What is Your Life’s Work?
My fascination with great human achievements started from an early age.
If I were to retrace its origins, my footsteps in memory would lead back to a book my father bought me in my early teens titled, “The Ones That Came Before Us.”
I can’t remember much about what the book looked like or what it said, but what is unforgettable were the pencil drawings in the book — something that appealed strongly to the young artist in me. They were drawings of the historic characters whose life stories were told in the book, and boy wasn’t I inspired.
I wanted to be like these people. I wanted to be great.
Coming from a childhood that bordered on precocious, I could draw, paint, sing, and play musical instruments and I passed every subject in class topping my class until it seemed a normal thing to do. I didn’t see why I couldn’t be like them.
Seeing that the people featured in The Ones That Came Before Us were from diverse backgrounds and fields made me a little more optimistic. At the time, skin color was not a consideration in my evaluation of status or circumstance neither was Death a familiar notion. So, it didn’t matter that there were no Africans like me in the line-up or that all the people whose stories were being told were dead.
What I saw on the contrary was that some were of noble birth, others were children of slaves; some were prodigies, others were late bloomers; some men, others women. They didn’t seem much different from any of us but for the great feats they pulled off in their lifetime.
Armed with this and the giddy feeling of invincibility that comes with unbridled youth, I set out to conquer the world — a young boy, born to civil servant parents in Ondo Town with a mind as fertile as black soil and hopes as high as hell.
Two decades later, older, more introspective, and having made my mark in my own ways, I realize that what must have been the central attribute common to all those people in “The Ones that Came Before Us” beyond their conferred immortality was devotion.
Total devotion to something.
Life’s Work
Meeting up with a friend recently, who had seen the paintings on the Sistine Chapel ceilings and was humbled by the genius of Michelangelo, we discussed the concept of Life’s Work.
Michelangelo, as we are told, worked on his back from a scaffold for over 4 years to bring this masterpiece to life. 4 years (I imagine) of back-breaking, nerve-wracking, space mapping. Layering time into the hues to bring humanity the Sistine Chapel gift. The same can be said of Baba Alajo Somolu; Ekenedilichukwu of Eastern Nigeria logistics fame, King Sunny Ade — unrivaled prolific maestro; Bishop Ajayi Crowther — the beatified saint of the Yoruba language in written form.
There is nothing greatness expects other than devotion — total devotion. Maybe that would be an exaggeration but the role of devotion in achieving greatness cannot be understated.
From Eminem, Tolkien, Bill Gates, the Williams Sisters, to Lang Lang and the multitude of unsung heroes whose names resonate in smaller spheres in their relative corners of the world, we are reminded that greatness requires doing — doing a thing consistently for a long time.
I recall that one of the things I couldn’t wrap my head around in my post-mortem analysis of the lives of the great people I read about in that inspiring collection of human achievements was how time seemed a different resource in their hands.
“Didn’t we all have the same 24 hours?”
Whenever I hear about someone who has spent 40 years following a cause; or 10 years writing an epic; or 25 years working on an idea my mind returns to this seeming contradiction in their lives and that of the rest of us. It is as if they had more time when in essence they simply did more with their time.
Time is what the greats of this world have converted into great deeds. But it is not Time en bloc as we see it with rear-facing eyes. It is not the 40, 10, or 25 years they have spent doing that thing. It is the daily contributions, their little advancements and setbacks, and the consistent devotion that built up to the greatness we now celebrate.
It is their life’s work.
What is your Life’s Work?
What is that thing you are devoted to?
Not all of us will attain greatness to the degree of the men and women whose faces I copied in pencil from the pages of “The Ones That Came Before Us.” Indeed, not many of us want it or aspire to it actively. And that isn’t unusual because many of those people we celebrate also didn’t set out to achieve greatness. Many died, unknightly until the world caught up with their genius centuries later.
Like us, in their time, many were just ordinary people who found a path worth taking and walked a few steps each day in pursuit of purpose.
To the bearer of many talents, more will be given; but from the bearer of little shall be taken away.
For a long time, I thought this principle was unfair but now I understand it.
To those who consistently ply their vocation, there will be more insight and those insights will lead them further down the path of purpose they’ve chosen to walk. Their journey will become lonelier but more familiar, and with time they will do in less time and what may appear as less effort, what others find difficult.
And, for all their life’s work, Life will reward them greatly — with wealth, fame, or immortality; and we will have no choice but to know them and celebrate them for their chosen paths.
This is the nature of greatness and to those of us that desire it, this is a thing to think about in making our life work.