The Viable Alternative

It’s that time of the week where I write about something else I’ve noticed over the years that utterly fascinates me.

Everybody walking this planet has some unique gift or talent that if they harnessed fully can change the person’s immediate surrounding, or his family, community or the world at large, not to mention his (or her) very own life.

Many people also have a dream clasped within their heart of hearts that if they pursued, would give them a life beyond their wildest imagination.

However, despite the fact they have a dream or a gift or an extraordinary talent, there are many people who decide not to pursue or make use of them, and settle into doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with their dreams and makes no use of their gifts or talents whatsoever, and life just seems to leave them alone. They go day in and day out, living their lives, working their jobs, some of them raising their families, with varying degrees of of happiness until one day their lives come to an end, and throughout their entire time on Earth, they were “allowed” to get by without pursuing their dreams or making use of their innate gifts or talents.

There are “those” people, and then there are those “other” people.

Those “other” people are those who life won’t let settle.

This latter group of people have a innate gift or talent or some sort of dream and try as they may to avoid making use of them, try as they may to settle into doing something totally unrelated, nothing seems to work out for them until they decide to face their “destiny.”

They want life to just “leave them alone in peace” and let them “settle,” but life won’t let them.

If you’re one of these people, this blog is for you.

I know this spiritually powerful Minister from Africa who was instrumental in the spiritual cleansing I had undergone several years back. This spiritual cleansing saved my life, and my sanity. I witnessed things from this guy that is beyond the scope of this blog because if I tried to explain them, you’d look at me as if I were some kook (if you don’t already).

Anyway, he told me when he was growing up in Cameroon, his grandmother and his mother while they were living told him that he had a powerful gift and his calling was to be a minister, a point they both saw it appropriate to mention to him on each of their deathbeds.

He rejected those claims and utterly refused to accept that calling for the simple fact that he didn’t want to be a minister.

Well, he told me that the prosperous clothing boutiques that his parents left to him when they died wound up collapsing and that he was met on the road by armed robbers two or three times. Now, I know that being robbed at gumpoint in any part of the world can be potentially traumatic, but imagine that happening more than once in a Third World country where often the ones robbing you at night are the ones who are supposed to be protecting you as police officers during the day.

Totally broke and destitute, the guy was forced to answer his “calling.” Years later, though he’s not “rolling in cheddar,” his every need is provided for and when he needs money, it comes almost “magically” from some source. In the midst of all this, his amazing gifts continue to shine, amaze and most importantly, help others.

I have another childhood friend, who I’ve known all my life. He has an extraordinary gift to draw and for art altogether. The guy at 3 years old could draw better than I EVER could as an adult even if I studied years in an art school (which I guess doesn’t sound like it’s saying much). He also has an uncanny ability to master different artistic mediums like say photography, to software like Photoshop or Illustrator quite effortlessly. Combined with all that he has a passion for comic book superheroes.

You’d think that his natural inclination would be to follow a career path based on the arts right?

Ummm….well….sometimes in life things aren’t that cut n’ dry.

For years, and years this guy has tried so desperately to settle for a mediocre life where he made absolutely NO use of his gifts. He tried to be a stockbroker, to an insurance agent, to even a brief stint in law enforcement, and all these stints through one instance or the other, wound up collapsing like a ton of bricks. He even within the last few years took the city examination to get placed in one of the city jobs which offered steady pay and good benefits, yet even though he scored very high on the exam, he was never placed on a job. The funny thing is, other people that he knew who took the same exam and scored lower, were placed with a job.

Life is funny like that huh?

Now, I’m not some sort of guru or genius, but I can say for certain that I two abilities that I have are having a good sense of whether a romantic relationship that friends of mine had entered into was going to last and also what the general path is a person needs to take to fulfill his purpose. With this insight, I would shake my head in disappointment at each of his endeavours, because I knew he was pursuing the wrong thing and I knew they were all ultimately going to fail. Seeing failure after failure to “settle,” I knew deeply that he was just one of those guys who wasn’t allowed to settle. Yeah, sure others including his friends were allowed to get away with it, but life wasn’t letting him off the hook.

