Beyond Limits: Achieving Dreams Against Odds

When we were in secondary school, we used lanterns, candles, and rechargeable lamps to complete assignments and study. I and my brother, Ayorinde Fadirepo, would compete on who would take the best of the reading lights first to study and complete assignments for the night. Before we were banned from using candles to study, there were times we slept off while reading with candles and my dad was the one who would wake us up to ask us to go and sleep. This was how we studied during our secondary school days. In the university at OAU, when there was an electricity outage, there were times when students needed to use light from the solar streetlight to read because they had exams the following day. This is not a justification for what led us here or the suitability of the method. There are cases of people who started learning how to code from their mobile phones; some even started by writing on their notepads or notebooks.

The point is that we always think that the absence of the best resources limits us from achieving our dreams. The question is, what efforts are we making toward achieving our dream? My supervisor during my bachelor's would not really accept 'no electricity' as an excuse for not working when we presented it to him during meeting times. Many people found him (arguably) a difficult person because of his work attitude. He needed and wanted you to show some motivation and the efforts you have made. The same students complaining of no electricity will have power on their phones, watch EPL and Champions League etc but complain of no light to do some study or writing related to their project.

I used to have a YouTube channel where I posted content; 90% of the videos on the channel were recorded when I was in Nigeria. You would think that the moment I'm not in Nigeria, where I have better internet and electricity, I would be able to do better, but the reverse is the case. It's not necessarily because of time constraints. What I have seen from people who have achieved success in what they have chosen is that they have always started from somewhere. You do not need to have the best cameras, or laptop or mobile devices to achieve some things in this digital age.

The point is, we may complain about the absence of infrastructure or awesome devices to use, but the question is how much effort are we making towards achieving our goal based on available resources? I remember I used to borrow my roommate’s laptop to work at first in Ife, and got a physics textbook to use from Ahmed Ojo which later made us become closer friends.

We cannot sit down doing nothing, complaining about the condition we find ourselves in, and thinking that we are going to achieve our goal. The truth of the matter is, that if you are not taking little steps and making efforts towards achieving your goals now; when you have more resources to support you, you may not be able to do something. So the question is, what efforts are you making at the moment? Sitting down and complaining does not solve the problem.

This post is also a message to the writer Jimoh Hafeez Olafisayo to start what he has been procrastinating to do all this while, leave distractions, and start taking those little steps today

Beyond Limits: Achieving Dreams Against Odds

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