Now out of school, Hitler decided to face arts. Unfortunately, his application for admission into Vienna Academy of Fine Arts was turned down. That was October 1907. Hitler was deemed unqualified. Disappointment motioned him by name. Life again dealt him an even more devastating blow, just a year later, when his mother passed on. To survive, Hitler pretended to still be in school in Vienna in order to be entitled to an orphan’s pension. Conversely, Hitler simply wandered about the city in admiration of itsarchitecturally glamorous buildings and blissful environment. He frequented operas and club halls. Although down, Hitler sought happiness and calm spirit at all cost. He resorted to night life in his bid to fight depression. When all money at hand was exhausted, young Hitler, still determined neither to be an employee nor live in self pity, ended up in a homeless shelter. Exposure to political and racial ideas of LanzVon Liebenfels at the homeless shelter aroused in Hitler the zeal to make a difference in his political world. The idea of the superiority of the Aryan race over other races worldwide changed Hitler’s opinion of himself and nation.
Hitler finally had his break on self employment and dream actualization when between 1910and 1913 he began to paint and sell postcards and pictures. He also copied famous paintings and drawings of public buildings. Hitler began to sharpen his oratorical ability in the hostel where he lived by engaging mates in debates. In 1913, Hitler’s Austria began to draft young men into the military. Fear freak Hitler refused to join. In a way to escape Austrian authorities, he fled to Munich Germany- his first visit to the nation whose greatest leader he would later become. But in Germany, fleeing Hitler was caught and was immediately deported to Austria. Unfortunately, the Austrian military considered Hitler to be unfit to serve in their army. Hitler thus returned to Germany. As a poor jobless youth, he joined the Bavarian unit of the German army at the advent of the 1914 World War I. Yet, despite his bravery and all his exploits for the German army, he was never promoted beyond the rank of corporal. He was only seen as a loner who was only good at doing dirty jobs and carrying messages but never good enough for commanding men. Undiscouraged, he emptied himself in the course of his duty. By the end of the war in 1918, Hitler was seen at the military hospital, blinded, howbeit temporarily, by mustard gas. Back to normal life in Munich, he looked beyond his past onward politics. He blamed the Jews for German’s defeat at war I and would use his public speaking talent to woo the German populace into a violent racial nationalism and anti-Semitism. The National Socialist German Workers Party (aka Nazi Party) turned out to be a perfect haven for young Hitler. By February 24, 1920, Hitler’s combined military and oratory might was already drawing over two thousand people per gathering. His star was gradually rising. On leaving the army on March 1920, he worked assiduously enroute being chosen as the Fuhrer (absolute leader) of the Nazi Party on July 29, 1921. He capitalized on German’s economic decline to plot a coup to ouster the reigning Gustav Von Kahr’s government. Thus, on the 8th of November, 1923, Hitler and other 600 members of the Sturmabteilungen(a Nazi Paramilitary force) marched to Munich beer hall. Gustav Von Kahr was taken hostage, and new national government declared in Hitler’s name. Hoping that he had succeeded Hitler released Von Kahr who immediately retracted his words and ordered for the immediate crushing of Hitler’s revolution by Bavarian police. Hitler’s men were killed; Hitler fled and was later sentenced to five years in prison, for treason. In prison, he wrote several books and reorganized the Nazi Party in absentia. However, he was released after just a year in jail. In 1928 he ran an election and lost. In 1929, he travelled all around Germany speaking against the ‘Young Plan’ policy of the reigning government. Although the initiative against young plan also failed, Hitler found in both failures the great gain of fame boost and the amassment of willing Nazi financiers. As the fame of the Nazi rose under Hitler, President Hindenburg was forced to appoint Hitler as the chancellor of German with Franz von Papen as vice chancellor. Thus, as Hitler was being sworn in on January 30, 1933, little did elderly Paul Von Hindenburg know that he was turning over power to his sworn enemy. Hitler consolidated his power by crushing the legislative and judicial arms of the German government. He brought everything under the Nazi control, and subsequently became the greatest and most celebrated dictator ever lived.
