The Hidden Destiny

When I was fourteen, my mother and I hit a rough spot where we couldn't even afford to buy food we used to go to churches to get meals, because otherwise, we would've gone hungry. But I had an ideal. I took a plastic bucket and put a sign on it that said, "please help. We need money." Too embarrassed to let anyone see me with it, I put it next to the road and looked out the window hoping people who went by would drop money in it. Needless to say, it didn't work. Even worse, my mother saw it, and it punched a hole in her heart. "You don't have to do this," she said, tears streaming down her face." We'll make it somehow, But I couldn't do nothing. The feeling of powerlessness was killing me. A few days later. I notice a Girl Scout going door-to-door, selling fruits, by the time she got to the end of the street, all her fruits were gone, and she had a wad of money in her hand. That's when I learned one of the most important lessons of life.... You can't just wait for people to put money in a bucket. You have to go to them, not expect them to come to you. But what could I give them? We didn't even have enough food for ourselves, much less supplies fruits. I look around and found a peom I'd written for my mother. It was all I could afford to give her for mother's Day. "That's it," I thought. "I'll sell poems." Over the next few days, I wrote a dozen or so poems. Each of them less than a page. And then I made little frames for them out of popsicle sticks. When I was done, I went to every house on the street my neighbors opened their doors and saw a skinny little boy sitting outside, selling poems for thirty Naira apiece. What do you think happened? You guessed it, I sold every single one of those poems. Not a single person said no. I made #1200 from my writing that day. Later we went to the store , and little Uche, a 14-year-old kid bought his family's groceries for the first time. Still brings tears to my eyes, thinking about it. A month later, my mother found work, and I stopped going door-to-door, pestering the neighbors, but I was never quite the same after that. I got rid of a demon that's plagued writer's for century: Shame. We love to write. We love to share our gift. We love to see it touch people. So must of us never promote our work at all.or if we do, it's the equivalent of putting a bucket by the road and watching out the window, hopping somebody drop a dollar in. But that's not the way the world works. If you want to succeed, you have to be brave. You have to fight for your work. Subscribe to our free email news notification for latest news and articles