I was born an optimist. I will love to believe that. I'm not living in fool's paradise by this assertion. My reaction to series of events that have occurred in my life, led me to this belief.
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I will tell you a few.
While in secondary I was quite quiet; a kind of person I wouldn't love to be now. Don't get me wrong, old habits die hard; it's commonly asserted, so I'm pretty much of a quiet person still. I love quietness and I crave such atmosphere, but I somehow feel that mine was a bit extreme then.
I wasn't that dude that could easily fix into cliques. There was really nothing much to say about me. However, when one of the biggest boys finds himself/herself in a dire strait and their clique of friends could not offer a tangible help, I used to be somewhat of a last resort. That person they will run to, sometimes surreptitiously, since I didn't belong to their gang. They will be risking their membership badge by being seen or perceived to be equally yoked with a commoner. So it seemed.
Their actions and perceptions never bothered me, since whatever class they thought they belonged to didn't entice my humble and contented soul.
Their shoes wasn't one I envied, infact I believe it stinked. I think dripping from them was a smell of a wrong mixture of hypocrisy, fakery and impostorship. That is a shoe I cannot travel a mile with. I loved me too well to have wished such for my ugly feet.
I was the misunderstood fellow, a case study for others. The odd one. I loved it more than belonging to a collage of wannabes, with a wrong frame. That's by the way.
The Point is when these fellows come and table before me the cause of their unrest, I do cook up words that will certainly make them work out of my presence feeling lighter. I had a way of making them to see what was mountainous in their eyes as nothing but an anthill which can easily be leveled with the right approach.
Long before I attempts things, I used to write them down and intentionally work towards it's actualization. Impossibility was a word whose meaning, I was oblivious of.
Mum will tell me that things does not bother me. She always try to make me see the magnitude of a problem, but she birthed me with a mind that either think of solution or nothing. While she and others might wail, I wouldn't. If I do, it will be but a little.
Worthy of note is a monologue that occurred between me and someone who was supposed to be a friend. This happened few days after the demise of my father in my then teens. My man, supposing to comfort me rather tried to stir up worries in my already worried heart.
"Oh! How would you be able cater for yourself and your younger siblings, now that your dad is gone?" My man asked rhetorical with that familiar, trained ritualistic sorrowful voice.
I didn't give him the satisfaction he wanted by matching up with his hopeless vibes.
I retorted with;
"Bruh if I cry over my dad's demise, it is because I'm gonna miss him. It's due to the fact that he wouldn't be alive to see the wonderful gentleman his boy will grow into. As for me, I believe that I will go ahead to become all I ever wanted to be."
That reply exposed my man's intent.
"Go, you don't know what you're saying, you don't know what you're talking about".
Maybe he was right. But I didn't how sorrowing with him would avert the gate that was awaiting a fatherless teenager who by defaults is expected to cater for his younger siblings and himself.
I walked away from my friend, with a satisfying grin.
Eureka! Negativity didn't win.
The story should have ended there, but that would be a poorly scripted lie.
My friend had a point, I just didn't want to give sorrows its full glory, nor allow doom to have the day.
Series of unfortunate event before and shortly after my dad's death, bent my knees before the the throne of pessimism and my head was bowed in honour to negativity. In the pool of discouragement, I swum night and day. Shameful!
I became the mirror image of my old self. I didn't dare to dream, set goals or hoped for the best. I just lived. Was I actually living? I think existing would better describe my then dilemma. I gave up. I felt that life didn't worth the fight. If death had dare stared me in the face, I think I would have conceded to it's whim. I'm Glad it didn't.
Some years back, while in the University, I will absent mindedly call into a morning show on radio.
I was literally grumbling in the name of speaking. The presenter first requested that I speak up. She went ahead to ask me with a melodious voice that might never be erased from my memory, how my day was going to be.
"Nothing much, just the normal thing" I said, with an I-don't-care tone.
My pessimism became an aura that could be sensed through the air waves.
"Why are you sounding like you have no plan for the day? Don't you have goals for the day. Something to go after?" She said with a concerned voice.
She went ahead to counsel me on how to approach my day.
She made me see my former self in her. Just what I would've told a discouraged fellow years back.
Her ability to accurately state my stat (".......you have no plan........",) made be to realise the criticalness of my situation. I was gone.
This realization gave me a resolution. I needed to find myself again. It was an epiphany to me.
My greatest discovery. I re-discovered myself and worth.
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Eureka! I've discovered me again.
I don't believe that virtues, talents or endowments can be totally lost. If you don't see them again, it will mean that you stopped fanning it to flames.
Better still, you stopped lubricating its engine or you stopped sharpening it's edge.
It's only blunt. Sharpen it by practicing those things again and you might just be screaming in a short while from now;
Eureka! I found it.
This is my entry for POB word of the week. You wanna find out what that is? Click
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