Where and how you begin is not as important as where and how you finish. Jesus was born in the manger but lived to become a name above all names. How you came into the world is not your fault but whatever you become is your responsibility. No one would blame you for how and where you were born, but you can blame no one if you fail. How you finish/die is totally up to you. Booker T. Washington was born a slave by slaves on April 5, 1856, on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. Yet, unrelenting Washington rose to become one of America’s greatest educators and the founder of Tuskegee Institute now Tuskegee University. Hear what he taught posterity towards the end of his life, “I have learnt that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has to overcome while trying to succeed”.
Perhaps, one of the most amazing proves of ability in disability is the American author and lecturer, Helen Keller. She was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her parents, Arthur Keller and former Kate Adams were well to do. Helen was growing up a happy bouncing baby girl until her 19th month in life. That month, an acute strange ailment left her both deaf and blind. In a short time, she forgot the few words she knew and thus became silent. Hence, Helen was literarily deaf, blind and dumb-talk of a walking corpse! Worst still, in her days, people who were both deaf and blind were classified in law as idiots! Alexandra Graham Bell happened to have lived at the time of Keller’s childhood. He advised her parents to send for a teacher from the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts. One Anne Mansfield Sullivan (nee Macy) was chosen for the task. Anne would later spend her next 50 years of service with Helen. Until her death in 1936, Anne remained Helen’s dedicated teacher, coach, motivator, interpreter plus a countless lot of other things. Anne Sullivan’s first task was to break through the barrier of darkness and silence that surrounded Helen. She used finger alphabets to ‘spell’ on Helen’s hand the names of familiar things around her. Two years on, the girl Helen was already writing and reading fluently via the use of Braille system. At age ten, by placing her fingers on her teacher’s larynx and sensing the vibrations, Helen re-learnt how to speak. Helen Keller would later go on to bag admission into Radcliffe College in 1900.
At the college, Anne Sullivan ‘spelled’ the lectures into Helen’s hand. Helen would later graduate in 1904 with honours. Thus, earning herself a worldwide acclaim. Through public speaking, book publishing, write-ups in newspapers and magazines plus speaking tours across the US, Helen Keller wrote her name in gold and became so endeared to the world populace. Her missionary and charitable deeds drew her to the hearts of legends like Andrew Carnegie who paid her annual income, Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson who wrote extensively in her praise plus several US Presidents who always invited her to the White House.
If Helen can make it, you too can!
CHAPTER SEVEN
HOW TO ADVANCE DESPITE ADVERSITIES
One now may begin to ask, how then do we advance through adversity?
#1.FACE REALITY
First, just face reality. Whatever has happened has happened. The question now is “what next?” You have failed? Yes, you failed but “what next?” Life is a test. The events of life daily examine you to see what you would do. Face it. The truth is: You cannot change the past! The best you can do is to change your attitude and perception towards it. Collect the blows in its full weight and then decide on how to react. Anytime she sees me worrying, Baby Mum would remind me, “You can’t affect the past anymore but you can determine the future by how you live at the present.” Stop looking at where you have been, advised Mike Murdock, fret not at where you are and start looking at where you can be. For according to Philip Ruskin, “The man who wastes today lamenting yesterday will waste tomorrow lamenting today”. Stop day dreaming and rehearsing what you should have done. Begin to think of what next to do. While Joshua mourned Moses, God appeared to him saying: “Moses my servant is dead!” He is dead, period! A gone man is a gone man. Stop wishing that something may just happen and bring him back. His rod may have had the power to divide the gates of hell but it can no longer divide the barrier that separates the living from the dead. He is dead. That very chapter is closed. That very incident has passed. That yesterday is gone. That lost opportunity is lost. Then God continued, saying: “Therefore arise!” Don’t dwell too long on that mountain. Arise and move forward. Stop looking back in regrets. Remember Lot’s wife! If where you where were better than where God is taking you, He would have left you in your past. His plan for you is that of good not evil, to give you a FUTURE! Arise and move forward. Hear Eileen Caddy, “Dwell not on the past. Use it to illustrate a point, and then leave it behind. Nothing really matters except what you do now in this instant time. From this moment onwards, you can be an entirely different person, filled with love and understanding, ready with an outstretched hand, uplifted and positive in every thought and deed”. Joshua was sitting on a great opportunity but he never knew. His tears and emotional attachment to the past never allowed him to see the opportunity his problem birthed. For years he was a faithful servant to Moses. However, God’s divine agenda for his life at that moment was to make him in an entirely different person who would accomplish the task his boss began. Don’t miss divine agenda for your life through self consumption. Arise. Get up from your mourning mat and move forward. What lies ahead is highly greater than what you have left behind. His word says, “Eyes have not seen. Ears have not heard what He has in stock for you”.
