational speakers who used to come to school every now and then with the aim of changing our mindset and brightening our future by instilling hope for a better tomorrow. I was never a fun of such talks reason being, the stories were always the same. It was just like watching a script over and over again and the only thing that changed was the characters, but never the story.
My greatest hobby is watching and I’ve come to note a commonly used term in movies; that is ‘supplies’. To some it can mean foodstuffs but to others it can mean armory/weapons. Same thing applies to dreams. You can’t tell people to follow their dreams without actually defining what a dream really is in the context you’re using it. The only dreams most of these youngsters have are just ‘wet dreams’ – metaphorically speaking; and then you’re surprised why fornication is now the new normal. I would say that they’re out here following their dreams just as advised by these ‘mediocre’ motivational speakers. We can only dream of what we can imagine and most of the time our imagination can be quite limited when it comes to our perception of a better tomorrow.
You might have noticed that the baseline to every successful person is how he started off poor and the unthinkable things that he had to go through to get to where he is. Never have I ever heard a person say that he was brought up in a family were everything was handed to him but still emerged successful in the society as opposed to turning into a ‘spoilt brat’ as it is expected by most.
I long to see the day when the story of a rich kid from the city who made it in life without any foul play will be just as inspirational as that of a poor boy from the village who through his struggles, also made it life. A world where not every achiever will have to stand in front of an audience and all he can narrate is his sad story about how he grew up in poverty which gave him no choice but to work his ass off to beat all the odds and became someone relevant in the society.
It’s a changing world which in turn demands a change in the way we do things and also how we tell our stories factoring in every imaginable scenario possible. It’s about time we let go of the old ways and embrace new ones. Do things and tell our stories differently to the extent that when we stand in front of people to tell our success story, they don’t start guessing what we are about to say. Just as I did back in those high school motivational talks. Let’s be the change that the narrative needs.
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| The Change the Narrative Needs |