Over the years, when each of these new endeavours would ultimately fail, I would tell him, “Dude, there are just some people in life who aren’t allowed to settle. You’re one of them. You’re not going to find peace until you pursue the path that was meant for you, and when you do, you’ll start to see everything fall into place.”

And of course, he never listened.

Well, life has an interesting way of getting your attention when it wants you to do something. My friend wound up taking a “low end” job in order to help provide for his family. At the company, he saw that there were graphic design positions which were the perfect outlet for his artistic ability. He began to teach himself Photoshop and reached a level of proficiency in it very quickly where people who would see his work were astounded that he was only using it for a short while.

Nonetheless, whenever a design position came up in his company, he repeatedly got passed over. To this I say, just because you’re pursuing your destiny doesn’t mean that things are going to come to you that easy. There’s a priming and pruning process involved to make you into the person that can handle a position at the next level when the opportunity presents itself.

In any case, frustration had set in and you couldn’t blame him trying to get a city job that offered more pay and stability. However, like I said before, none of that panned out. Whether he liked it or not, he was going to have to stick it out until the opportunity he was meant to take presented itself.

Finally, one day, he had his desktop opened to an image of his he had on social media, and one of the owners of the company happened to be passing by. The owner saw the picture, marveled at the skill and precision it took to create such an image, and offered my friend a design position that recently opened up right on the spot when he found out it was him that created the image.

My friend wisely accepted the position and for the first time in his life, is making money doing something that reflects his natural talents and ability. With this development, other things seem to be falling into place. Within a few days of him accepting the position, the department landlord a project involving his other passion, comic book superheroes, and now, even the caliber of women that are attracted to him have gone several notches up.

I don’t have all the answers to life. I don’t know why it seems like some people are allowed to shun their gifts and their passions and settle for mediocrity while others get no peace until they face what they have to face. It’s as if some people have a gift or a calling that is deemed so important by life that rather than allow you to squander it, it’ll kill you first, or at the least make life increasingly uncomfortable until you make use of it.

You may be one of these people and know it deep down inside but are afraid to admit it to yourself because you don’t want to deal with the responsibility of facing or doing what you’re running from. Yea, I know you don’t think it’s “fair” that others can slip through the cracks but life won’t let you do the same. You just want life to leave you alone and let you live in peace.

Your situation is like the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale. God wanted Jonah to send a message to the city of Ninevah but he refused and tried to run, but the method through which he chose to run brought storms and calamity into his life. Eventually, he was swallowed by a whale and sat there three days until he decided he was ready to do what God wanted to do, and then the whale vomited him onto dry ground and he went and faced his calling.

Everybody has trials and tribulations in life, even the ones who have answered their calling. However your trials and tribulations are directly due to the fact that life is trying to make you go in a certain direction which you refuse to go. As a result, you feel like you’re sitting in the belly of the beast, because you’re stuck in an uncomfortable position, absolutely nothing in your life seems to be working out for you and you feel like you have nowhere to go.

I can assure you that the trials and tribulations of life won’t disappear when you face your destiny and answer your calling, but things will become “easier” in the sense that your life will be going with the flow as opposed to against it. Though you’ll still have trials and tribulations, they’ll be a necessary part of the flow of your journey as opposed to them being as a result of you trying desperately to go against the grain by settling.

As such, you’ll also find things working out for you in ways that you’d never thought you’d imagine in a very timely manner to the point it’ll eventually become the “new normal.” Also, you’ll now have the peace that comes with your life “being in the flow” as opposed to feeling like you’re fighting an uphill battle.

So….are you ready to face what you have to face or are you going to continue to make things hard for yourself?

Just to let you know, if you decide to keep on running, life will make sure it gets ITS way…

This is the Viable Alternative.

Hope this helps,

Ike Love