Face it. See life as a game of cards: accept what is and then play to win. Ignoring your problems and adversities is not the best solution. Facing them is. Don’t live in the fool’s paradise by thinking that the problems would just fade away. Problems only fade when you face them. Don’t waste your time wishing that the adversity never happened at all; you can’t abort the pregnancy of a born child. Faith is calling things that be not as if they be; Foolishness is calling things that be as if they be not! The only right question is not “why me?” …but“what next?” Think solution. Always remind yourself that there is no problem on earth without solution. NnamdiChibor will always tell me, “Every problem has a solution. No solution, no problem!” Yes, if it has no solution it is not a problem at all. Don’t waste your time and energy on things that can no longer be changed. Your most important assignment at every point in time remains your choice of attitude. Your attitude will determine whether it will be a stopping or a stepping stone. Crying over spilt milk will do you more harm than good. Facing reality and planning your next step is always the best choice. The past is over. Look upward and forward. God announced through Jeremiah (29:11); “The plan I have for you are good not evil; to give you a future!” Thus, it is all in the future not past. The best is yet to come and the better days are still ahead.
Concentrate on the now. Not even the greatest magician can change the past. Live in the present (and build a great future). It was Dennis Waitly who observed that, “The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will and I am. Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can’t do”. Stop looking backward. The truth is: You cannot move ahead when you are in reverse! Be like Thomas Jefferson who said that he prefers the dreams of the future better to the history of the past. Get caught day dreaming not worrying. Worrying wastes the bone and destroys the spirit; day dreaming supplies the energy that keeps you going. Stop brooding over that spilt milk. Even if you fill the bottle with tears, it is still but tears. William Shakespeare wrote, “Things without remedy should be without regard; what is done, is done!” You can’t abort the pregnancy of a born child. Crying over it is not the best option; running from it is not better either, but looking it deep into the eyes and discovering its beauty, opportunities and the great potentials it carry. Build on your failures to achieve a greater tomorrow. Seethe tripping stone as a stepping stone. Bewarned, the past is a smarter thief than you possibly imagine. Don’t let is steal your present! Hear John Maxwell, “You must learn to say goodbye to yesterday’s hurts, tragedies and baggage. You can’t build a monument to past problems and fail forward”.
Saul Bellow (1915-2005), a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize Winner, has this to say, “The real universe, that’s the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real-the here-and-now. Seize the day!” Always remind yourself that all that hashappenedhappened in the yesterdays. Every new day comes with its new package, blessings and challenges alike. Lam, 3:20 says “The steadfastness of the Lord never ceaseth. They are new every morning!” Wow that means, despite missing that of yesterday, there is a new fresh package available today! Seize it and forge ahead.
