The Audacity To Dream
There are things that wake me up early in the morning and others that keep me up late at night. All these things have one thing in common: they reside deep within my soul. My heart burns with a fire for them, an endless flame that keeps me awake to the reality of their fruition and the opposite reality, which I don’t like talking about.
The audacity of thinking that someone like me can bring such things to life. The audacity of walking with confidence as if I possess something the world needs. It’s this same audacity that has led to the birth of the most extraordinarily out-of-this-world inventions.
I can’t fathom the person who invented the bulb being laughed at for being insanely amazing. Or Steve Harvey being told by his teacher that he would never be on TV. I’ve heard so many similar stories hundreds of times of people who had the audacity to dream and beat all odds to achieve them.
TD Jakes once said, ‘We’re born looking like our parents, but we die looking like our decisions.’ We get to choose whether we will just be creatures occupying the earth or contribute to its transformation. And that’s a tough choice. In the midst of it all, we get caught up with just trying to survive and forget about the essence of our survival. What’s the essence of living a life one is on the verge of losing?
Deep within everyone lies a dream. Whether it’s achieved or not is a complex equation yet to be defined. As I always say, things aren’t always as black and white as we think. Someone dreams of taking us to Mars, another dreams of providing the best education for their kids, and yet another dreams of making it to Hollywood. All these dreams have the right to be brought to life.
This leads me to think about one of the youngest African presidents, the late Thomas Sankara, former president of Burkina Faso. I’ve watched several documentaries about him, and it’s saddening to see how a revolutionary leader like him was betrayed to his killers by one of his closest friends. It shows that you never truly know who’s with you until power and money come into play, and then greed clouds people’s judgment.
Sankara undoubtedly had his people’s best interests at heart. His audacious dreams, even today, remain far from being realized. In fact, after his death, Burkina Faso regressed into a worse state than before. Here was a man who could have transformed the country into one of the richest in Africa, but someone had the audacity to end his life. Perhaps there were things he could have done differently, but he certainly didn’t deserve that fate.
You know what I believe? We all should have something we are working toward; otherwise, life will be meaningless. It’s like how sometimes we use heaven as an excuse, saying things like ‘this world is not my home, I’m just passing through.’ To where?😂 We all have a responsibility to this world. We are all writing stories, some will live to be told to generations others will be just a eulogy. I don’t want to be just another eulogy.
One of my friends the other day told me, I must live to tell your story. I’m still digesting that.
