I sometimes wonder whether I have ever truly experienced imposter syndrome. A few times perhaps, but more often than not, the feeling I have come to have is the conviction that I am exactly where I was meant to be. I have never been entirely sure whether this is hubris, confidence, or self-preservation, but it has served me well enough. I mean, how else do I explain the sequence of events that brought me here? Every morning I tie a tie around my neck and refer to colleagues who would have outperformed me in every primary school examination as my peers. If you had met me in Primary One, you would not have vaguely predicted that I would one day write an essay like this, much less hold a job role with a fancy title and responsibilities that would have sounded absurdly sophisticated to the little-boy version of me. Yet here I am, right here, right now, writing these words.
As a child, I barely paid attention in the classroom. My attention drifted mostly inwards, and if at all outwards, it was towards the swaying trees, the calming breeze, and the floating dust outside rather than the chalk markings on the blackboard. I found most subjects unbearably dull and most teachers incapable of competing with whatever was happening inside my head or outside the classroom. The only sound that awakened me was the timekeeper’s bell announcing lunch break. Suddenly I would spring to life, fly off the pavement, and race around the school field with all the enthusiasm I had withheld from the classroom. I desperately wanted my peers to pick me for football, although they almost never did because I was spectacularly bad at it. That never discouraged me. I simply ran around the field without purpose until the bell rang again and summoned us back into class.
By then I was drenched in sweat and exhausted. Naturally, all I wanted to do was sleep. The teacher would notice, call me out, and ask me to stand with my hands raised and my eyes shut while everyone else continued with the lesson. Looking back now, it almost feels as though I spent most of my childhood asleep. Perhaps not entirely asleep, but certainly half awake, drifting through classrooms while the rest of my peers and the world progressed. I needed a wake-up call to save my life. The first callers were my family and then a long line of men and women who have called on me to wake up and seize the moment. Reality demands presence, and success demands action. At some point, something had to give. Eventually something did. I grew up, the classroom became a boardroom, and the teacher became a boss.
I owe an immeasurable gratitude to my first boss for deciding I was worth taking a chance on. Looking back now, I realise my first job was not just about employment or the responsibilities that come with it, but about permission, access, and the opportunity to seize the moment. During my first week on the job, I accompanied him to a strategy meeting with executives from a multinational television network and representatives of an FMCG client sponsoring one of the country’s biggest television programmes. My responsibility was uncomplicated. I was there to listen, observe, and take minutes. The room was filled with people whose experience dwarfed mine, and I was perfectly content remaining unnoticed until the Brand Manager/Project Leader on the client side looked in my direction and asked, “Clinton, what do you think?”
That moment remains so vivid in my memory because it was a wake-up call for me to seize the moment, to carpe diem. I honestly didn’t make any remarkable response to that question. Nobody applauded my contribution. Nobody interrupted the meeting to congratulate the young trainee with no corporate experience. Whatever I said was almost certainly inexperienced and probably rather forgettable. Yet memory has an odd habit of preserving moments that seem entirely ordinary to everyone except the person living them. What remained with me was not my answer but the question. The permission and opportunity to sit at the table. An invitation back into the proverbial classroom. Someone had looked around a table occupied by people infinitely more experienced than I was and assumed that I possessed a thought worth hearing.
The little-boy version of me never left. In many ways, he has become the invisible companion I carry into every meeting, every presentation, and every interview. He remembers every embarrassment, every poor result, and every occasion on which someone else seemed effortlessly better. He remembers, and whenever I find myself sitting in rooms I once imagined were reserved for other people, I cannot help thinking that if the boy who struggled to stay focused in class somehow made it here, perhaps the distance between where we are and where we imagine ourselves to be is never quite as great as it first appears. People may call it being a late bloomer. I have never cared much for the phrase. It assumes that everyone is supposed to bloom according to the same calendar. I have always suspected that people bloom whenever circumstance finally gives them enough light.
My story is certainly not one of triumph. It is, if anything, the story of someone who has undeservedly been called to prove themselves, and I am grateful to everyone who has opened the door for me to have a seat at the table. To me, the clarion call to carpe diem isn’t a call to pursue glory or greatness, but a reminder that life rarely waits for certainty before extending its invitations. It simply presents the moment, leaves the decision to us, and carries on regardless. The only thing left is to decide whether we shall spend the rest of our lives wondering what might have happened, or whether we shall have the courage to answer when someone unexpectedly looks across the table and asks, “Clinton, what do you think?”