Some days, I gloss over my throwback pictures and scroll through them all. They are like a pathway back to where I am coming from. I have a lot of them, and my friends found it unbelievable when I told them how many pictures I have, thanks to Google Photos, which has enabled me to keep them all. So sometimes, I scroll through different eras and times of my life, moving through different stages and capturing into still pictures moments that were fleeting.
This made me realize also that if truly wishes were horses, many would ride. My pictures are embodiments of dreams and wishes of what the future would hold at that time. They were foggy, but I held onto them dearly, and most of them became unrealized dreams that couldn’t be achieved anymore.
I look at a picture of mine from my first year at university, proud to make my parents proud, and I promised them I would make a first class. It was a dream that rested on my soul when I took that picture, but it wasn’t realized, and somehow, life has since then moved on.
Another was when I was in college, and I thought of becoming a lawyer—helping people achieve justice and protecting the law and order of the city. I ended up studying Literature in school.
Not only can dreams appear unachievable with time, but they also become undesirable, and you then realize you have been chasing what is not appealing to your soul.
At a point, I dreamed of becoming a doctor. It was superimposed on me by my parents. As the first child, they felt that becoming a doctor was good for the family and would also help my younger ones aspire to a better job in life. As I grew older, I realized it wasn’t for me, and my family releasing me from such expectations allowed me to find my own way and what I was comfortable with.
Scrolling through my pictures has enabled me to realize that life is a growing wave of wishes, dreams, and visions, which create the pathway to being in the present. They are what keep the hope of humans alive—to keep going and to keep finding meaning in the vanity of man.