IMITATION: SHORTCUT TO OPPOSE TRUE PURPOSE!

‘Kayode Oyero

   Hello dear friends! How are you? How life be? Let’s talk about a counter-productive attitude and orientation called Imitation. Permit me to start with an anecdote. I believe the most valid evaluation of issues is one’s personal experience!

   Are you ready? O ya, on your mark, get set, Go!

“…There is nothing as shortsighted as to compete with others. Instead, complete them by being exclusive: follow your dreams, aspirations and desires, make that passion your profession. Solve problems hitherto unsolved. Tread paths yet to be trod. Don’t be a conformer. Don’t be a prisoner of tradition. Who knows, you can be the next celebrated Zukerberg, Dangote… By being exclusive, I mean: don’t go in tow with the majority. Imagine if all players in a football team are strikers. Who will defend? Who will secure the goalpost from the net-racking shots of kicks, swift as cheetah? Definitely, the outcome of this kind of formation is catastrophic and disastrous to the team…”

   Growing up, like any futuristic young mind of my generation, I look unto some people whose lives I much envied and admired not as role models or mentors but with a keenness to become exactly what they were, then; to drive the type of car(s) they drove, to put on suits exactly the way they wore it, to marry even the version of Eve they clung unto and to do their kind of work, some day in the future.

   My childish infatuations reached a crescendo when I approached my mum a number of times, inquiring the type of occupation Brother ‘This and That’ worked; the name of the company and of course, the area of discipline my ‘object of lust’ studied at tertiary institution.

   Of course, she divulged answers to my cravings. The truth be told: the fancy way of dressing of those individuals, mostly bachelors I couldn’t help resist. Their shirts over squared shoulders always dapper and form-fitting as though they filled their being in those apparels - starched to the point of immobility and pressed dutifully to the extent that the face of the Iron plate used to achieve such smoothness often formed an imprint on their frocks. See fine boy, no pimples I had tacitly commented in wonderment and excitement, demurely.

   During those formative years, my mother was attentive, the way any caring mother with a listening ear would. She meticulously satiated my precocious hunger to know more about life every now and then, literally peeling off the gritty scales and speckles of ignorance from my spectacle of world view with her explanations and answers so down to earth and simple for the understanding of a child. She played the role of ‘Google’ very well until a certain day.

   That day, one of the neighboring bachelors had cruised past the house’s frontage with a gleaming car. It was certainly brand new. Tear rubber as folks will call it in local parlance. A Toyota Camry, 1998 model.

   Again, possessed by desire, I excitedly yelled, “That is the type of car I’m going to own when I grow up!”

   Mother never spared a second before she did launch her combat, a hand missile. Let the sleeping dog lie was weak a self-counsel to restraint her from doing her spanking. “Shut up!” she shouted, a thunderous and dizzy-induced slap accompanied her verbal rebuke, simultaneously. “You will own brand new cars of latest model in your generation. This one will soon fade off.” She had said, clairvoyantly.

   Dear friends, imitation, no doubt is self-destructive, self-reducing, self-restricting and creatively destroys creativity. And asides that it is an evidence that an individual has not discern his or her assignment, it also wields grave attendant effects on a person's life. By imitation, wanting to be another instead of being original, an individual stands the chance of digressing from his or her true purpose. When a person rejects his or her authentic self in exchange for another’s, amazing gifts and marvelous talents divinely and exclusively deposited in such individual’s life remain dormant and ineffectual foreclosing chances for self-exploration whatsoever. By trying to be someone else, an individual’s salt and sauce lose taste and become rancid. Gikuyu was rightly correct that a borrowed necklace cause one to lose his own!

   Actors and Actresses and other great professional imitators beg to agree that the act of mimicking is not one easy to sustain for a long period of time before the Imitator relapses back to his or her original self. This is instructive. If actors and actresses who either by crook or by hook received professional trainings in the business of feigning one character or the other - as story lines necessitate - can’t do so for a stretched period of time, then, invariably an individual who apes to be another in the sprint race of life stands the doom of exhaustion. No one copies others for long without making costly mistakes. A borrowed necklace truly causes one to lose one’s authentic necklace!

   Although, the maxim: Imitation is limitation is as old as the sphinx of Egypt and widespread the way and manner a struck matchstick spreads fire on an arable of tinder dry plantation during summer, turning grasses and trees to ashes just in a twinkle of an eye. But, it is quite worrisome that a lot of us are deviants when it comes to practicing what we preach.

   Truthfully, some of us are encyclopaedias when it comes to knowledge and witty wise sayings. When we talk, people are amazed and sometimes overwhelmed by the enormity of our amassed knowledge. “The Prof.” “Solomon the second” they christen us in sheer adoration and in a salvo of cheering. Yet, we are the parents who impose choices of career on our children. “My first born must study aeronautical engineering. The second medicine and the third Law.” we outline their destinies even before they are born.

