adminGarvin Maduku
Garvin Maduku is a third-year Purchasing and Supply student at Bindura University of Science Education. He first appeared on this space making a distress call over the injustices of the university internship system. He loves reading The Manica Post and welcomes the chance it gives to students at all stages of their education distilling wisdom and sharing wise counsel. His contribution on Students Making Progress this week is as follows:
For years I used the word “greatness”. I always said I wanted to achieve it. I dreamt of being documented as one of the great achievers of my time. That was long before I thought about it seriously. After second or even third thoughts, I really wanted to know what it really is. Whether or not it is achievable is what I want to know.
To begin with, what is greatness after all? Someone once asked if we are born with it. Maybe it comes about through nurture and not nature? What, it could even be through commitment, passion, discipline, and strife for perfection that one can achieve it? What if I am wrong and greatness is only about destiny and being extraordinary?
Of all the above, I would choose commitment, passion, discipline and strife for perfection to constitute ingredients of greatness. These are the basic ingredients that I would choose as my route to greatness.
Personally I would say greatness is then about “doing the extraordinary without being extraordinary”. This means I can achieve greatness despite the challenges present in my immediate environment. It is not about flowing with the tide and seeing yourself there. It is on the contrary, about manoeuvring strange tides and ultimately getting where you want to be.
Henry Ford, Einstein, Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King and Thomas Edison, to name but a few, did not achieve greatness by chance but by choice rather. They had the same 86 400 seconds a day that we have, but they utilised that time to become who they became.
They set their sights on achieving their set goals. Instead of just dreaming, they went all out to put themselves to task and made sure they did it. They did exactly what Baltasa said, “BE CONTENT TO ACT, AND LEAVE THE TALKING TO OTHERS”.
Now I am wondering if I can really do as these gentlemen did. They had nothing of note at the beginning of it all, but they ended up having all that is enviable. They were naturally able to die for their visions. They justified their living by being able to change the lives of others, and doing what that little voice in them told them to do.
If these guys were able to do this after they grew up in similar ghettos like ours, why then can we not achieve the same? It may really be a problem to say this aloud and expect our dear friends to accept this, but I would say IT IS ONLY AFTER CHOOSING A PATH, THAT YOU CAN REALLY START USING IT AS YOUR WAY. I would like to encourage my fellow students to be firm on their visions and strive for greatness. It is now that we should put our feet down and choose a path that leads to greatness.
I put pen to paper, for the sake of those of us who would like to be great achievers. Alan T. Armstrong once said: “Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it.
“The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character.”
What this simply means is that you are already a great achiever and not performing is disfavour to yourself since greatness is already in you.
What I would like to believe is that we all wish to be better people in life. If we are really pursuing this vision then we should know that we can defy all odds and be who we want to be.
Garvin G. Maduku is a third-year Purchasing and Supply student at Bindura University of Science Education.
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