Two days ago, I was just down; exhausted and almost depressed. I usually write away my sad thoughts, in my little journal I call Daybooks—I’ve filled 89 journals between 2009 and 2016—to help overcome the bad feelings. However, this time, I typed the thoughts on my Facebook Status update field. I clicked on Update. Your status has been updated. Close Facebook app. 15 minutes later, notifications start pouring in. one comment after the other; eventually we had 35 comments as at the last count. My lovely friends were giving their 2 kobos and providing lovely counsel to the thoughts I shared—the only sad thing was none of them offered to buy me Pizza to make me feel better. So what did I post you ask? I was frustrated by many things happening in Nigeria and it reflected in the number of scholarships and fellowships I had applied for in 2017. When you’re a 24 year old who is trying to make a difference in this wicked world, you seem to run out of self-motivation sometimes. So I asked if anyone had felt the same way and how I could overcome the feelings. The replies I got inspired this piece. I learned that if you want to change the world you have to learn how to live with frustration and harness its power for your good.
What Drives your Life?
My friend, Soibi and I recently accepted Rick Warren’s 40-day challenge (for the umpteenth time) reading the revised edition of Purpose Driven Life. The topic for Day 3 is, “What Drives Your Life”, and it got us thinking about our lives and what drove us in the past as individuals juxtaposed with what drives us now. We saw a lot of change between when we became born again and now. Personally, I used to be driven by the ‘need for speed’. The need to get “double promotions” in Primary school—where you get to skip 2 classes at once, moving from Primary 2 to Primary 4 because you’re ‘exceptional’—and I remember asking my Mom, “Do people get double promotions in secondary school?” (Lol) I learned patience the hard way. I had to learn how to wait on God between 2007 (when I finished secondary school) and 2012 before getting a full understanding of who I am and what I am on this earth for. It was a long wait, indeed, but I think I am better off for it.
Two questions I’ll love to ask at this point are; first, what drives you? Anger; Sexual pleasure; Food; materialism; Football (not to say, it’s bad…hey I am a Rivers United & Arsenal fan), the need to show off to friends, the need for approval from the world, new clothes…? The things that drive us are the things we spend the largest percentage of our income on; the things that consume our time and take all our attention. They are the things we can fight for. Second question, what about life and the society frustrates you most?
Thomas Edison and his incandescent bulb
The Power of Frustration
Thomas Edison gave the world a lot of inventions but one we are very conversant with is the modifications he made to the already designed light bulb which made the bulb commercially viable. Whenever the Sun goes down I am reminded of how grateful we should be to Uncle Edison for fighting the frustration with short-lived light bulbs existing during his time, if not perhaps, we’ll still be using wood and fire like cavemen. When asked what the process was like for him, Edison explained that he had thousands of failed experiments. Can you measure the frustration he encountered? Let me put it into context. So, if you’re a Nigerian you will totally relate to this. Has your Mom woken you up by 11pm asking you to pass a thread through the narrow opening of a small needle because she needs to stitch her gown that night in preparation for an event she’s attending the next day?
You know how it can be right? Imagine struggling with it and for 10 attempts you feel like the thread is in, but it just slides out. Multiply 10 attempts by 1,000. Most people will give up and risk being called lazy by their Mom. For Nigerian Moms (we love you so much), but it’s almost like the thread and needle thing is the true test of your education! Lol. That is the same way Thomas must have felt. I wasn’t born then, but I can imagine that he was frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t move around very well at night or couldn’t do experiments after 6pm.
That frustration is what drove him to press on after attempt number 9, number 90, and even number 900!!! That’s how to harness the power of frustration. To remember why you started and why you must change it despite the number of failed attempts. To be really downcast by something—an event, a person, a phenomenon—that all you want, so badly, is to change it. No matter what it takes! That’s the power of frustration.
I know Many “Frustrated” People
Some of them I even call mentors, and they are frustrated by many things. They can’t understand why things are the way they are. Why is fuel still N145? Why doesn’t NEPA keep power at night? Why do people dump refuse indiscriminately? Why are there plastic bottles in the drainage, can’t we recycle them to make money and save the environment? I know a friend who organized an event to inspire his community—everyone came ate and drank—and he’s still struggling to pay for the hall. So he sits and wonders if this thing is really worth it. The frustration stays with him months after the event, but will he organize an event next year? Yup! My sister has become the queen of proposal-writing because I have even lost count of the number of organizations she had approached to ask for support. Soon the contact persons even stop answering calls. She will empty her account again and again to host events or carry out projects—she will end up frustrated. But she won’t stop.
Success = Hunger + Foolishness + Frustration
When Late Steve Jobs gave that famous Stanford University commencement speech, the phrase, “…Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish…” made a lot of sense to many of us right? The fact that we have to stay hungry for ideas and innovation and stay foolish with an open mind like a sponge ready to soak up every information that comes our way. I think there’s a third part that makes the equation complete, and that is frustration. When you get all that information and have all that passion, it has to be channeled to changing something right? Yup, you can channel it changing whatever frustrates you.
In course of interacting with people who have changed the world in one way or the other—on “The Stroll Live” alone, I have spoken to over 120–I discovered that, almost all of them are frustrated every day. Something still hasn’t worked for them. Okay, yes they won this grant and that award, or even and it might seem like their life is great but deep within them. They are restless. They know they are not where they want to be; they have not been able to change that thing that frustrates them anytime they think of it. This is why they still do their best to beat their previous performance. They keep pushing; they keep fighting.
Back to the question I earlier asked, what frustrates you? Whatever that frustration might be, it will only be meaningful if you stop tweeting or moaning about it and start doing something about it.
Your frustration can become what drives your life, and as you work to cause a change you will find out in the bigger picture, you weren’t the only person frustrated about that issue and slowly an army will join you, and they will hold hands and march with you. It will become our frustration not just yours. And before you know it, something in the world has changed, why? Because, you were frustrated by something and decided to do something about it—and the world will be grateful to you forever!
This might not be a perfect example, but I think it works. Few weeks ago I decided to write about something that frustrates me most; the JSS-SSS transition process in Nigerian Secondary schools. The piece is entitled, “Why Many Millennials in Nigeria may End up Unfulfilled Adults”. I wrote it and shared it with my friends on Whatsapp. Morris Ogbowu, whose life the story was weaved around, shared it on Facebook. The last time I checked, the piece has now been liked, read, shared, and reposted combined over 5,000 times across multiple social media platforms and blogs. Do I know these people? Nope! Why did they share it? They were equally frustrated about it! What does that teach us? Do something about your Frustration.
This piece was first published on my YNaija column