I don’t know where my singing voice went. True. But once – for a brief season – I was in a choir. This was at the Nigerian Law School, Enugu Campus, Agbani, with the Christian Law Students Fellowship (CLASFON). And, it appears, I was one of the few male members of that choir. Looking back now, I see that this strange pull towards the microphone, towards the stage, that has taken me through many incarnations, was a bit like young Samuel hearing a voice in the night calling him, and getting up each time to answer at the door of Eli. Till the old priest said to the young seeker, “I am not the one calling you, Samuel. Next time you hear that voice, say to it – ‘Hear I am, Lord, speak for your servant listens.’”
Like this, when you have no one to guide you, it is possible for your calling – the reason or reasons why you were born – to drive you through several professions, professions that approximate – but are not quite – your purpose. Like this, it is possible for you to use your God-given gifts in ways other than the way or ways He planned for you to use them. It is possible to wander, and to seek, and to find what you think is your place today only to discover tomorrow that it is not, and perhaps the day after that it is. But, if this is where you find yourself, upon a path where the contentment you feel today is tomorrow replaced by an uneasy sense that, once again, this is not home – then, so be it, do not grow weary of setting forth at dawn, again and again. For he who seeks must continue to seek until he finds.
But infinitely blessed are you if you have a guide, a helper, along your path. To tell you, like Eli told Samuel, what to do to sate the insatiable thirst within your soul for fulfilment. Like my younger brother, who in many ways is an older brother, always says – ‘follow who know road’. Like this, you must never let your ego stop you from submitting to those who know how to help you answer the recurring questions in your life. I tell you, it is a tragedy that will long haunt you when, at key junctions, you fail to recognize those who were put there to be your teachers, to be your leaders, to be your guides through that section of your journey. You see? I know what this tragedy feels like. And it has taught me a humility that will never leave me. For even now I am certain I have not yet fully answered my call in the way that I should. But, at least now, I no longer struggle much to listen to those who, the moment they speak, I know were put in my path to help me zero in on my purpose. And for this I am grateful. For there is no GPS on the road of life – only the voice of God in your heart, and the people around you who have been where you are attempting to go. You see? A master is one who not only knows what she knows not, but from whom she must learn it. This is all.
