By Ojigbani Kojo
There were those humbling moments in life, times that taught you something about life. Those days when you met your former classmates and while all their talk was about “..My boss this..My boss that”, you sat there silent with an a brown envelope full of CV’s. You admired them, you wanted to be like them, be able to also say something that would be relevant in such a conversation but this was not yet your time. You remained patient but hungry with ambition believing that one day the sun will rise. And before long, after years of waiting, just when your shirts, your trousers and shoes were about to seek asylum, the breakthrough came.
And with the breakthrough came selective amnesia…you changed friends…changed place of worship…changed where you eat…changed even the way you speak, your new status demanded that you said. Instead of living life, you started racing with it, competing with others. You feel like in the years you struggled you missed a lot and you want to make up for that. You didn’t drink enough, you didn’t sleep with enough men or women then, so you turn your life into a struggle to make up for the lost time. The humility you had is all gone, there is new sense of braggadocio in everything you do. You abuse with careless abandon. You spite with no remorse and for a moment you believe you are Moses holding the 10 commandments and everyone should listen to you. Who knows how your end will be? No one, not even yourself but one thing is your end will be sad. As you carelessly persecute your real self, persecute your past the day of reckoning slowly approaches and just as Saul it will happen. Sadly for you it may not be a voice or bright light from the sky but it would be life itself stopping you in your tracks.
Be humble with life, you are 28-years-old but want to live like you 40-year-old friend, do you ever sit down and ask yourself how much they have toiled to be where they are? Yeah, before you knew what Pizza was maybe he/she was owning the Pizza place you now throng to go and validate yourself from?
Do you ask yourself if you must attend all events? Before you go to validate yourself at Blankets and Wines (last time i mention it before a price is put on my head), does it ever hit you that those you trying to fit in with have all expenses paid by companies? Am sure if you do, you forget easily like you do on the number of selfies you take in an hour.
Don’t forget your past as you chase short time happiness. Let 2015 be the year you ask yourself if you ever bought for your parents the goat they sold so as to buy you a phone while you were in a campus so you could be like other kids.
Did you ever borrow a shirt, shoes or even a trouser to go for your first interview? Let this year be the year you look for those people who helped you then and say thank You.
When was the last time you talked to the person who housed you when you you got your first job, do you remember the guy who helped you with your first piece of cutlery?
Re-visit your past this year, fill the pot-holes you have left as you traveled to your new found happiness. It may not be for you but for others who come after you.