Don’t waste your time and energy worrying about the past. Don’t abuse the power of your creative imagination rehearsing what you should have done. The past has passed. Live in the present and create an unregrettable future. Writing on the dangers and futility of worry, US physician, Charles Horace Mayo (1865-1939) wrote, “Worry affect circulation, the heart and the gland, the whole nervous system and profoundly affect the heart. I have never known a man who died from overwork, but many who died from doubt.” Worry is like a rocking chair; it gives you a stressful work to do but gets you nowhere.Cut yourself off from the past. Severing the chains to your bygones restores your options for the future. Do everything necessary to uphold this severance. Develop the right attitudes and mindset. One major force that keeps people stuck in their past is unforgiveness. Forgiveness is a two way act. Forgive yourself and others. You can’t go forward if your mind is ridden with guilt. You must receive God’s forgiveness to free up yourself from the long term immobilization that guilty conscience brings. Receive divine forgiveness for things you have done that hurts and the ones you have not done that morality demands you should have done. Then forgive others. This is often the hard part but it shouldn’t be so. Forgiveness is like setting a prisoner free and then discovering that the prisoner was you. You must forgive those that have failed you or caused you to fail. Adam never divorced Eve. Stephen never cursed Saul. I so much love Job 42:10 where it says, “And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends…” Don’t dwell in unforgiveness, there is no place more uncomfortable! Let bygones be bygones. Forgive and forget. Encouraging black Americans to forgive their white counterparts, Civil Right leader, Rev. Dr Martin Luther told them, “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind”. Learn to overlook errors. No one is 100% perfect. Even your best friend with the best intention for you may err and hurt you in error. Forgive.
When you fail an exam in the University, it is mandatory to carry it over to the next session. But it is not so with life. Bad enough, most people who experience failure often make the mistake of carrying it over. Avoid this. Live in the present. Carefully avoid living in the past. You can never move forward with a reverse gear. Facing reality opens your doors of opportunity and allows creativity and innovative drive to blossom. Most people who return to face reality after a great failure came to the realization that what they thought was pain was actually a great gain. Borrow a leaf from Carlos Slim. The great business tycoon is today the world’s richest man. In the early 80’s, Mexico was in huge trouble. The economy failed and business ventures followed. Many including Slim, almost went bankrupt. Mexicans and non Mexicans alike fled the country. Stocky Carlos Slim remainedin the country and bought up assets from people at 20c on the dollar. Today the rest is history. Any fool can spot problems, but it takes a genius (of which you are one) to spot opportunity in the midst of chaos. Face reality. Every opportune failure has a hidden opportunity for greatness behind it. Until you face it squarely, you can never be able to see the gain behind the pain. The truth is, you can’t run away from your past-there aren’t a place more far. The reality you fail to embrace will really tie you down. When you embrace the reality of your past you free yourself from its control. Failing to face reality makes you forfeit the driving seat of your life to people and fate when you would still bear the full weight of its consequences if anything goes wrong the more. Refuse to be defeated. Always remember that it was in the past that you failed not in the present. You can still win big today!
D.L. Moody narrated this in his article, ‘cut the chords.’ Two heavily intoxicated men, on one night, went down to their boat to return to their homes across the bay. They got in and began to row. They rowed hard all night, wondering why it was taking them so long to get to the other side of the bay. When the sun came up and as the two became more sober, they discovered that their mooring-line had never been loosened and that their archer had not been raised.” Quitefunny; right? The truth is: Many today are like those drunken dudes! They are trying to move on in life in a similar fashion. Unfortunately, they cannot because they are still tied to their past. They are weighed down and immobilized by many hurts and things to forgive and forget. Cut the cord! Set yourself free from the dogging weight of past hurts and failures. A man can never run as fast with a bag of stone as he would without such.
