Dear Segun,
It has been a long while and I heard you have completed your degree course successfully and have found gainful employment. I also heard from your mum that you seem to have lost your initial excitement on getting the job. As you told her, your pay is hardly sufficient to cover your transportation and feeding not to mention other needs. She also spoke with concern, about the impatience and disappointment she senses in you at your present inability to buy her all the nice things you would want to considering all she sacrificed to see you through school and the university.
I thought I should write you again after such a long period and despite the fact that you are now a young adult capable of making your own decisions, because you have always been capable of using good advice and obviating the need to learn from the painful teacher called experience. The first thing I want to tell you is to cultivate a habit of gratitude for whatever progress you have made regardless of how little or insignificant it may seem in comparison to others. That is exactly the point Segun, do not be distracted or discouraged by comparing yourself to others. I know some of your mates are earning fat salaries in dollars but that may not the path to your own fulfillment. It may be difficult to convince you now but money is not everything and cannot buy everything.
Besides being constantly grateful and joyful about your own strides, focus on growing in wisdom and knowledge. Value your job not for the pay you are getting now but for the skills and competencies you are gaining from first hand interaction on the job with your superiors. That reminds me; your mum also mentioned you had protested the insolence and indignity you had to endure from that your arrogant boss. I wish you could see the smile on my face now as I write. The first lesson in your working life is the need for emotional intelligence; the capacity to put your emotions in check. It is part of the training.
Segun, you need to understand that process is as important if not more important than destination. God does not believe in short cuts, because he knows that shortcuts are usually short sighted. He understands that as tumultuous as the journey may seem, it is just what you need to be the gem that he has intended for you to be. You see, the process of experience is priceless. There is no formal learning that can imprint in you, those lessons needed to fulfill your colourful destiny. Thomas Edison’s journey needed one thousand steps to get to that one step that will make his invention the most talked about in the world. David is known as Israel’s greatest king, but we often forget that killing lions and bears while tending his father’s sheep prepared him for that defining moment at the battle front where he slew the giant Goliath.
I know that it is hard to keep to the straight part when everyone around you appears to take detours. The internet age is abuzz with opportunities that will leave your fingers itching and your imagination running wild. They may attempt to get you closer to that which you crave for, but the truth remains that they will ultimately get you off track. As depressing as a life without instant achievements may seem, do not be distressed. Keep your chin up and know there is a divine plan for you to be a solution somewhere at some point. Your role is not to help God make that happen but to focus becoming better at wherever you are and at whatever you do. That will ultimately get you to your destination.