Snoop Dog – By @BeaaaBergman
By Bea Bergman
Snoop Dog
Have you ever been told you can’t do something? Or that the odds of that happening are zero to none?
I have heard it many times, and I have said it to others many times.
Still, I keep on reading about, and meeting, all these people who have gone against those zero to none odds.
Who are they and what planet did they come from?
It’s so easy to distance yourself from successful people as if they were non human, better than everyone else.
How did they know they were better? Did anyone tell them?
Then I came across something truly inspiring in my Facebook feed the other day, that made me change my mind.
It made me realise, no one ever told successful people they would make it, which is why they did in the end.
When I was 14 I was in a normal school in a small city. I used to think I was special, a goth kid looking down on all the ‘normal’ people.
In my school, we had an international class for young kids my age who had lived majority of their lives in another country.
They went there to learn Swedish and not fall behind on other subjects while doing so.
As a goth kid, to some of these children I was very exotic. To me, these kids were very exotic, as they did not falling into the ‘Swedish norm’.
There was always banter between us.
One of these kids named M, started having classes with us. He at first had troubles finding his feet but through football he quickly found friends in the guys in my class.
He used to tease me for my looks and hair, I used to tease him for everything.
He was a funny kid, and the reason the international class all called me Snoop dog for 1.5 years.
As I left that school, we went separate ways and I never really thought about M.
I remember seeing him in the city centre once, shouting snoop dog after me as I walked past laughing.
Occasionally I would tell the story to people of M and his friends calling me Snoop dog for a laugh. This was always met with great laughter from my friends.
Sometimes, me and my friends from home would talk about what happened to everyone in our old school class. M was always a mystery, and I was sometimes worried he was not in a great place, because I knew he had struggled in school.
I had over heard it from teachers telling him to focus more on school. M’s answer was always the same. He would understandably look embarrassed in front of his friends. Sometimes I felt bad for him. Because M would always reply: “I will become a football pro, so I don’t need school”.
Our teachers would tell him to be realistic, we as his classmates would joke about it.
But M never let that get to him.
The other day someone on my Facebook feed posted an interview with a new premier league star, giving a motivational speech to the kids from a international part of my home city, I clicked on the link, it was M.
He f***ing made it.
People had laughed at him, told him to be realistic, and he still made it. He’s a football pro.
In his speech he said, never give up on yourself and keep on practising hard.
Everyday you need to practise and never give up.
I know the speech wasn’t meant for me, but I was so incredibly motivated by it.
Not in my wildest dreams did I think M would end up as a footballer in premier league, he still did.
So no matter what I think of my future, I have the power, with hard practise, to make my own dreams come true.
I just need to learn from the 14 year old boy that teased me for my looks and called me Snoop dog.