The truth remains that it is grossly impossible to succeed in life without overcoming your past. Don’t cling to people’s hurts and opinions of yesterday. It was in the past that they said you cannot make it, not today. When the famous Paderewski began to learn piano, everyone’s honest opinion, including that of his teacher, was that his hands were too small to master the keyboard. Too passionate to stay down because of yesterday talks, Paderewski firedon to become a world renowned pianist. Always remember that you are a newer and better person than you were yesterday. Every new day makes you at least 24 hours/times older, better and more experienced than you were yesterday. Today, the man Enrico Caruso is remembered as one of the world’s greatest tenors. Yet, when he began to learn singing, his teacher told him that he sounded like the wind whistling through the window. Never allow the discouragement of yesterday dampen your today’s courage. Men’s opinions change. Don’t let it change you for bad. Consistently do what you have chosen to do. Like Paul and his observers, at the Island of Malta, people will change their mind and opinion about you suddenly. Shun the past. Move on without it. Keep going despite the past experiences.
Next, take responsibility. Avoid the blame game bug. The truth is, at the middle of every success or failure in your life is ‘U’. No one failed you. It was Albert Ellis who said, “The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You don’t blame them on your parents, the ecology or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny”.
CHAPTER 8
#2.RECOGNISE THAT SOMETHING BETTER IS AVAILABLE
Recognize that something better is still available. Losing hundreds of thousands doesn’t disqualify you from still being a potential millionaire. When my friend, Achy Kelz, was kicked out of the University unjustly, little did we know that he was being kicked into his place of destiny. For two years, just like Joseph Jacobs, His words tried him. Kelz started out as a pre-degree student. He then gained admission to do optometry the following year. While in Optometry, he was made the Course Rep. due to his reputable charisma and high moral standard. I was his closest friend, neighbour, course mate and confidant. We were always together in either person’s room: eating, cracking jokes or even doing school assignments together. However, just after one year in Optometry, I moved over to Medicine and Surgery with Kelz still in Optometry. Unfortunately, later that same year, Optometry was scrapped out from the school and its students disbanded. The school had lost Optometry after its failure to win accreditation to run it. All those who were still in either first or second year were asked to withdraw and join any of physical and biological science courses. They protested. “Give us medicine or nursing at least”, they all demanded. Kelz, the able Course Rep. was the leading voice in all their protests. Each student vowed to remain in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences come what may. Conversely, while Kelz busied himself moving from one office to another, rallying the support and pity of the Dean, Registrar and VC himself, others spit him at the back and changed department. By the time he knew it, he had become a lone voice in the wilderness. Worst still, Kelz was made a scape-goat and subsequently lost it all as neither Medicine nor any other department in the school agreed to accept him. He was devastated. He felt like suicide. I breezed in into my ministry of encouragement. Daily, I spent quality time with him, assuring and reassuring him that God has a better plan for him and would soon turn it all for his good. Like it is with many in their valley experience, my words seemed too abstract and even annoying. Yet, I pressed on. Kelz managed to write another matriculation exam, but he failed, woefully! There was no spirit left in him. However, I still encouraged him, even more. By then, his younger sister was already a graduate. Kelz, the first born of the family was completely devastated. “Son, I am ashamed of you”, became his dad’s favourite poem. Nonetheless, we kept praying together. By the time his mates entered 300L, Kelz wrote another University Matriculation Exam. Although he passed this time, he failed the school’s Post-UME aptitude test.
However, that same year, he got a connection to school in Poland. Guess what? On scholarship! I was reading all night at home during one of our usual protracted ASUU strikes when my phone rang. It was Kels. “Aruba m!” He hailed me. “My mannest man!” He added. I was thrilled by the great joy in his voice. He had never been that happy since I knew him. I immediately trimmed my ear to receive the great good news. However, the news turned out to be too good for my imagination. “Odims, pray for me oh. I’m just about to board a plane en route Poland”. He said. I was shocked. For several seconds, I was too dazed to talk. Seven months after, Kelz called me again. It happened that I was moving from Okigwe to Uturu, two villages in two different states that are only separated by a 5mins bus drive, when my phone rang. It was Kelz. He began with an apology that he had been too busy since arriving Poland. He then gave me a palatable shocker. When I asked him how his studies had been, “We are now on holiday”, came the sharp reply. “I’m currently in Russia now, just about to take a train ride to London”. He added. I was dumbfounded. Shame gripped me. I was happy to travel from one local village to another while my once next door neighbour toured Europe. That was a guy whom barely few months earlier there seemed to be no hope left for him at all.
