The power of aspiration

“An aspiration is a long-term hope or ambition of achieving something in life, such as becoming a lawyer or medical doctor. In contrast, a goal can be a shorter-term individual step toward achieving a specific aspiration, such as passing the law school entrance exam or getting admitted to medical school” www.google.com/search/aspiration

It is trite knowledge that the term of a lawyer is for life, meaning there is no end to being a legal practitioner except death or debarment. It is my candid observation that many lawyers have great aspirations necessary to improve the legal practice but allow self-imposed restrictions to deprive them of achieving same.

There is reason why the title of this work is the ‘Power of aspiration’ not ‘power of dreams’, and the sole reason is because many don’t believe in dreams. Aspiration on the other hand, “is a hope or ambition of achieving something” and applicable to all great minds.

Aspire for greatness in the legal profession; the plethora of cases of innovation and success stories of lawyers who started from nothing to greatness, the wealth accruing initiatives popping up in the profession, like electronic reporting and all, should be enough motivation to any lawyer to do beyond the limit his or her mind has placed on him or her. 

Some brilliant ideas lose life at conception because of the overwhelming effects of the discouraging elements that play out in the society. Time and experience have shown that lack of support and encouragement for any idea has a way in determining the longevity or otherwise of such idea. This is not peculiar to the legal profession alone; it is a recurrent experience of a Nigerian in the Nigerian setting.

Nigerians most often doubt the genuineness of new ideas on first hearing about them. The bad image of deception that walks around with the name of the country contributes more to crippling beautiful innovations of this great country. The truth is, even a good idea needs fund to scale through, and if those who ought to sponsor the said idea, view it as fraud, and hold back their resources, such ideas with time would cease to exist. 

 It is understandable that many aspire to do great things both in the legal profession and the society, but sometimes don’t see the need to put in the effort to actualize such aspirations, but then again, no innovation got to where it is without obstacles. Facebook is a social networking service launched on February, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard student Eduardo Saverin, today it has 1.71 billion monthly active users and a total assets of $49,407 billion as at 2015. Many are not aware of the obstacles Mark had to go through to make all this possible because the perseverance and never give up attitude has really paid off.

The same applies to all of us, both learned and lettered alike. We might not hit a milestone like Mark Zuckerberg, but we can get somewhere if we believe in our aspirations and work towards same. Legal practitioners should try to see the legal environment for the potentials it avails one. Sometimes people don’t know they need a particular thing until someone shows them that they do.

So true, the legal environment might be discouraging, frustrating to that innovation or idea that could change the legal profession, the ability to plan, stay focused and resilient to achieving same might eventually pay off. Did I hear someone say, can I change the legal profession? It is this self-imposed limitation that every inventor surpassed to bring the invention to fulfilment.

We must grow from thinking that the legal environment is too big a place to make an impact. We must see ourselves worthy of bringing the desired change to the profession. We must view ourselves as capable of taking the legal profession to the next level, believe in your competence and capability to do great things, look beyond the immediate temporal challenges that may look insurmountable, rather look at the future permanent benefit that comes with the success of your idea, there is power in aspiration. 

Godspeed!  

 

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