Sign Your Autograph On Me

Its the last day in the month of October! I am optimistic to share a guest post from a friend and brother - Joshua Peter. I've known Joshua for a few years, and have the privilege of having him on our organisation's management team.

Apart from working collectively with team members and other members of our working community, Joeblaque - as i do call him - and I have always been having fun, thinking creatively, and investing in touching lives positively.

Over to Joshua's post titled 'Sign your autograph on me'.

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I am very happy at the turn of events right now. As more evil prevail, we have more and more opportunities to show people we have bright-hearts. The darker the environment, the greater effect a light has!

I remembered seeing a film where a best-selling author has so many people asking for his autograph that he got a table and asked them to queue up. Wow! It was a long queue! He must have been really admired to have such a queue waiting for his autograph.

sign your autograph

Autographs aren't really new to us. Your autograph is simply your handwriting or signature. No doubt, you have seen people ask for other people’s autographs. They do this because they greatly admire those people and want to have a kind of souvenir with which to remember those they admire.

I have always fantasized that someday, I will walk down a street – any street - and people will rush out asking me to sign my autograph for them. I have carried this dream for so long until truth dawned on me. I discovered that my dream has long come to pass but unfortunately I deliberately refused to sign my autograph despite the desperate pleas of people I meet where ever I go.

The truth I discovered is that people have a silent plea in their hearts – a desperate plea. They ache for normalcy. They ache for affection. They ache for relationships. They are emotionally hungry and mal-nourished, without hope of being shown love or care. A simple smile will do them a world of good. A friendly hug will help lighten their burden. A sincere and sweet sentence will help a great deal. They silently plead with us: SIGN YOUR AUTOGRAPH ON ME. We move about each day oblivious of the pains and hurts in the people we interact with. We fail to notice the forced smile on their faces or the mechanical laughter they try to conjure in their bid to cover up their pains. Painfully, we leave them as we met them without fulfilling their silent but desperate plea: SIGN YOUR AUTOGRAPH ON ME.

What will you be most remembered for? Your insensitivity or sensitivity? Your lack of affection or your warm heart? Your coldness to others or the warmth you radiate? Your self-centered-ness or selflessness? Your value-added interactions or your value-diminishing interactions? If the summary of your existence with others is negative then it means you have successfully denied them their pleas to have you sign your autograph on them – on their hearts.

Have a minute’s thought? What will you be really missed for? Surely, you’ll be missed but for what? What will be the outcome of your interactions with peers, friends, team members, colleagues, neighbours and most especially, strangers? Will they miss you for the peace you bring or for the peace you take away? Will you be missed for your friendliness or for your hostility? Will that stranger you met today remember he/she met an angel? Common, it’s so easy. Just have a heart for others.

Don’t be stingy with your smile. There are more where it came from! You can’t exhaust the supply of smiles God gave you. A smile is so important yet its so free. Be lavish with your smiles and be sincere about it. Your smile kindles a spark of love in whoever receives it. It doesn't hurt to smile, even to a stranger, rather, a smile breaks the wall of hostility between you and others. It softens the heart of all who receives it when it is done sincerely. It makes others comfortable with you and it boosts your confidence. You don’t lose anything when you give someone a smile.

Choose to be kind! Kind people are held dear! The world will be so acidic and cruel if mankind has lost the virtue of kindness. Choose to allow others get ahead of you. Choose to help pick a fallen pen. 

Choose to clean a seat for someone. Choose to comment on someone’s dressing or beauty. Choose to help someone for free. Help that granny with a chair, she can’t stand for too long. Give someone else your seat when there are others standing while you are sitting. Consider the poor, the pregnant, the ageing, the disabled, the hurting and rejected. Choose to offer them a little of the kindness they desire badly but have been so long denied of. Common, it’s not difficult. Be an angel with a heart of gold.

It is a fact that every living being aches for love and affection. Maturity doesn't take that need away. Everyone you come across, no matter how old, rich, powerful, poor, educated or not educated, remember that he/she is begging you to SIGN YOUR AUTOGRAPH ON THEM. Don’t deny them that plea.

So, when are you going to start signing your autographs on people? Now?

If yes, begin with me. Hahahaha...just kidding!
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Joshua Peter blogs at the LightHouse, and can be contacted via mail.