SHOLA OSHUNKEYE 08056180011 sholaoshunkeye@yahoo.co.uk
My Dear Blessing,
I greet you, and bring you peace that transcends all human understanding, in the name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. I write this letter to you with mixed feelings, hoping it will meet you in the best condition of health, and praying that you will read the content with deep introspection, and grab the lessons therein with both hands.
My daughter, I have never met you in person but I adore you like a queen on account of the glory you brought to Nigeria, our Fatherland, from the tracks in the not-too-distant past. I can’t recall what that moment, in 2008, looked like when you broke into the consciousness of Nigerians, like a sudden storm. My queen, I missed that moment when you mounted the podium to receive the bronze medal you won in the long jump event of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. It was your first major medal for Nigeria. It was a bronze that shone brighter than gold. And you were just 19 when you did it.
But as I sit behind my desk, in Accra, Ghana, this evening, set to put my thoughts to paper, I still see your gleaming face in my sub-conscious. I still see the glow on that face that cloudless night in Glasgow. It was the face of victory. It was a perfect symbolism of the Nigerian spirit. My daughter, needless for me to tell you how proud I was as a Nigerian, that night, as I watched you breast the tape, like a gazelle, at the finishing line of the 100 metres event of the 2014 Commonwealth Games. The Games were held in Glasgow, the Scottish capital. I cannot remember how many times I screamed: ‘Oh, God bless Blessing Okagbare!’ My staff could not but marvel at my excitement. My joy knew no bounds that night. Since then, your name, Blessing Okagbare, has remained a sweet song on my lips. Since that night in Glasgow, you became one queen of the track in whom I’m well pleased, and in whom I see no vile.
Well, nothing much has changed since then, Blessing. Except that the reports I have been reading about you, a gem of an athlete, in the past week, have broken my heart. No, not because you did not win any medal in the recently concluded 2015 IAAF World Athletics Championship, held in the same Beijing, the same city where you stylishly announced your arrival as a global star seven years before. Rather, it is about a particular report that mirrored you, my idol, like someone flaunting her failure at the competition like a banner; a report that portrayed you as prodigal child who cares no hoot about wasting her people’s goodwill. For your dismal failure in Beijing, my daughter, the report quoted you as virtually telling Nigerians that you owe nobody any explanation, let alone an apology.
You were even reported to have skipped the 200metres event, despite appearing in the warm-up area earlier!
Oh, Blessing! Tell me this isn’t true. Tell me the post in your Facebook account that reportedly said “I owe no one an explanation win or lose” was the handiwork of some good-for-nothing hackers, who were hell-bent on rubbishing your good name before your right-thinking compatriots. My queen, please, shame your detractors by denying that you didn’t post that monumental insult against journalists who helped your flight to stardom in no mean measure. Please, deny the statement credited to you that, “Not everyone, who open their mouth to talk or write with a pen in the name of journalism, have their sanity intact and they know themselves.”
Ah, Blessing! Did you actually say that? I refuse to believe that you said all those things. Well, if you did, my daughter, you have not done well. What you did is abominable. It is a betrayal of the trust that millions of your compatriots repose in you. It amounts to biting the very fingers that fed you. If you actually said those words, I advise you to withdraw them, this moment, and beg for forgiveness. I tell you, if you show genuine penitence, God is faithful and just enough to forgive you. And Nigerians, even journalists that you so maliciously insulted, love you too much not to forgive you. They will blot your iniquity from their memory, and extend a fresh hand of fellowship to you; trust me.
I’m not judging you, Blessing. But as a girl brought up in a good home, a display of genuine repentance is the way to go. Anything short of that would be begging the issue. It would allow the fire of antagonism currently festering against you to become a conflagration. God forbid.
But for God to forbid, you must first forbid it, my daughter.
You see, life is not a dash, Blessing. It is a marathon. The same people you so revile today might just be the same people God would use to save you from some nasty situation in future. With humans, you can never, and must never say ‘Never!’ my daughter. If anybody tells you anything to the contrary, it is grand deception. Even if success has got so much into your head that you think you could snub over 170 million people, it is grand self-deception for you to think that Nigeria’s salvation in athletics lies solely in those beautiful, long legs of yours. It is grand illusion to see yourself as indispensable.
The truth is, you are not indispensable, my daughter. Nobody is. God has not created any human that cannot be replaced. It would be a serious error to think you are. Or, haven’t you read or heard the inscrutable truth by Plato that ‘Nothing is easier than self-deception.’ So, you are not indispensable, my daughter. Honestly, you are not. And the earlier you lap up those empty, vain and arrogant words of yours, the better you would be.
Am I sounding harsh, Blessing? If I did, forgive me. Those words are not an expression of anger. They are not. I cannot get angry with you because I appreciate that most people who achieve phenomenal success at your age often find it difficult to manage their success. Of course, I’m aware that adventure, exuberance, operating and dwelling in that realm where money, influence and power hold sway are one terrible mix that often frustrates every effort successful young people make to maintain their sanity. I know, too, that prosperity sometimes breeds bad manners. These are part of the reasons I have refused to get angry with you over the insult you reportedly hurled at journalists after your dismal outing in Beijing. Rather, I sympathise with you.
At 26, you still have a very long way to go. You still have the future spread before you like the firmament; like a wide, spotless sheet without any visible end. But you need to keep your head low. You need to make patience your second nature. I’m very sure your darling parents must have given you many pearls of wisdom as you grew up. You need them now, more than ever before, my daughter. One of such pearls, I’m certain, is: Pride goes before destruction. Whereas humility, charity and love conquer all things, pride goes before a catastrophic fall. While pride brings you hurt and shame, humility brings you honour and respect. Yet, of the two, pride is costlier to achieve.
So, which one would you rather choose, my queen? Choose humility. Shred the toga of pride that you are reported to have donned, Blessing, and replace it with the beautiful and honorable garment of humility. Humility, like good manners, consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves, and how well we think of and respect others. Think less of yourself. And good manners, like Oscar Wilde says, are made up of petty sacrifices. Start making those petty sacrifices from today.
I speak these words of wisdom to you, Blessing, to make you a better person; and help you manage your success better. Don’t thrash those words. They are capsules of wisdom. Embrace them; use them and get wiser. And your life would be better for it.
As I end this letter, I beg you to forgive me if I have hurt you in any way. Don’t be angry. I took the decision to write you because of the love I have for you, and, more importantly, because I do not want anything to derail the beautiful and glorious future God has mapped out for you. My prayer is for you to continue to soar like the eagle.
May you continue to enjoy the peace of God which neither fame nor money can buy. Greet your lovely parents, your siblings and your boyfriend or fiancé, for me. May God continue to keep and bless them.
Bye for now.
Sincerely Yours,
Shola Oshunkeye
Accra, Ghana
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