WHAT IS LIFE ABOUT...REALLY?

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life"...Albert Camus 

I bet the above caption kind of makes it seem like I’ve got it all figured out, right? How I just wish. And again seriously, how dare this young and relatively naive me in the least remote way somewhat feign understanding the same complicated life that we all dwell in with countless intriguing stories underneath our belts, claim to know what life is about? Well, I’d listen with mine eyes and heart amid a potential slap to my chin just for my apparent and potentially evasive and perhaps lucid justification or alibi as the case may seem, gracefully amass like a thick clump of smoke hoping that we don’t get choked.

"History will be kind to me if I intend to write it"...Winston Churchill 

History

Have you ever felt on top of the world or better than your contemporaries in any sort of gathering when you realize you are privy to a piece of information that they apparently know nothing about? I have, and this is an indication that knowledge has power, and the above scenario is an example of the impact of well researched history.

A school of thought teaches us that nothing is new under the sun, and by implication life is a repetition of events, it further clarifies that whatever difficulty we are in can be solved by consulting the relevant part of our history which relates to it.

We in our present generation have no choice but come to the understanding that our history is filled with extremely rich content that we cannot afford to ignore the uncharted goldmine.

The Landmark events that happened in the sacred times of our fore-fathers varied, ranging from wars, politics, colonialism, slavery, revolutions, industrialization and various forms of discoveries, which of course illuminated our paths and have graciously led us to the present direction we currently lead.

“The death of an old man is like a burning library”…African Proverb

The Sages

I saw a movie recently, it portrayed the life of a successful young lady whose business moved faster than she did herself. The achievements of her company was so over-whelming that her colleagues predicted that they would soon crash because the success would eventually be unmanageable.

Anyway an internship program was proposed, the irony however was that the intended interns were to be senior citizens. After the recruitment was done, the young lady, clearly not out of arrogance made plain her lack of need for the 70 year old recruit attached to her office.

During the course of the program after the old man had affected the company positively with his knowledge, the young lady started to appreciate the value of experience. Good story right? Yes though I’m narrating a Hollywood block buster, but it is true.

Our present society and generation is carried away with the energy we exude now so blindly that we fail to realize the relevance of our senior citizens.

We feel because we’ve manufactured some slang or new generational company term we got it all figured out, but we are making so many mistakes. We lose our souls and health in our quest to acquire material wealth and money we rarely need. We are enslaved by an infectious mirage and infinite insecurity only to aspire to be like that flashy looking dude whose lifestyle is extremely unhealthy, but despite that we feel it’s okay to relate with and directly to a stereotypical superstar or celebrity who makes bad and shameful acts look cool to the extent that we even long to have the diseases that haunts them even in their closet, but we feel its fine due to the lasting fake impression the devouring media paints of them.

We are so obsessed with the bottom line and soaring profit figures of big companies so much that we encourage them to feed on our souls and conscience, while they indirectly blackmail us to help them conduct crime and terror of killing us all softly and slowly through their harmful products that have taken the place of the devil and the deep blue sea.

These so called old folks are definitely not a part of these crimes, they have kids, they’ve been there, done that and have seen what life is all about.

Have you ever had a Near Death Experience (NDE)? Well, it is described as the moment you have a close encounter with death, and it does have a powerful impact upon the psyche of the victim. It is a turning point for the lives of many people when they usually realize all the wrongs they’ve done when their life flashes before their very eyes, and then the tendency of doing good soars through the skies. Most old people want to die at peace realizing they did their best to make the world a better place, and since they’ve probably had more NDEs, chances are they’d point you in the right direction if you gave them the opportunity. Lesson learned; never take an old person for granted, they are literally sages.

"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves'...William Shakespeare 

In the Future

If God spares our lives and we out of our own never-ending curiosity do not self-destruct, no doubt the future holds a huge box of surprises. With the present spate of amazing inventions and discoveries that have helped add immense value to our standard of living, we are definitely anxious for the next best thing as the best is always yet to come. The question however is, are we moving too fast?

Every day the world is bothered with a new theory, eventually the most convincing or provocative one steals the show and wins the Nobel Prize. Some inventors get carried away and in the long run complacent with their research when they reach a pinnacle only for a more versatile and open minded group to overtake them, and so we keep going on and on like a vicious circle of health diminishing ambitions, desperation and incited jealousy.

Are we moving too fast? It almost sounds like a rhetorical question. Well we already send information at the speed of light, our cars move fast, our jets of course move faster perhaps in some way to our detriment as all these developments are not quite the right order of things and naturally comes with commiserate costs.

Are we moving too fast? Well, like the wise and old folks would perhaps say, what greater joy can be achieved than a peaceful life? While on a journey we might as well enjoy the ride on our way to our desired destination.

Life is about us and the decisions we make. Life is about the value we attach to it, the lives we save and what our conscience tells us, and of course so much more, seriously I wasn’t going to cover all that life is about in a single blog post.

Thank you.

Akin Abimbola (akinzogee@yahoo.com)

Sources:

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Getty Images

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Good Reads

The Intern

History

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