PART 1....

Perhaps our biggest mistake is that we try so hard to find ourselves in a world where it is very easy to get lost in, perhaps, we try so hard to figure out who we are and what we were created to be. Perhaps, our biggest mistake is that we expend so much energy and so much time just to discover where we fit in, so much energy to realize where our place in this world lies, and so much time wasting in doing a lot of adjusting and accommodating, sieving through deep layers of personalities and shades of our lives, hoping to present that near perfect aspect of ourselves to the world.

Perhaps, our biggest mistake, no, problem is ourselves.

Unstable as the waves of the sea, and unpredictable as the wind that blows haphazardly from the far corners of the globe, it is no secret that almost through out the green years of our lives, we struggle, with almost little success, to make sense of why we even exist; our lives, most times, have the abstruse feeling of being auto piloted by whatever hand we think controls us, and one may be well forgiven for attempting to succumb to the temptation of leaning back, relaxing, and enjoying the ride. Life, at this point, becomes almost very predictable -pass through the childhood, get good grades, have a degree, secure a good job, fall in love, have a family, grow old, and then leave this earth- and it takes only those who are crazy enough to wake up to the realization that life may not be so nice to give us what we ask for, and that something bigger, something more worthwhile could be in play.

Now stop and think for a moment…

Ever find it so bemusing and quite puzzling that even along the lines of how predictable we wish life could be, we, at the very least, are so often saddled with the hope of changing the world? Burning from within the embers of our chambers, we are largely consumed with the desire that one day, just around the next corner, what we do, what we say, will alter the direction of people’s lives for the better, yet, so annoyingly true, we realize that we are so overwhelmed smitten with the uncertainty of how to do it. We now reckon that the problem is not in getting there at all, but largely owing to glaring the truth: there was given no blueprint of how to get there. This throbbing headache leaves us in arrays of disjointed thoughts and keeps us sprawling freely in a catacomb of uncertainty and despair. This, we clearly understand, is a challenge.

But suffice me to say, or more appropriately, to write, we have a problem.

Tell me, what is the most terrible fate any man could suffer from? And what greater ill luck can any man have? For me, is for one to walk through this brown earth without anyone recognizing and appreciating him for who he is and for what he is. Such madness is too unbearable for my feeble heart to comprehend, but then, this mad matter always form the root of all man’s successes and failures. The challenge of how to get there becomes less intimidating when compared to the monstrous problem of identity. Now we can agree that the challenge of how to get there has never been our problem, the challenge of how to change the world is never an issue, but the problem of this challenge is what we must first arrest.

So yes, we have a problem, and one that needs a solution so urgently. But then, how effective can this solution be if the problem behind the challenge of how can we change the world is not known? How can a solution work well if it does not solve the problem of our challenge? This must we answer, but first, let us summarize this problem.

To be continued….
Let me know your thoughts and opinions...

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Now if you are reading this at this point, then it is most certain that you are one of three categories. Perhaps you are among those who I have really succeeded in stirring up their curiosity and appetite for the understanding of this problem and to figure out the solution, or perhaps you are among those who have no conviction of what I have been writing, and you are only reading this just to see where it ends. And yes, the third category are those who are neither here nor there, only reading for the fun of it; but then, I must make known one startling truth; the answer, as we should see here, may never truly satisfy our raging curiosity and the answer we get here may never come close to what we hoped for, but surely, it will stand with time.

It’s no telling secret that the dawn of each new day brings with it a bearable burden that stirs up a familiar concern within us as a constant reminder, and in the similitude of a nagging lady, begging us to poise an answer to the challenge, how can I change the world today? Or more importantly, how can I affect someone’s life today? Well, except you are not thinking or musing over this, then I must be very candid to point out that your problem is quite bigger than what we are delicately trying to uncover here, because the purpose of every life is to affect another, and if for any reason we find ourselves failing to achieve this, then we probably don’t deserve to live. But if so, for any reason, you find yourself in this our bandwagon to the discovery of a solution, then we must do to ourselves the honesty favour of realizing that we all, almost always deliberately or unconsciously choose to relegate to the background the real question we must fight to answer. Maybe we are sincerely ignorant of this question, or maybe we are fully aware, whichever group we say we belong, the fact remains, we can certainly do nothing until we, ourselves, become the answer to the question.

Now tell me, from where cometh this our insatiable need of changing this world we live in? Or the ravaging hunger that drives this our ever increasing desire of transforming the life of another? Tell me, how are we so made drunk with the notion that something is fundamentally wrong with this world? Or made subjected to the belief that something different could be and should be happening? This inherent desire in every thinking human has an answer so simple and so near, and one that is summed up as this: that in spite of the glaring limitations and profound shortcomings, we know that this world, because we live in it, deserves to be a better place, and every life, those we meet and those we don’t, irrespective of its glorious inabilities, deserves to be happy; so therefore we strive so diligently and quite unrelenting to fulfill this lifelong insatiable need. But so painfully, how then do we so gloriously fail in our attempt to live out this desire? How then are we so easily knocked back into the quagmire of utter despair to think that this our own very dream could as well be a living breathing nightmare? Could it be that we have so big a dream as compared to what we are actually capable of achieving? Or we let our ‘uncoordinated’ desires run so wild to the point where we practically set up ourselves for an enormous letdown? Or perhaps, could it be that we believe not in our own strength to put flesh on our own dreams? Maybe yes, maybe not, but suffice me to say this is not the issue; for our very own enemy, and real problem of our lives is ourselves.

Stop for a moment and think……..

Tell me, by what strength can a man fully operate with? Or by what measure of ability can he function with uttermost clarity of purpose? Do enlighten me, on what ground can a man have the full assurance to do the unimaginable exploits? Or to what degree is a man so undoubtedly sure of conquering the world? Is it on the strength of his arms do he rest his boastful confidence? Or by his uncanny wisdom do he rely on to ghost past his fears to the point of his dreams? Is it by the multitude of sincere motivating friends, spurring him to the finish line? Or the very icy grips of the fear of failure itself? In all these, I must submit, neither of them holds sway when stacked against the truth; for time and time again, the truth remains still, in all generations, the amount of knowledge a man has about himself is the amount of strength he will operate with because his value depends on the truth he has chosen to believe. Herein lies the root problem of every challenge we face: what do we know about ourselves?

Moving from the corridors of our childhood to the point where we are presently, it is no breaking news that at every level of our short robust lives, we have somehow deliberately or even most times, unconsciously accommodated options and opinions of other friendly faces, that if and when we sit back to dissert its compatibility with what we are so madly in desire of, to our bemusement, we may be so utterly ashamed to realize that those options and friendly opinions do somehow makes us feel like aliens living in our own bodies. We begin to see and sadly recognize that the life we say we live is entirely not our own because in it contains the child idea of another. And then, we slowly develop and depressingly cultivate the gloomy sense of being lost even in the midst of familiar faces, and the more we cry within ourselves, silently screaming for a hand to pull us out from this sinkhole, the more we feel the ground shifting under and the mudslides coming all over us again because our own identity is becoming nonexistent to ourselves and to the next person beside us. It is at this point we feel the need to find ourselves. So then, the struggle of finding who we are in this world kicks off.

But perhaps, the struggle of finding ourselves may just be the very fatal mistake we all make and are still making, because this struggle, surprisingly and sadly, could make us focus on our weaknesses and limitations, and so therefore is no ideal solution to this problem and enemy we are seeking defeat.

So then, we have a problem, and yes, a scary enemy to face. A problem that needs a solution and an enemy that needs to be subdued; but if the problem of finding ourselves in the midst of crowded faces will solve no inch of it then what must we do?

To be continued…