The Lectern: THE LAW OF THE ICEBERG

Hi.

Here’s announcing the start of a new series on Words Are Work. It is called ‘The Lectern’ and is really a column for you, all of you, to express those thoughts no one ever paid you a penny for. For family, friends, fellow bloggers, writers, and – I am really hoping – readers, everybody, The Lectern is a platform beneath your feet and a microphone up against your mouth, thus the motto: That we might be read…  

If you have a piece you would like ‘read’, send it via email to ojukwumartin@gmail.com; title the mail ‘The Lectern’. And for those of us who feel the need to ‘be read’ but are yet undecided about a subject matter, send me an email and we can talk through it and select something appropriate for you. My editing and fine-tuning skills are offered free of charge too…(no cameras please)

We start off the maiden edition today with ‘The Law of the Iceberg’ which is courtesy of a colleague, Seun Abejide. Be kind enough to pen down your (chocolate-flavored) criticisms, comments and thoughts in the right sections below. Till later…have a WAW experience!

That we might be read…

“No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.”

― Ansel Adams

THE LAW OF THE ICEBERG

Bimpe is an only child, a teenager resident in Ikoyi, Lagos with her family. She very recently returned from a 3-month summer vacation in the UK – her first time ever to leave the country. While on the trip, she lived with her mum who has lived in the UK for over a decade now. Bimpe’s departure date was planned so it was concomitant with the commencement of her mother’s vacation leave, and when it came around, mother and daughter returned to Lagos together.

In the month since her return, Bimpe has taken on a superficial attitude that pisses everyone around her off. She refuses to play with her neighborhood friends because ‘they are local people’; she refuses to eat with her hands anymore and insists that her bread must always be toasted; and she skips and hops all around her house chores – ‘they could get dirt in her nails’.

One evening, her father returned from work to find Bimpe cowered into a corner by her exasperated mother who stood over her with a cane, yelling. Intermittently, she flicked the slender wood over Bimpe’s flesh in a visibly half-hearted attempt to discipline the errant child; and every time the cane brushed her body, Bimpe whimpered like a little scared kitten.

Flick! “Ouch”, she whimpered. Flick! “Ouch”. Flick! “Ouch! Mummy, you’re hurting me” she enunciated in a very nasal voice.

Now fed up with the child’s act, Bimpe’s father stepped up and took the cane from his wife. He flexed it once and let rip on Bimpe’s clothed back with the cane: WHACK!

For a split second nothing happened. Then Bimpe’s eyes widened, her face contorted into an astounded cum tortured mask and her back arched at an angle so acute that she should have cracked. Then she screamed, “CHAAAEEE!!!”

WHACK! WHACK!! came her father’s reply.

“YEKPAAAA” Bimpe yelled again, springing up. “E GBA MI OH!!!” And she raced off like an alaye cat whose tail was on fire.

MORALE: Pretend on the outside all you want, what you are on the inside will eventually, always, out-shine it.

And on that note, I present to you, The Law of the Iceberg.

Experts estimate that on the average, only 10 percent of the entire mass of an iceberg appears above the surface. What that means is that 90 percent of the mass is beneath the surface and is invisible to those above the surface. The Law of the Iceberg, as put together by Todd Duncan, states that ‘the truest measure of your success is invisible to the people around you’.

Your success as seen by people could be summarized by your income, official designation, accolades and material possessions, but the truest measure of your success, Todd Duncan espoused, lies deeper within you in the form of your values, character, passions, desires, goals and purpose in life. Most of the latter are hardly ever visible to the outside world, so that what the world actually does see is often – and should rightly be – the tip of the iceberg.

Unfortunately, the exact opposite is the case majorly among the young folks of the present society many of whom are largely empty barrels living off the cliché, ‘fake it till you make it’.

Party-pooper alert! You cannot fake it for long if you have nothing on your inside, which is why Kenneth E. Hagin said that “it doesn’t matter how beautifully you label a can if it is empty; a labeled empty can is still an empty can”. Robert Kiyosaki also intimated the ‘Be-Do-Have’ principle when he said: “Before you can have, you need to do, and before you can do, you need to be”.

Folks have tried to reverse this principle unsuccessfully. We think that if we have what certain people we term successful have then we can get to do what they do and therefore we could be like them. But we forget that we need to have roots. Deep roots.

How many times have we seen someone looking successful only to find out he was a hoax? Remember that musician who comes out with a hit song, causes raves and in six months, he’s gone? We hear nothing of the artist ever again. Also the young man who buys a new car, rents a 3 million naira apartment, marries a wife but is broke in four years, busted and disgusted begging for his next meal? Or the curious case of lottery winners?

On the other hand, there are people whose present positions in their lives’ journeys do not look like much yet they have a quiet assurance within them that makes them excel at most things. Because they have roots.

I am reminded of the very first time I watched the now famous Nigerian rapper M.I.; it was on the lunch hour show of the local television station MiTV some years ago. The little man looked tired and hungry in over-sized clothes which he probably borrowed from a bigger friend to make an appearance on TV with. He didn’t look like much. But when he went on to rap, I knew he was different; I judged him as a more than a flash in the pan. True to my judgment, M.I. has gone on to become “African Rapper No. 1”, the only Nigerian artiste ever to have sold one CD for 200 million naira.

On another pedestal, a lot of really wealthy people appear so simple that it is difficult to associate them with their great wealth. No wonder Poju Oyemade said that “highly successful people are masters of understatement.” Indeed, what we see on the outside is often not an accurate representation of how successful a person is.

Still on the earlier analogy around an iceberg, imagine sawing off the visible surface of the block of ice. What would happen next is the appearance of another tip, a dense substantial mass of ice which would float around for a while until the entire block of mass becomes stable again. in fact, a thin iceberg – one without a foundation – is more a slab of ice than an iceberg, and it would play slave to the ever-changing ebbs and flow of the tides.

In similar fashion, without a solid foundation beneath the surface of your life, the surface success may never be stable. What is on the outside is important of course – appearance matters – but it is not nearly as important as the stuff we have on the outside for many reasons, most relevant among which is the fact that the inside produces the outside.

If you are ever going to have or be anything, reader, it’s going to come from your inside before it can work on your outside.

Money on the inside, working on the outside;

beauty on the inside, working on the outside;

genius on the inside, working on the outside;

wisdom on the inside, working on the outside;

excellence on the inside, working on the outside;

success on the inside, working on the outside.

So says The Law of the Iceberg.

By Seun Abejide