TIED IN THE WEB by tosin onabanjo

Oluwamitomisin [Type the abstract of the document here. The abstract is typically a short summary of the contents of the document. Type the abstract of the document here. The abstract is typically a short summary of the contents of the document.]

[Type the company name] [Type the company address] [Type the phone number] [Type the fax number] [Pick the date]

Tied in the Web She had these beautiful eyes like her mother. You can hardly tell the difference. bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb She swayed her hips as she made way to the entrance of the house. With hands holding the rails, she shouted, Shit! I am trapped. Susan’s mother ran forward to help, but from a distance, Susan shouted, I am fine. You could see the disappointment in the mother’s eyes, as she watch her struggle for hours, yet with so much love, she held out her hands. Susan let me help you. You’ve got to let me, she said. How long would you stay trapped? Mum, No! I will be fine, just leave me. I will be fine, Susan added quickly. Soft tears began rolling down her cheeks, as she tried leaping to her feet. Her mother made a few steps and this time, held Susan’s leg. Lift your leg up, she said softly. Close your eyes! You have to bear the pain, Susan Let me help you. Susan began struggling, Mum I am fine. It’s Ok. I can bear the pain mum. Her mum tried pulling her leg more as Susan shivered and then she saw the trap. It’s a huge trap! This one is a webbed Trap. Do you know how it feels to be trapped in a fisher’s bait? You might be wondering, how am I expected to know that? I have never been a Mackerel. Better still, a spider’s web. Susan is one of the millions that are trapped in the web called AVERAGE, yet feels no need for help or denies a source. Some have got their eyes blindfolded, feet tied, hands cuffed, ears blocked, and all they can do is bear the pain. Their voices are similar, their words are familiar. It will be good someday, be better tomorrow, be best in years to come, they say. They all summon the courage to sing a new song but read the same lyrics. But will yesterday ever pass? Will today ever end? Will tomorrow ever come? If you are lucky to have lived in the hub like me, you can’t help tracking a spider, at least in your home. As a small child, I have watched this little creature close the farthest distance and knot the shortest string. I am of age, yet the image does not elude me as a spider walk, as if moving forward, yet moves backward and as if working upward yet on the downturn and with the most intriguing feeling of the weight it pulls along its back. For a poor vision, it webs its way through for survival. This is not a rare kind for spiders. However, it is a simile form of a man’s character, who for the vision to survive, move into the future but drags along the whole of his past. Like the spider, he ties himself to the centre of the web of the average and extends his hands out to the next average and looks forward to the topmost average. We all live in a world of conformity and like the spider webs-on in wait for its prey; we are often webbed into the conformity for the average. The average would not believe that one day an iron cast would fly in the air and carry humans; neither will the possibility of reaching a once distant land a near thought.

The conformity for the average begins in the labour room, as nurses ran helter skelter to get a silent new born child to cry. A mother gets worried for her child who cannot walk according to a doctor’s timetable and a teacher often write-off a boy because his performance isn’t similar with his peers. A child begins to grow with this same image to be someone he is not, to be dressed like another, walk the way it’s painted and live in the standard that was written. A boy ends his career because a teacher noted, “Lacks capacity”. A girl quits her vocal lesson for a laboratory session because her father once yelled, “you have a horrible voice”. For the wants of orderliness, lives have been lost to conformity and in the midst of this imperfection and crave for conformity, the originality of the mind is lost, the power of the brain is underestimated, and the hope of a man is bury in the mud. It’s saddening when a solution is buried unexplored, a cloth is burnt unused, a car is scrapped untouched. In the quest to stand for conformity, visions have been aborted, a story is left untold, a song is left unheard, a book is left unpublished, an invention is buried and a company is never brought to place. How horrible would life be, if those have made giant steps decided to crawl into the shell of conformity. How unhealthy would life have been, if every doctor has chosen to stay off school? How dark will the world remain, if Einstein have succeeded being average. How tiring our journeys would be, if the Wright brothers have chosen to live with conformity. This is the way we do it. This is the standard. The most outstanding software “the brain” is daily tailored to work like a computer. Our intelligence is often measured with grades. Like the computer hardware is uploaded with soft computer languages, our minds are programmed for the average. It’s at the shopping mall, stating “have a figure eight”, and at the bank doorstep, “meet the standard; take a loan”. Like the little creed of an average child… I don’t cause teachers trouble; My grades have been okay. I listen in my classes. I’m in school every day. My teachers think I’m average; My parents think so too. I wish I didn’t know that, though; There’s lots I’d like to do. I’d like to build a rocket; I read a book on how. Or start a stamp collection… But no use trying now. ’Cause, since I found I’m average, I’m smart enough you see To know there’s nothing special I should expect of me. I’m part of that majority, That hump part of the bell, Who spends his life unnoticed In an average kind of hell… Mike Buscemi

Like a shadow, its follows a child to school in the morning, sleeps with the woman at night, wakes the man in the morning, drags a boy, lures a girl in the dark, pulls an addict to drugs, waves a shopaholic every day, makes tea for its owner and drives them all to the shores of a sea called “SAME”, “COMMON”, “DUPLICATE”, “UNIFORM”, “EQUAL”. They all match with the common goal to bury “The Unique Me”. I remember giving up a dream to earn first class bachelors qualification because a lecturer once said; it wasn’t possible and however too late. Bound in my thinking, I watched a fellow friend, who refused believing in the average rise to have it. I remember pulling out of several roles because someone once said, it is a man’s duty, women don’t and I can’t count the number of times, I have heard, it can’t be done. But the battle for success only began when I said to myself, I can. Nothing is Impossible. I will. The world has programmed our mind in such a way that we are often bound by the limitations of our colour, our religion, our face, our culture, our beliefs, our age, our sex, and ultimately our background. Who would believe that a black boy who lived in Hawaii at one time would become the president of the United State? This reminds me of the Olympic Games; every one running the race with a limit in mind. If I can just run the race in three minutes, the mind keeps saying. Who says you cannot run the race in a minute. We are bound by our perspective, tied in our own opinions and beaten in our limited thinking. We are trapped in the fear of being different. The most outstanding geniuses of our times were classified as weird and awarded heros of all times because they chose to live out their dreams. They unbolted the nuts of conformity. They prove to the world that the record of conformity is and will be wrong. Bill gates prove conformity wrong. Ford showed average that you don’t need an IQ test. Even if, we have been programmed to be average, do we continue to live in the average? We are all created to solve a problem and until we break free from the mind of the average, we would be bound in that web for life, hoping and wishing for the better. If you are ready to take the step like me, it’s time to download the mind of the average and upload the mind of excellence. It’s time to break free from the ties of the web called AVERAGE.

Oluwamitomisin

Acknowlgement Images: http://ozwildlifeart.com/wildlife/enormous-spiders-web/ Poem: http://holyjoe.org/poetry/buscemi.htm