The POTENTIAL IV: Staying True
Once upon a time, there lived a poor hunter and his childless wife. One day, while gathering wood in the forest, the wife built a maiden out of snow. "If only you were real," she sighed, "how I would love and treat you."
The forest queen heard the wife's wish. She promised to turn the snow maiden into a real girl. But with one condition: in place of a heart, she would have an icicle. With that, the maiden magically came to life. "If she ever steps outside the snow forest," the forest queen warned, "the ice will melt, and she will die."
For many years, the snow maiden and the wife lived together. Then one day, the wife died. The snow maiden was sad. She moved through the forest until she came upon a young boy from the village, lost in the woods. Taking pity, the snow maiden led him to the edge of the forest. If she walked any further, she knew her heart of ice would melt.
The snow maiden looked into the boy's eyes and knew what she must do....
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It is no longer news that to survive in the days and weeks and months to come one must break forth and start his own business, set boundaries and realise those limits (as) set, and mind one's business. That we must shift gaze from the ambitious, ambiguous, Agenda we are asked to look unto, and look within. That we must hold our destinies in our hands and defend our sovereignty, security and sanity. That hope comest not from the Centre, not from the House, not from the Court, not even from the Rock- the only water in this wilderness is Mara and Moses is yet in Sambisa looking for our girls.
Hope comest from within us. It is held in our arms, held by our hands, close to our hearts. It is not threatened by Boko Haram, it is not starved by the incredibly high cost of living, it is no longer disabled by PHCN, or whatever it is now called (even Airtel has stopped changing names; for by their changing names ye shalt know them). It is our ingenuity, it is our industry, it is our business; and we Nigerians are an enterprising lot.
Yet as one breaks forth, he soon realises that running a business is no easy task; keeping it afloat, much more so. That the journey must be rough, time must be tough, and to succeed must one cover as much distance in as little time. That one must be questioned, and oneself must one question.
For a time comes in business when one's stance is requested, when one's nature must be revealed. When one is confronted by illegitimate and/or immoral options, when the promise of greater profit seems premise enough to profit off the burying of one's true self: You just discovered a way to hide income and cut taxes; you have just come into some cheaper (smuggled) goods and the hope of increasing profit; you have just been taught how administering steroids can fatten your animals and reduce cost.
To be or not to be?- becomes the question one must answer.
It is proverbial that to discover new lands, must one consent to lose sight of shore; yet which shore? the shore of one's conscience? Yes, at what cost must one succeed in business? at the cost of one's integrity?
Challenges must arise no doubt, failure must scent; but to oneself must one be true. One must stand by that which he believes in, by that which he holds as right, as fair, as true, even in the face of uncertainty, even in the midst of threats and anger, even in spite of Verdicts and Edicts, Indictments and Inquisitions, Denials and Betrayals, Early retirements and Forced leaves, and to spite Presidential silences and hush-shush - or pastoral invectives, ambitions, and na-me-holy-pass.
It may be that one will be the subject of a bulletin, called arrogant and dirty, maligned, because his accusers cannot answer him in honesty and truthfulness, because they cannot look him in the eye and acknowledge their own lust, their own ambition, because they are too many, too holy, to be wrong, because they must have God on their side by default.
It may be that one will be lucky, that she will vanish and be no more, true to herself even to her last breath...
***
She took the boy to his father and as she watched these two happy souls, her heart of ice melted. And she died. The snow maiden's body turned into a perfect snow flake that rose into the air and danced with the breeze. And her last vanished in the sunlight.
***
But it may also be that the gods will that one be fortunate, in which case he will be rewarded for staying true to self, for not compromising, for not losing focus, loosing grip and placing integrity in loos. He will succeed and be renowned. He will succeed his detractors, and be remembered long after he is no more.
And it is with such high hopes that I share with you this story of Kreb, the discoverer of the famous citric acid (now also called Kreb's) cycle that powers nearly every cell - and cellular organism - as I leave to prepare the next in this series, The POTENTIAL V: Assets, Liabilities...
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The manuscript proposing the citric acid cycle was submitted for publication to Nature but was rejected:
"June 1937
The editor of NATURE presents his compliments to Dr. H. A. Krebs and regrets that as he has already sufficient letters to fill the correspondence columns of NATURE for seven or eight weeks, it is undesirable to accept further letters at the present time on account of the time delay which must occur in their publication.
If Dr. Krebs does not mind much delay the editor is prepared to keep the letter until the congestion is relieved in the hope of making use of it.
He returns it now, in case Dr. Krebs prefers to submit it for early publication in another periodical."
It was subsequently published in Enzymologia. Dr. Krebs proudly displayed the rejection letter throughout his career as encouragement for young scientists.
For this discovery, Sir (Dr.) Hans Adolf Krebs shared the 1953 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine.
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Ayokunle Adeleye,
Sagamu.