   We are the brother, the chief adviser, the most enlightened and sage of aged and uneducated parents who determine what younger siblings settle for in life. We are the know-it-all family breadwinner sister who condemns any attempt by younger dependents to venture into unchartered waters like a career in theater arts or music, artistry, photography, cinematography, comedy, public speaking, writing, event planning and management, catering, paintings, linguistics, education and so on.

   In our myopic spree, we term these disciplines as seriously unserious and not lucrative and worst put, socially un-prestigious. We glorify and term as socially celebrated such disciplines and fields of human endeavour as Law, Medicine, Engineering, Science, Accounting, Insurance, Banking, Architecture and what have you. We see them as glamorous and shortcuts to fame and wealth.

   May I drop this on you: Assumptions and prediction have no place in the matter of true and fulfillment of individual purpose in life! Little-wondered why no two persons have the same fingerprint, not even Siamese twins. Scientists in the field of forensic have proven that there is morphological variation even amid individuals with same fingerprint type. No two persons on earth have the same type of Whorl, Arch, Loop or Compound. The creative wisdom of The Divine is indeed mysterious and unfathomable, defying scientific inquisitions!

   There is an interesting testimony of the career life of a Nollywood actress popularly known as ‘Jenifa’. ‘Jenifa’ was of course compelled by her parents to study law after bagging a national diploma certificate in Mass Communication.

   Obviously, she must had budged to studied her parents’ preference of a University discipline - law - which wasn’t in tandem with her passion and ambition to be an actress because of parental blessing. And it happened that after five summers and winters of study at the University, a year at law school and a year in the service of fatherland, ‘Jenifa’ graduated and guess what she did? She gathered the law certificates and dumped them at her parents’ feet.

   “I have studied law and this is the certificate. You can have it sir and ma. Acting is my line.” She had told them, matter-of-factly. A wise decision! A good resistance against career imposition and an eternal life of regret! It might tickle you to know that ‘Jenifa’ won The 2009 African Movie Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role!

   Dear friends, who says a person gifted in comedy or acting or catering can’t rate in the ranks of the crème-la-crème of the society? Who says you can’t chart uncommon paths and emerge success in life? I’m happy to announce to you that what we get in life operates on the principle of fractional distillation. By this I mean: the level of pressure that is applied on the crude oil of life determines what the bye-product is. Difference in pressures applied to crude oil in a refinery determines whether the end product of the fractional distillation process is kerosene, diesel, bitumen or premium motor spirit alias petrol. We don’t get what we deserve in life, but what we demand!

   Dear friends, the best and easiest way to miss career fulfillment in life is to go aping others or settle for a career because everyone does it. Imitation is not only limitation but destruction. Like Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics, you are Classic! That is if only you stop imitating and start initiating. There is nothing as shortsighted as to compete with others. Instead, complete them by being exclusive: follow your dreams, aspirations and desires, make that passion your profession. Solve problems hitherto unsolved. Tread paths yet to be trod. Don’t be a conformer. Don’t be a prisoner of tradition. Who knows, you can be the next celebrated Zukerberg, Dangote, Otedola, Adenuga, Obama, Ali Baba, Mandela, Ben Carson, Bill Gates to mention just a few, if only you see yourself as having something distinguish, unprecedented and peculiar to offer this present generation and even, posterity.

   By being exclusive, I mean: don’t go in tow with the majority. Imagine if all players in a football team are strikers. Who will defend? Who will secure the goalpost from net-racking shots of kicks, swift as cheetah? Definitely, the outcome of this kind of formation is catastrophic and disastrous to the team.

   Football enthusiasts, imagine a 0-0-0-11 formation. Supply is no doubt overflowing in the front attack and striking position. Under normal circumstance and conventional method, strikers representing a team in a game of soccer mustn’t be more than two, three or four in desperate scenarios. In the absence of such fictitious absurdity, team players on soccer pitch all have well-spelt role.

   For few some, the role is: use all of the might you’ve got, your hands and legs and in fact all your body parts, even if you can dive acrobatically like a bat. Just make sure the round leather does not ghost-past you into the net. For some, the role is: you are the sentinels of the post-18 area. Make it watertight for opponents to be unable to penetrate or infiltrate while for some, it is: use all your antics to get the ball into the opponent’s goal post. There’s specificity and precision of parts to play based on each player’ strength and weakness, efficiency and deficiency.

   Dear friends, to compare your essence of existence with others’ - to compete with others’ natural anointing is the best and subtle way to oppose the Divine’s purpose for your being. Just strive for excellence and distinction and complete them: supply what they lack. You have an area of comparative advantage, a niche, a reservoir of strength, a place of efficiency, a talent others aren’t divinely anointed with!

   Life, I bet, will be so dull, boring and uninteresting had the creator been monolithic and parochial to had designed us the same way, deposited undifferentiated talents in us and ultimately make our behavior the same. Variety is indeed the spice of life!

   Dear friends, you are peculiar just the way you are.

   Thanks for the read. Enjoy your day!

I'm @Imodoye_1 on Twitter

…Kip da Optimism Alive!