Build Your Dream and Die for It

Dream
Nelson Okwonna is a business coach and DFID consultant

Leaders are dealers in hope. They are not hope-dealers because they are more optimistic than the rest of the team but because they are less afraid – not unafraid – to follow their instincts. They smell out water and follow the chase, some have died before they found water but the ones we celebrate today are those who found their chase and fulfilled their dream.

Often times, their chase is not entirely rational especially at first, at least to the onlooker. It is not that leaders are entirely irrational but often operate with different hues of rationality. Much more than others, the leader is much more prone to cross-examine herself; as she is operating by a higher yardstick. The fears and criticisms of onlookers help her in this quest – to verify her persuasions, hence the necessity of these.

She is special, like the rest of us are and her task also is; so she thinks herself double so and with this,heaven agrees.

Her failings force her to learn more, to study more and to engage the deliberate act of exposing herself to new ideas and people. She knows the drawings by heart but needs the information out here to help execute her blueprint. Between the actual execution and the learning curves are timelines – the price the leader must pay, the ability to survive this interval is a combination of the grace of God and practical wisdom. Wisdom to prepare for the rainy day and the hope when preparations fail – as they often do.

The leader is somewhat spiritual – she hears things and most time has a great deal more faith in those things than in the observable. To kill her before time, one must first disconnect the vital link –this meditative heart, to fill it with noise and cares.

A leader knows that life is really a preparation for death – not a cessation from existence but a completion of the race of this particular phase of life. She lives not to survive it or to just exist because she knows she would always do (we all will keep existing), rather she lives to be ready for the finish line –to die. With her, God is really glad, for she has lived as she ought to.

For her journey, she must be wise and hopeful. This is written to remind her that both are within grasps, that though the errors of life be many, but with a strong inner motivation, she can arrive ready –having done all that creator had put in her heart. For some, that path might involve many failures but these kinds are akin to those of a child learning to walk. The one who stumbled trying – and all would, might have failed to stand but the wisdom is not in calm sitting but in the faith to try again.