How Society Kills you (negative configuration)

Have you ever felt useless, less intelligent, uncelebrated, less gifted or intellectually disadvantaged especially amongst your contemporaries? Have you ever felt like you weren’t born with any talent or gifting even after searching inwards? If yes, then you need to pay more attention.

Growing up as a kid, my parents and neighbours’ loved me ravishingly. Beyond the wit and stubbornness, I was a cute kid with an interesting personality. However, they all seemed to have one problem with me - I talk too much. I was nicknamed “ekwurekwu” which is used in Igbo language to refer to an annoying talkative person. They didn’t know that the nickname killed me psychologically. I struggled daily to suppress my brazen and extroverted personality. I’d try as much as I could to talk less (whilst imploding with thoughts) at home and eventually explode in school. While in junior high school, the authenticity of the ‘noise-makers list’ was verified if our form-teacher saw my name there. We (noise-makers) were almost always punished and sometimes extorted as penalty for our noise. Honestly, I hated myself for talking too much. Soon, my miracle came.

In JSS 2, my literature teacher called me for a counselling which changed my life. She said, “Kingsley you are very intelligent, nobody can doubt that, but you can do better. Since you like talking, why not convert that talking energy into debate? Combined with your natural ingenuity, you can become the best debater in this state”. I was motivated! Someone finally saw a good in my plenty talking. I got enrolled into our inter-house debate team as the Chief speaker. Not long after, I became the lead speaker of the school team, the state team and eventually that of the national team.

She formatted me and reconfigured me (positively). From debating, I went on to preach with that same mouth and eventually tilted into full-time public speaking, with that same mouth. That same mouth earned me scholarships, takes me around the country and the world, earns me lots of cash on a seasonal basis, made me popular etc. All she did was re-channel my natural speech drive into something more positive and rewarding. I have a friend who acquired an introverted nature (though born extremely extroverted) and developed fright for public speaking because she couldn’t deal with the societal stereotype that came with having a very liberal and vocal personality as a little girl. She was negatively configured, and consequentially, to the suppression of her true personality. Everyone is better when properly groomed and exposed. 

Unfortunately, our society does a terrible job at discovering talents and properly channeling  them into offering maximum utility to society. Most Parents also do a bad job at understudying their kids with keen interest during their childhood, so as to discover their natural inclinations. Most medical doctors would be more useful to society as preachers, engineers, musicians, activists, politicians or public speakers.  

You would agree with me that fraudsters (locally called 419) are very intelligent people. As a matter of fact, being a very successful criminal requires a sophisticated acumen. No talent or skill is bad, it depends on its application. The level of ingenuity needed to be criminal is the same level of ingenuity needed to be an inventor or innovator, it all depends on configuration.

Let’s take American Millionaire, James Kosta as a case study. At 13 he was already earning $1,500 a month as an IT consultant. He even managed to persuade his school to let him 'formalise the computer club' and run his business from there. With an 18-year-old girlfriend, pockets full of cash and friends aplenty, he began skipping school and staying out late into the night. Then his parents issued him with an ultimatum: If he wanted to live under their roof he had to give it all up and focus on school. 'I went to court and proved to a judge I was responsible enough to be on my own,' he told the Huffington Post. Alone and with nobody to reign him in, he turned his knack for computers into low-level hacking. But his solo activities soon caught the attentions of the online criminal underworld and he was swiftly recruited into a criminal hacking collective. He and his accomplices began hacking the sites of big business and military, including the systems of major banks, General Electric and IBM. For this 14-year-old nothing was out of bounds. He was found guilty of 45 counts of technical burglary and sentenced to 45 years in jail. But he says the judge saw a spark inside the troubled and neglected child and decided to give him a chance of atonement. After a year in juvenile detention, he was released on a suspended sentence and offered a spot in the military on the condition that he would not commit another crime. At 18, he joined the navy. At 20, he joined the CIA tracking funds of warlords in Africa and Middle East. At 24 he sold his first doctom company for tens of millions of dollars. At 37, his games development firm turns over more than $10m a year and he also mentors troubled youths to unlock their potentials.

Let’s analyse this. At 13, he had a potential his parents wanted to kill for schooling.  At 14, that talent was converted into criminality. At 18, the government used that same talent to fight criminality and at 24, he became a millionaire and an asset to society. So a few lessons:

·         Rather than beat a kid for drawing on the wall or on your texts, buy a drawing book for that kid and encourage them to draw there, he/she might just become the greatest artist ever.

·         Rather than mourn your introverted nature, turn your quietness into moments of critical thinking, inventions and innovations are possible outcomes.

·         Rather than make plenty useless noise, become a preacher, activist or public speaker.

·         Rather than scold a child for playing with spoilt electricals, guide them. That child is a potential engineer.

·         Rather than beat a child for his passion for soccer in preference for academic activities, get him enrolled into a football academy. Lionel earns more than most Presidents etc.

When you suppress or ignore potentials, they are either unfortunately lost or utilised by the underworld to cause havoc to the society.

Nobody is born a nonentity or born to be insignificant. Every man has a potential and that is his source of blessing (proverbs 18:16). Forget about what society thinks, give attention to your distractions, weaknesses or peculiarities. Consciously improve them and you might just be on the next flight to stardom. If you are not careful about who you pretend to be, you will forget the real you. YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS!!!

Ezeme Kingsley C.

Kingynelsy@gmail.com