God is not man. His assurances are sure. His word says, “Eyes have not seen ( ie it is not here yet), ears have not heard (i.e. it is not a super story, fairy tale or mere narrative of what happened in the past), nor has any mind (including yours) imagined what God has in plan for your life [1Cor.2:9]. I love that. Paul wrote of Him to the Ephesians (Eph.3:20) that God is mightily able to do more than we can ever ask or think. If you can think it, then it is too small for God to do. If you can imagine it, simply expect more. When Kelz and I first went to read in the medical block as optometry students, he prophetically told me that we were in our new department. He dreamt of his state university’s substandard medicine but God preferred Poland. My dad once warned me, “God is committed to His plan for your life not yours”. It is only our role to dream and plan but only His purpose that He would bring to pass. His will is to give you, not the good you think, but the best He has in stock for you. As every night births a new day, so also every test births a testimony. A man who spent the night complaining all through that it is dark, won’t have the strength to enjoy the light at the break of dawn. Violeta Parra puts it best, “Don’t cry when the sun is gone, because the tears won’t let you see the stars”. Repudiate all forms of self condemnation and blame. The truth is, adversity is not a direct result of past sin; God’s idea for adversity is to better you and not to barter you. Ask Henry Ward Beecher, “God uses suffering as a whetstone to make men sharper”. Most great ministries were born out of mysteries. Every bad, well managed, births something good. In the words of Sampson, “From the eater, comes something to eat” (Judges 14:14). It was Samuel Butler that gave us this timeless revelation, “The course of true anything never does run smooth”. Simply put, nothing good comes easy. Expect obstacles! Trials and temptations must surely come. Satan will never fold his unholy hands to watch you succeed when he knows that your success would become a source of inspiration and blessing to many. So, as he fights, fight back with persistence and perseverance. A Yiddish proverb says, “God gave burdens, also shoulders”. He knows that it is only the way of the cross that leads to the crown you crave for. Whenever He allows you to lose the good, be rest assured that the best is near. When David lost the fruit of his sin with Bethsheba, the merciful Lord gave them Solomon. Saul’s family’s missing ass led him to the kingship of Israel. Daniel lost his freedom in Israel but God gave him royalty in Babylon. When Joseph lost his place in his father’s heart and house, God made him a prime minister in Egypt. For lost of one professional career, God gave me three in the western part of my country. The truth is, for every allowed loss, lots are set loose for your good. Losing is often an evidence of an impending victory. Mignon McLaughlin once observed, “When suffering comes, we yearn for signs from God, forgetting that we have just had one”. The very week I left my state’s University, I reached a book deal with a publishing firm that will later land my novel in every home, nationwide. Just few months after that devastating disappointment, I bagged another admission into a far much better, cheaper, calmer and more equipped medical school. Indeed, the best won’t come until the good is either lost or better still sown as a seed. When you fail at a thing after giving it your all, it doesn’t mean that God is unjust; it simply means that He is hatching a better plan. He is an unfathomable God. Don’t waste time trying to figure it out how he would do it. In a dream one day, I was faced with the challenge of crossing a collapsed bridge. Many alongside me were stranded too. While I was in a deep thought on what to do and at the same time at the verge of falling off the cliff, an unknown fellow suddenly grew into a giant, spreading his legs to stand on the two sides of the cliff, he carried me to the other side, into safety. As I woke up, the lord laid a word on my heart saying: “Stop trying to figure me out”. That day was Thursday December 5,2013.