Your Wealth is in Your Passion

Everything a person needs to be wealthy is in his passion. What he needs to move from point zero to point hero is all within his reach. But human seems oblivious of his precious possessions that are before his eyes, while he is busy with a search for what is not lost.

Usually, several factors are responsible for the search for what is not lost. The factors range from societal conventions, peer influence to fix-it-quick mentality, among others. For instance, societal conventions have placed some professions such as medicine, law, engineering, etc. above others. So many people tend to believe that their licence to wealth is to study one of these courses. As good as the courses may be in terms of their potential to help one acquire wealth, they  are not sufficient to make one wealthy. After all, there are poor doctors, lawyers and engineers in the society. Professions do not make people rich or wealthy. It is what one makes out of a profession that determines where one will stand in the society, not necessarily because one is into a particular profession.

Others have equally missed it in life because of peer influence. The expression that association can make or mar one is very true when viewed against how many people join the bandwagon to choose what they do in life. Many that would have made it effortlessly in some professions are into other ones where they remain strugglers, not achievers. But for a chance encounter with one Samuel James Akpomiemie, the Assistant Head Boy of my alma mater, Fatima College, Ikire, between 1990 and 1991, I could have ended up in a profession I am not cut out for.

It will interest you to note that I was a vibrant member of the Press Club and the Literary Debating Society of my secondary school. My gift of the garb made me a cult-hero of sorts in my school and its environs. I represented the school at so many competitions and won several laurels. But when we were to choose subjects, the school counsellor put me in science class, not because I wanted it but based on brilliance in science-related subjects. What I had passion for took the back seat. Like it happened to me so it did to my classmates. I struggled all through. Although the school still considered me to be one of its best students, the reality became apparent when the West African Examination Council released our results. I bungled Physics! This devastated me. It was while I was brooding over what had happened that I ran into my Guardian Angel whose advice put me back on the right track. Today, I do what I do effortlessly and people still pay me for it.

Let me say here that despite the fact that I do what I do effortlessly a lot of preparations still go into it. People with “fix-it-quick” mentality will end up as imitators rather than originators. Even when one knows what to do one needs to still work at it until it becomes a second nature.

Societal conventions, peer influence and fix-it-quick mentality will not bring you wealth and happiness, but struggle and sorrow. What will bring one joy lies in what one has, not in what one does not have. So what do you have? What is your gift? What do you have passion for? This is where your wealth is, not in any societal convention, not in blindly copying what your peers are doing  and above all, not in trying to fix it quickly. Enduring wealth comes from what you have passion for, and it requires patience and perseverance.