The Search Within

Finding Kelvin; Choosing your path

I grew up in the bustling streets of Lagos, Nigeria. One of the most interesting things about growing up a city like Lagos is that it gives you the option of becoming anything you want to be. The biggest issue for many of us is having a plethora of options in the first place. If you grew up in a Nigerian home like myself, it means your Saturday mornings look a little like this; wake up early in the morning, gather round for the family prayer in the sitting room and start clean-up of the entire house. If you are like me, then you would find a way to sneak out to play football in the street, come back in time to watch Silverbird TV and wait for the food to be ready; maybe pap (Akamu) and Akara (Beancake).

Depending on your age, you might be able to skip one or two of these. Growing up as the first son in a house full of kids (I have 5 siblings) came with a few perks. I had only one job on Saturdays and it was to clean the staircase outside the house. This gave me the opportunity to leave the house and go play football on the field just beside my house.

The field had a lot of kids from different homes and the most interesting about this is how it seemed like everyone knew what they were good at. The kids knew the best keepers, the best forwards, the best coaches, the badass defenders and the best runners. I did not quite fit into any of the mixes and this discouraged me from playing football when I got into the University. An obvious conclusion was that I was not a good footballer but I also do not think the best footballers back then are currently playing football professionally.

The things we love

I found myself reading a lot of books growing up. One of the reasons for this was because my sister had a whole lot of books, most of which were novels. I did not read a lot of the novels but I found myself tending towards the self-help and motivational books. One of the thing that left me puzzled was how I was encouraged to find that one thing I love and make a profession out of it. How can I do this though? When the things I love have always changed with time. I loved playing football growing up but that ended in tears. I loved acting and playing the drums in the church which have spurred my eccentric behaviours and my love for music. I love Mathematics and Physics which made everyone think I should definitely go into engineering. I love cars and wanted to build a flying car when I was in secondary school. I loved sketching comics, ‘actor and boss’, soccer players etc. I even sold a couple of these as well as some of my written stories in my school. I remember my best seller being the ‘The Agony of Pains”. I remember this because I had to write copies of this and even got my younger brother to write one or two (this was how we were making photocopies).

For many of us, we will either have a lot of things to love or could not be any worried about anything passionately. If you have no passion, then I believe you can just find your profession easily based on what you are good at and what you can be paid for. For the rest of us, for every path we choose to follow, there are a hundred other paths we are deciding to ignore. It becomes a lot difficult when we are told to find one thing that;

1. We really love — Passion
2. We are really good at — Profession
3. The world needs — Purpose

Where it all meets

The more recent version of this I found is Ikigia (A Japanese concept meaning ‘a reason for being’); the intersect between what you love (passion & mission), what you are good at (passion & profession), what the world needs (mission & vocation) and what you can be paid for (profession and vocation). The interesting thing about this in my story is that I believed I found it last year. Here I was in that little intersect of all things that mattered to me; a place where fulfilment became a daily dosage. This is until the streets of Lagos told me quite frankly that I could not have it all. Most of us do not turn our passion to professions, rather we try to find passion within the chosen profession.

The intersection where fulfilment lives

Mission over Role?

As I mentioned in my 2019 review, I am lucky enough to be able to articulate the current thing that I have found fulfilment doing; building platforms or products for people or businesses to achieve their greatest potential. To be frank, this is the best thing I have done for myself yet.

It might change over time but for now, it is helping me make decisions on the skills to learn, the organizations to work with and the people I should connect with.

There are 3 things that I found to be really helpful in finding your path;

1. Self — Audit: This is a step in understanding yourself. Taking a look back to discover the points in your life where you felt most inspired, the most motivated and where you had a sense of fulfilment, excitement, freedom or joy. These points can help you understand the thing(s) that you are most passionate about.
2. Commit: This is a step in making a decision. You might not be able to articulate your passion into a line item as I have done but you have a good idea of your interests at the time. You might need to do a little research on how your passion can be useful in various fields, how you can earn from it and how other people can benefit from it.
3. Take Action: This is the most important step. You will most likely get nowhere by thinking too much about this. If you have seen something that you like and feels good to you, start doing it. Take the course, learn the skills, connect with people that have done it, switch jobs, start the business or start volunteering etc.

If your passion can not keep body and soul together, by all means, do the thing that you do not love but gives you funds to survive first and maybe can even fuel your passion as a side hustle. Your fulfilment will not come with one single job title or organization, it will come with doing that thing that makes you feel good about yourself and your actions.

The road to success or fulfilment is filled with so many trials and you should be willing to make mistakes, start afresh and make more mistakes. No need to compare paths with others, you’re super unique and your experiences, knowledge and thoughts make you the only one with your perspective to life. If you are looking at others, it should be only when you have figured out what to do (at least at that time) and you are looking to learn or connect with others doing the same thing. You are a limited edition; the only version of yourself out there, take time to discover your best and hidden features.

I hope you find this helpful. I wish you well in your journey to finding you.