#LIFE: WHAT ARE WE MISSING?

"I think there is a part of life that I am missing"...Kenny Chesney

First of…

When the world started to exist and man took charge of it, there had always been a need to creatively stay alive, or rather make life worth much more to live for especially with our insatiable nature running proportionally along the same line with the inexhaustible beauties that life genuinely has to offer. Man also had to make the element which support life succumb to him, and there also was stagnant water in the backyard, which apparently didn't only breed flies and reptiles, it also had a really nasty stench. 

Also there was a need for man to project into the future with optimism, perhaps by thinking big outside the virtual box especially when it is fostered through relatively extreme circumstances, like having to make fire, surviving the cold and having clean water, indeed necessity is the mother of invention.

"Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something"...Eric Hoffer

Attitude trail

 

Sometimes when you’re in that still state and environment, the serenity and calmness makes you drift away in thought. The peace inspires you to see things in a whole new light, for instance bad guys and murderers would still unwittingly act kindly to a child due to the infectiousness of the kid’s innocence. Also, a strong and aggressive man is soothed and won by the love and loyalty of a woman, while words fitly spoken and well crafted flattery turns away the fury of an angered mob.

It is all in our minds, the fact that we can fake it till we make it actually means we can assume great things are possible in as much as there isn’t a thing to lose, we simply should have the right attitude by being positive, having faith and truly meaning well for other people as what goes around comes back around.

"Sometimes only one person is missing and the whole world seems depopulated"...Alphonse De Lamartine

Love and Hate

Strangely, from time immemorial till this day, no one has been able to adequately define what love is, but surprisingly, we all know what hate means.

Some say love is an ability to make sacrifices, but we either run away from the action part of the sentence, taking it completely out of context being that sacrifices can be relative, or we just pretend to be victims when needed.

According to the Holy Bible, Jesus demonstrated the highest degree of love by dying for sinners, too bad his crucifixion was borne out of hate, how ironic can life get if we aren’t actually missing something. Jesus showed us that we can defeat that with true love for our enemies, a timeless principle that works till this day. The principle of doing things wisely and differently was further described in Stephen Covey’s best seller ‘7 habits of highly effective people’, where he talked about pausing to think before acting when a stimulus is applied, the resulting action should be delayed so that you can take control of your destiny.

“Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles”…Thomas Browne

Opportunities

We currently live in a very fast paced world where we move with the speed of light and you could be left behind if you can’t keep up. In this present world, if you’re not chasing something, then you can be sure that something is definitely chasing you. We live in a world where you must pay bills through your nostrils and where there is massive peer pressure in a misguided world of hypocrites, greedy propagandists with ulterior motives and mega rich organizations that make their fortunes by exposing our lives to danger for the benefit of racking up a substantial bottom line which they use to acquire vanities which are not necessary and by implication confuses the younger generation to be stereotypes that should continue, creating an increasing debt profile.

A school of thought encourages us to recognize and exploit the opportunities and resources that the world has to offer to maximum levels, but the continuous exploitation and exploration we embark upon makes the world poorer, people greedier and sees environmental degradation on constant rise, robbing the poor of health and hope, and stealing the souls of the rich.

We can all be Heroes

What are we really missing in a world where some people actually starve to death while others have carefully and care freely bred a culture of wastage of precious resources?

The priorities that God set for man in order to be in charge of the world is gradually being lost out of sight as we have settled for milestones that are beneath our standards. Now we propagate the depletion of morals, we choose lesser evils as alternatives to healthy lifestyles; we embrace material things at the expense of precious human lives in search from enduring vanity to please other folks such as ourselves, spurring them to unnecessary insecurity, inferiority and envy.

Of course now is the time we need heroes that shall perform miracles that can bring us back from our lost ways to moral consciousness, we need heroes that will remind us of who we really are so that we can save and preserve our souls. At this crucial time, it is highly imperative that we become heroes in our communities so that we can save ourselves from the monsters that we have inadvertently become all for the sake of our quest to living up to the image and what the uncanny world expects of us.

What are we missing? We are missing ourselves, we are missing our love for each other, the strength that our unity can create, and the change it can ultimately bring to the world.

Thank you folks.

Akin Abimbola (akinzogee@yahoo.com)

Sources:

Google

Wikipedia

Goodreads

Brainyquote

7 habits of highly effective people

WHY ME, WHY YOU...WHY NOT?

“When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the Heavens ‘why God, why me?’ and the thundering voice of God answered, ‘there’s just something about you that pisses me off”…Stephen King

Isn’t Life Perfect?

