Welcome to my world!

The Gift In Me Wants To Be Free....

The original lyrics of this great worship song is,

 'Oh the worshipper in me wants to be free...'

On this particular lazy afternoon, I couldn't help feeling this way even as I just wrapped up work on a book I hope to publish soon. I then checked on some job recruiting site I had registered for sometime last year. I read my profile and even I was impressed with me. However, I didn't feel any sense of fulfilment despite the nice ring the profile seemed to have to it.

I knew deep down that I could do a lot more than my profile read. I knew the person on my inside was worth more and a lot larger than the person on the outside. This is no motivational talk it is what I know. Hence, the reason for this introspective and almost gloomy mood of mine is why the me that I see on the outside is a small fry to the me on the inside.

 

Oh the gift in me wants to be free. I remember how as a young teenager in Senior Secondary School, my English teacher took one look at my essay and said to me,

'You will make a fine writer someday and if you choose journalism, you'll make a fantastic journalist'.

I didn't think anything of his remark because I had heard these same words since I was 7 thereabout. My dad told me, so did one of our neighbours and every other person that read any of my writings even at that age. So my teacher's comment that fateful day didn't come as a surprise.

I remember how when I was barely 11, I was taking my classmates in a tutorial I organised for them. A teacher standing on the corridor of the classrooms who had been watching me for awhile said,

'Wow you'll make such a great teacher.'

I turned, took one look at him and continued with what I was doing like he said nothing at all. Again I was not surprised because at a much younger age, I used to gather young children in the neighbourhood (some my age, some younger) and teach them. So much so a mother told me how her daughter had improved so much in her academics and was wondering if she could employ me as her lesson teacher and pay me of course. I was just about 8 then.

I remember how as a young adult in business school one sunny afternoon our professor saunters in and proceeds to divide the class  into four groups with different topics given. Each group had to then  pick a speaker to give a summary on the topic chosen after a thirty minutes break out session with the group. I was chosen as the speaker for my group. Needless to say our facilitator, the cerebral and famous Professor Pat Utomi slept right through all the other groups' presentation. By the time I was called on as the last speaker, my throat was already parched and my heart was  threatening to burst out of my chest. Then I started to speak. He was not only wide awake all through my presentation he said after I was done,

'Thank you for saving the day Toyin'.

I was to later repeat this same feat, if you will, at my first visit to a Toastmasters meeting. Toastmasters is a club cum organisation where people learn to develop their public speaking and leadership skills. We were given table topics which are basically impromptu speeches on any topic at all. I was adjudged best among the eight speakers of the day.

Few years ago I thought to help out my brother model his beautiful, exquisite beaded jewelry as someone he had earlier planned to work with disappointed. Before I knew it, the pictures went viral and then calls that I should consider modelling started to mount.

I walked into a friend's studio once to record for a program on her online radio station and she goes,

'You really should be on TV with this your beautiful face'.

 

Our anniversary this year, hubby takes one look at me and he said something that I thought was known only to me as no one had ever said it.

'You are a fantastic administrator. You've made my job so easy with the way you've organised things in the office. I just want to use this occasion to say thank you.'

Oh the gifts in me want to be free. The writer, the teacher, the public speaker, the model, the television personality, the administrator in me, all want to be free.

 So I've decided to release these gifts in me as a legacy to my world. Not so much for the money or the attendant fame that may come with it, but so that with this release I may also experience the joys of failing forward, the adrenaline that comes with 'doing it afraid', the humbling thrill of having my name etched on posterity's hall of fame, the euphoric sensation of going to my grave empty.

Now this is my story. What's yours? What are those gifts crying for freedom in you? What are those dreams and desires that are in the words of Regina Agyare (CEO, Soronko Solutions),

"... causes you a lot of sleepless nights; it is like an alarm clock going off inside you. Hitting the snooze button doesn't work; the alarm will just go off again."

                    - Excerpt from Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In For Graduates

Quit hitting that snooze button. Wake up, smell the coffee, get to work. Now I just think of myself as...