What's the most unserious thing that affected your mood today?
Well, the past few days has gone well for me. The new year didn't start in any particularly awesome way but I have had a couple of things to be grateful about. I've come close to hitting some goals I've been pursuing for some time now. And if anything is bright and encouraging about the new year, it's the prospect it holds for my life. There are many opportunities this year to turn my life around.
Life's is as unstable as a boat on the waves. This moment bright, the next moment dark and gloomy. Your mood is good this moment, the next it's gone bad. And most of the times, it's unserious things that spoil our mood.
Things like sports competitions. Most people on the planet are a fan of one or more sports. Either soccer or basketball, or baseball or cricket. For me soccer and basketball are my too best sports, especially soccer. I enjoy soccer like I enjoy good food and I enjoy it even better if the team I'm supporting wins. That means if the team I'm supporting loses, I get depressed.
That's one of the unserious things that spoilt my mood one of the days this week. As you may know, the continental competition for the African continent is ongoing, called the AFCON. As usual I supported my country to get the trophy from the onset. I even predicted them reaching at least the final. And that prediction almost happened.
Well, my nation did well in the group stages of the competition. They won all their games, conceding only four goals in the opening three matches. Then they subdued Mozambique in the Ro16 and next they demolished African soccer powerhouse Algeria in the quarterfinal.
Coming into the semifinal, I and indeed a lot of people rated them the number one team in the AFCON. But fate had other plans. We were sure Morocco was going to be a walk over, or at least we would defeat them after a hard-fought battle. Indeed the semifinal match between my nation and Morocco turned out to be a hard-fought battle, only we didn't win that match.
We had good chances to score early in the first half, before the Moroccan team set about to dismantling Nigeria. To be frank, they outplayed us entirely, but we were dogged enough to hold on till the end of 120 minutes.
We had confidence we would win the penalty shootout. Our goalie had a good record of performing well in penalty kicks. His heroic saves had helped us to defeat South Africa in the previous edition of this tournament, also in the semifinal, after he saved about 3 penalty kicks.
Morocco scored their first penalty. We scored our first too. Then a Moroccan player missed his penalty and we scored. Then one of our players missed his penalty. It was a terrible penalty taken with an annoying nonchalant attitude. That's how Morocco went on to score more, we missed one, and they won the match.
The first thing I did when I realised that our hope of winning the AFCON had ended was take a deep breath. Then disappointment and panic set in. My mood was spoilt, badly for that matter. But I managed to take my dinner and go to bed.
I have always told myself that football is the unserious aspect of life. While we may take it serious, it doesn't add much value to our lives, except the entertainment it provides, the exhilaration and excitement. That's what I told myself that night and the next morning. But my mood was still spoilt. Even till now I've not completely recovered from the shock.
But still I move on with life as if nothing serious happened. It's only just a game of football, I'm not a coach or a player, I mean I don't get any part of the revenue soccer teams and organisations generate. So in reality I lost nothing of great importance. My mood may have been spoilt that night and the days that followed, but for me, life goes on.
P.S What made the loss of my nation to Morocco harder to bear was the AFCON was our only hope of enjoying some soccer glory, since we missed out on this year's FIFA World Cup.
Also, Nigeria won the match for third place today, so my mood is much better now.
Thanks for reading.