Too many questions but first, HOW ARE YOU?

We all struggle in life.

If you like put your hands while snapping them over your head and say ‘God forbid I will never struggle in this life’ that’s your business.

Like I was saying. We all struggle in life. Consciously or not. We struggle with various things. They could be little things; they could be big things. Some of us struggle to adjust to a new role at work. For some, it could be a new phase of life, it could be a new age or even the new koi-koi shoe they told you was your size that you just bought but have only worn once because of the painful experience you had the first day you wore it. I personally think I’d struggle to come to terms with the fact that, I paid money for that shoe and worse, the seller looked me in the eye and said, ‘baby this thing na ya size. Carry dey go’.

Bottom line, at different points in life, we struggle with something. (Roll your eyes all you want.)

The last three months have been a tremendous transition for me and yes, a struggling one too.

Over the last weeks I have come to understand the value of contentment and appreciation or gratitude like some of us would love to call it.

Ambition is a good thing. I believe it is one of the things needed to achieve goals.

Ambition is not the problem. Well, not for me. The problem however is the occurrences in this journey fueled by ambition.

One of the many things is ‘the search for more’.

Countless times, this has proven to be a force stronger than ambition and here is why.

But wait, how are you doing?

How has the last 7 months been?

But before you start to squeeze your forehead so that it looks like the Wi-Fi signal because you want to answer the question. Don’t. read on.

The search for more is intoxicating. It is crazy! It leaves you hungry and helpless and pretty vulnerable.

I am a free spirit. If you know me well, forget that work makes me look and seem serious, I am. Worse, I get bored easily. So I love to be spontaneous but it is in the weirdest ways possible. Sadly, today is not the day I will explain, I’m heart broken. (I’ll tell you why at the end of this).

One of my fears have always been that I would get tired with my life. I mean, I get bored with things, with people (don’t try to understand this and stop looking at me like that!), with places, how much more, life. You can’t imagine. So I try everything possible to make sure I create some form of activity for myself.

It used to work until I started working again.

Work was fun. I mean, work IS always fun. I cannot begin to tell you, you’ll end up hating me. I still want you to like me. I mean, who will I write to?

Work was fun. I always looked forward to meeting new challenges and conquering them. Then the boredom crept into my head. I became bored.

I went from a 100 to a 2 real fast. I began to want more. I began to feel inadequate as such focus disappeared. I see people and I’m like, what’s going on with me?. It felt like I was stuck. Like nothing was happening. Basically I felt choked. I just wanted more.

The struggle for me began here. Somehow all the negativity began to wait for me each day.

I remember one day, I was in the bus to work and there was this girl in front of me with a child. Pretty young girl but from the way she handled the child, I was worried.

It was clear, she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready for motherhood and here she was, taking care of a baby. I mean who gives Maltina in a cup to a less than three-month old baby?

I wondered why she was all by herself and other things till the lady beside her took the child from her and said, ‘you can’t even take care of a baby but you can open your legs. Where did I go wrong with you?’ That was her mother. I didn’t wonder again.

Some days after, I woke up feeling one kain. You know that melancholic feeling that you can’t explain? That feeling that makes you believe nothing is working? The feeling that makes you believe maybe you are not good enough. The feeling that makes you look at someone else and you ask yourself ‘why can’t I be this way’? For some reason, this is how I felt that morning, till I got into the keke with the singing driver. This guy was singing songs to God as he went on his duty. He sang all through the trip.

I couldn’t but feel shame.

I couldn’t get my mind off the keke guy or the girl and then It struck me.

Too often, we are caught up in the expectations of ourselves in our journeys towards fulfilling our ambitions that we forget to be thankful and we start to question our lives.

We want certain things so bad that we want them at whatever costs and when we don’t have it we begin to let it bother us. You see, we should be grateful that God is a good God who is kind enough to answer us when it is the right time else most of us would drive ourselves to our destruction.

You see, because we want something and are impatient about it, we do things on our own terms. We bite more than we can chew, probably because we think we deserve it and we then cause an alteration in our lives, just like the girl in the bus.

Why don’t we wait? Why rush? Why not let God work at his own pace?

You should stop to give yourself a pat on the back because you work so hard to achieve your dreams and even when you aren’t close to what you envisioned, you still hold on to something.

Look around you, there are people who are in worse situations still they find time to be grateful. The singing driver probably doesn’t have half of what we own but it didn’t stop him from going about his duty. He is a reminder that maybe we need to be more thankful.

Keep your ambitions as top priority but still be grateful for feats achieved.

Do you remember the things that kept you going? Hold on to them. You won’t break. You’ll be fine.

How are you again?

You should be smiling here because you know deep down you have made some achievements that you should be proud of.

Be thankful.

Tomorrow will take care of itself.

Happy New Month y’all.

©M.Chidi

2:33am

1^st of August.

PS about the heartbreak story, it’s too long and I’m tired. Look at the time na and I’m still awake. You sef!

peace, happiness and more love.

#stayrelevant.