Perhaps the relatively stereotypical shield of ‘without prejudice’ should be tolerated at this point of inception for the sake of some uniquely discerning minds that will take the quotes and explanations in this piece entirely out of context, but then still, isn’t life at all perfect just as it is?

When disasters happen in different places and to different people be they natural or man-made, were they meant to happen or what?

Well, a school of thought tells us that whatever happened already was actually meant to happen, more like it was written down by a higher power way out of our league, thus destiny.

“Why, if it’s going to be alright, do we see it getting worse every day?...Jeanne DuPrau

Fate And Destiny

 

Although destiny and fate are often used interchangeably, they have distinct connotations. Traditional usage defines fate as a power or agency that predetermines and orders the course of events. Fate defines events as ordered or inevitable and unavoidable.

On the other hand, destiny is used with regard to the finality of events as they have worked themselves out; and to that same sense of destination projected into the future to become the flow of events as they will work themselves out.

“If I were to say ‘God why me?’ about the bad things, then I should have said ‘God, why me?’ about the good things that happened in my life”…Arthor Ashe

So this is the situation, of course bad things happen every now and then, naturally, good things happen everywhere in any possible way. When miracles happen we rejoice and even clamour for more. But when we get saddled by misfortune, we become sober in grief and forbid for such to happen again.

Not that I’m being either extremely pessimistic on one hand and contrarily optimistic on the other hand, but even if we unrealistically fail to acknowledge the dangers that come with the developments that are a result of increased knowledge such as inventions such as guns and bombs that have brought more grief than peace, the families of the victims of past natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis surely said to themselves in sorrow, ‘why us?’.

“For as long as there is anyone to ask ‘why?’ the answer will always be ‘why not?’…Vera Nazarian

Selfish

Have you ever been stuck in traffic and when you tried to make a detour, a lousy fellow wouldn’t let you have your way? Well, I have happened to witness such a scenario first hand. This particular dude wouldn’t allow my friend pass on to another lane; it became quite a stiff competition that they eventually scratched each other’s cars, which by implication culminated into a nasty fiasco. Were the lads selfish with the right of way?

The question now is, what would it cost you to let your ‘road rival’ have a right of way? Maybe its destiny, perhaps it was written or we are just living freely in a random flow of series of events, selfishly, or why us? Right?

Several schools of thoughts weave series of theories into a unique web of systems to describe and justify our behavioral patterns and predictable temperaments in the face of extreme and overbearingly prevailing circumstances, which of course bring out the best in us.

In essence, in as much as we do not wish for bad things to happen to us, and in the light that we distort events by changing the course of cause and effect, ‘relatively’ bad things will surely occur to some people, some experiences of such make us better and even stronger people however depending on our exposure, mental attitude and ability to discern opportunity like diamond in the dirt we are cast into, and we become like selfish persons if we do not ask ‘why me?’ when positive things also happen to us.

“Never follow anybody who hasn’t asked why”…Aniekee Tochukwu

Eureka

What greater feeling comes close to figuring something out? Many amazing discoveries and inventions that have completely turned the world around came with a price, and they also usually come around by accident, inspiration and pain, forcing us to ascribe worthwhile value unto them.

Imagine the frustration that visited Thomas Edison after he tried countless times to invent the light bulb, he sure must have said ‘why me?’ in the midst of it all. After his ‘eureka’ moment however, his paradigm shift also helped the world see the term failure in a whole new light, when challenged how he felt when he failed countless times trying to invent the light bulb, he simply replied that he only discovered how not to invent a light bulb countless times.

Also, in Holland where they live below sea level, the probable impending danger of possible flooding has forced them to be the best at dyke technology.

What about regions where snow falls and even perform sleet stunts? This has kept inhabitants of such regions to adapt in creative ways, recognizing and appreciating the risks and possible benefits, our courage to live helps us to use the situation as a leverage, or why them right?

“For true success ask yourself these four questions: why?, why not?, why  not me?, why not now?

Your Attitude Matters

So isn’t life perfect, or is there probably a salient battle between reality and destiny? Maybe nobody can tell for sure, but one thing is certain, the most successful people failed the most times and even probably had near death experiences. This helped them have an unusual perspective on life, built their hope to help them have a positive mental attitude, and ultimately changed their outlook to be realistic out of experience and optimistic out of hope and the principle of abundance and expectation.

So the next time something extreme happens to you, either good or bad, and you are so moved to say why me? for the hurtful event please feel free to cry from your heart, and for the good things please don’t forget to shed a tear of joy, think about it, why not?

Thank you.

Akin Abimbola (akinzogee@yahoo.com)

Source:

Google

Wikipedia

The city of Ember

The perpetual calendar of inspiration

Good reads

Brainy Quote