One of the biggest stories I heard in 2021 was that of an old dying man on a hospital bed. He’d suffered so many medical complications and his strength was failing. All medical findings showed that it would only be by a miracle if he made it through a few more days.
But this man drew strength from his memories. He won’t stop starring at his wedding picture; memories of when he still had his youth and held the woman of his dreams. I could imagine him remembering when he watched the sunrise with her and ran to hear the birds sing. Or maybe the memories of him telling her jokes at a beautiful restaurant. He placed the picture very close to his heart and drank up all the lovely memories with his fainting smiles.
I know someday we’d all be like this man; on the verge of also leaving this world and fighting hard to relive our youth. One puzzling thing, however, is how come humans spend most of their lives planning and reserving their happiness for the future and spend the future desiring to relive the past? “When I’m retired, or married, or finally quit this job, or move to a developed country, then I’d be happy.” Someday, we’d be disappointed at these choices and wish we decided to be happy now and not reserve it for the future.
Let’s say you had superpowers and can study the human race from a large screen. Then you turn your camera to study the civilization in big cities like New York, California, Delhi, Lagos, London, etc. When you look across individual homes, workspaces, classrooms, terrible traffic, boardrooms, one question that you can’t seem to get over is why people expend so much energy and work so hard, yet hardly do what they love. We’re all struggling for survival. Living each day to avoid dying.
Of course, survival is our natural instinct. Our ancestors spent their lives as nomads, moving across locations in search of food, hiding in caves, and learning how to stay away from death.
Millennials and centuries later, their descendants, though they live in high-rise buildings with better quality of life, are however no different. We spend all our lives pursuing degrees, taking courses, networking, making applications, sweating behind screens to also survive and stay away from death.
The world is littered with so many unhappy people pursuing goals that don’t matter to their happiness. We spend more time fantasizing about lofty dreams than actually living them. A fellow once told me that he feels he’s in a box and can’t get out to pursue what he loves.
Maybe we need to learn to pause and take lessons from children. Yesterday, my little niece was fed up with us adults. We’d spoken so much about the cross-over service and why no one should miss the ‘triumphant entry’ into the new year. She’s 8, but brave. She asked her mum what would happen to someone that sleeps into a new year. “Would he die?”
There was a long silence, we soon realized that the little girl has nudged us right there, to pause and think. We all crawled back into our thoughts, then I started wondering about how seldom we pause to become conscious of what we do. Conscious about life.
It’s another year and folks have outlined new resolutions and goals that their happiness would be hinged on. Like a sprinter on a race track, we are all geared up to take off. But how often do we pause to reflect on our ‘whys’. Why are we more focused on a destination rather than the quality of our journey?
No. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with setting lovely goals and strategizing on personal plans. I do too. I guess the problem is that year on year, we’ve learned to place our happiness ahead of us and not with us — right now. We hardly live within the moment and rarely find happiness around our present lives until life is almost gone.
The biggest lesson I learned in 2021 is to never hide in fear, struggling for survival at the expense of quality of life. I’ve learned that it’s easy to be caught up with survival that you forget you are here to experience life and not survive through it. 2021 taught me to walk away from things I can change and create happiness around the things I can’t change. I no longer try to survive through life with an expectation of a day of deliverance. That day never comes.
Are you fed up? Quit! Guess that’s hard as it sounds. Winners also quit. They quit at the right things at the right time. Quit meaningless relationships. Quit going down paths that enslave you. Quit living like your happiness is ahead of you, it’s now. You decide what happiness means to you now.
Don’t make a big deal out of 2022, else you’d be pressured to set unrealistic goals that would leave you frustrated in the long run. January holds no magic wand. It’s just another month. I believe, after all we’ve been through over the past 2 years, our priority now should be how to guard our mental health and spend more time doing what keeps us fired up.
The storms would come, only what you love would feel natural. Understand that sometimes life is not fair, even to the best of us. It’s not within our power to have total control of life’s outcomes, but we can certainly control how we respond to them.
Yes, you’d have a reason to be disciplined, you’d have a reason to make sacrifices. You’d have a reason to be patient. You’d have to wake up each morning, make your bed and earn your daily meal. But ensure while you go through these, you create your happiness through the process and that this sacrifice would be on the things that matter to you.
These are things I’m saying to myself right now. I love writing. I need to write more, it makes me creative. I have a friend that enjoys teaching kids, I hope he considers teaching more this year and takes a break from his endless pursuits. How about you? You love singing, sing more. Not for people, but to fill your atmosphere with what makes you fulfilled. Go mountain climbing. Go on road trips. Volunteer with organizations and help others smile.
Oh yes, I thought you might want to know what happened to my little niece. She didn’t just sleep into the new year, she also ensured her siblings did the same with her. Just this morning, they’ve had double breakfast and are playing with fewer worries. Certain, we all have something to learn from kids.
