On Finding Purpose (Inspirational Nonfiction)

You were in primary school the first time you thought about being something.

You had just finished watching a Nat Geo Wild show with your family and you didn’t understand how those videos were made. So you asked your older brother in university if it was animals that recorded their fellow animals, and he told you no.

“That’s the job of a wildlife photographer,” he said.

Job. Sounded fancy.

The concept of having a job, though new, sounded appealing to you.

So you responded, “I want to be a wildlife photographer.”

“God forbid!” your mother rebuked. “Kosiso, why is your own always different, ehn?”

But you didn’t understand what she meant by different. All you knew was that you wanted to make videos of animals, so you started telling your friends and teachers your plans too.

On the day you wrote your first school leaving certificate exam, someone had a seizure and you changed your mind.

The girl was from the school across the street. The one that teachers always said you and your classmates had to beat at everything. The one you all were secretly in competition with.

But this girl started shaking and it was your school’s nurse that came to her aid. And teachers from all the present schools stopped what they were doing to check if the girl would be okay. Thankfully, she was.

This act of kindness displayed by the nurse made you decide to become a nurse too. You had a vision. You would be kind. You would save lives and save children from failing their exams because they could not breathe.

Throughout your junior years in secondary school, you were wavering a little bit. On some days you still wanted to be a nurse, and on others, you wanted to be a dentist. After reading Gifted Hands, you swore to become a neurosurgeon and separate your own set of Siamese twins someday. You were getting confused, but at least you were still in the path of saving lives right? Nothing spoil.

Plus you couldn’t leave this path because you could not stop thinking about your mother. The smile her lips formed when she came for one Open Day and you said “A Neurosurgeon” when they asked you what you wanted to be in future. You couldn’t forget how it made you feel too. She finally approved.

But during your JSS3 holiday, you went to catechism class one day and afterwards, you had a conversation with your friends. Everyone was talking about what they wanted to be. Whether they would choose science, arts, or commercial arts in SS1. And you realized just how much you hadn’t thought about this from any other point of view other than making your parents proud.

What about you? Would you be making yourself proud? You got confused again.

“Kosi, your mummy told my mummy that you want to be a neurosurgeon. What do they do?” One of them asked.

At that moment you figured out that you didn’t know. You were not sure. All you knew was that Ben Carson was a neurosurgeon who separated twins, and he was a cool guy, and people liked him. And you wanted to be cool too.

“They separate twins”, you said, more like a question than an answer.

“Why would anyone want to separate twins?” Another asked.

“No, like conjoined twins.”

There was an awkward silence and they all looked so confused. Suddenly you felt so little. Then you got enraged. These people are unexposed, why am I even associating with them? You mumbled something about needing to get home and stormed off.

Your walk home was introspective. You knew the truth but hope was blurring the lines a bit. Hope of the respect neurosurgery would garner for you. Hope that your mother will finally believe that your own is not different.

But you knew it wasn’t good to become something just for honour and glory. It should be because, from the bottom of your heart, you want to be that person.

So you changed your mind again. You didn’t know what you were changing it to yet, but you would figure it out. You still had time.

By the time Senior WAEC exams were drawing near, you knew in your heart that you wanted to create stuff. You had an eye for art but not the kind that is found in the Nigerian curriculum. Not the kind that is just the opposite of science. Real art. But stuff like that doesn’t fly in Nigeria. And your mother might just have a heart attack. So you decided to apply for a course you believed you could always find your way around.

You got admission to study Computer Science at the University of Benin and you were elated. Not because you gave a damn about Computer Science, (you didn’t, duh) but because for you, getting a degree was a no-brainer and also because you would finally get to figure out who you were and who you could become.

Unfortunately, life is an expert at dealing us other cards than the ones we expect. You spent four years in university and never really figured it out. And you had tried everything; writing, video editing, programming (which you absolutely abhorred, by the way), 3D design, and even clothing customization but nothing did it for you. Nothing felt like passion, or even fun.

Until one random Thursday afternoon two years after graduating. You were on your lunch break at work, watching random YouTube shorts. Anything to relieve the stress of your God-forsaken accounting job (Yes, accounting. Welcome to Nigeria.)

You had been watching all the other videos absentmindedly, just for the sake of it, but you scrolled onto this particular video and your senses heightened, your interest was piqued, and you felt like a person who stumbled upon a treasure. Like the biblical people who walked in darkness and had seen a great light.

You swiped right to the account’s profile and went through more similar videos. Dots were connecting. Puzzle pieces were fitting. A fire was igniting.

This was it. This was the thing that did it for you. And it had been right under your nose this whole time. But a random animation about styling an empty bedroom from start to finish was what opened your eyes to a new reality.

You started thinking about all the times you would walk into your friends’ rooms and point out a curtain that didn’t match the aesthetic or a bed that wasn’t positioned with ventilation in mind, or a wardrobe that didn’t compliment the tiles’ undertone.

You remembered how your older brother almost killed you one day after he came back from boarding school and noticed you’d rearranged his room. He threw a fit but he never told you to undo the arrangement. And the time your mother video-called you to ask for your opinion on the new wallpaper design for the kitchen. “You have eyes for beauty” she would say.

She was right. You do have eyes for beauty. For pattern matching and color matching and furniture positioning, and you could make any house feel like a home.

You had found it. The thing that lit a fire inside you. Your passion. Your purpose. You may be twenty-four at an accounting job you hate but if there’s one thing Ben Carson taught you, it’s that it’s never too late.

Fueled with hope and faith for what the future holds and what God could have in store for you, you open a new tab on Google and type in your first search term:

“How to become an interior designer.”

Thank you for reading In Black and White! This post is public so feel free to share it.