Patricia Nkwane, The Author
Last year I did a little survey to find out people’s thoughts on who I really was. I asked several people the question who am I? First was my son and he said you are my mother, Olga said you are my friend, the taxi driver said you are a passenger and many more responses. Reality is that it was all true. I am a mother because I have a son, a friend because I have the person I call a friend and a passenger because I was in a taxi but I realized something. All the answers are dependent on something or a certain condition. That is people’s definition of who you are, it depends on a condition. The perceive you based on something, so [ads1]who really are you beside the conditions. That is self-definition. An evaluation by oneself one’s worth as an individual indistinct from what other people think.
Self-definition is where you build a picture of the person you are, your true identity that is not based on any other person’s opinion. You build a true definition of yourself that is not based on what people say. See people may hate you, rate you, silence your voice or break you but how strong you stand is what really defines you. It is that definition of thyself that fuels your success. I remember back in primary when I was doing standard 3 my teacher back then in Tholodi told my aunt I was what she defined as ‘naturally stupid’. She said with a brain like mine one could never be able to read and write, my family started to call me Lebonga meaning an idiot which was later nicknamed to be baby Bongani.
Based on my limitations, close to twelve years after that I graduated from a very prestigious University with not only a first class but as the overall best student from all the campuses of Botho University in the country. If I would have never taken time to define myself, to find my worth I would have never gotten to know who I really am. I would have never gotten to meet the most vibrant, intelligent, enthusiastic and innovative Patricia I know today. Self-definition makes your aware of your strength, your capabilities and your hidden qualities.
Talking of hidden qualities I remember a story I once heard: it’s about a man who picked up an egg as he was walking on the bush, it was an egg of an eagle. So this man took this egg and put amongst the eggs of one of his hens, the egg hatched with the chicks and grows up with them. All its life the eagle did what the chickens did, it would poke around in the dirt looking for worms and insects to eat, fly a few feet in the air like a chicken, cluck around like chickens do and as time passed it got old and died. That eagle lived and died a chicken because that’s what its surrounding made it believe it was.
I don’t know what your surrounding made you believe you are but I know one thing if the eagle mastered the law of self-definition it would have never died a chicken. Refuel your success, take time to get to know who you really are, to realize and appreciate you for who you are beside the limitation that’s been put on you because if you don’t know who you are you will keep creating identities of yourself, consequently going further from your true self and denying you the opportunity to reach your dreams.
Like Maya Angelou says in one of my favorite poems: they may write you down in history with their bitter twisted lies but when you know who you really are, like the air you will rise…
#BeUnstoppable
