Got the worst luck with success, she is a lazy goddess never coming to me because I have not worked hard enough. Okay.
It is that time again when the convulsions are high in religious institutions. Where passions are high as the preacher fluctuates the energy of his congregation with perfected oration – evoking the desired sobriety and falling back to influencing another major cataclysm when prayers are launched, spat on microphones, and caroming off different angles of the hall. It is the time of the year where resolutions are remade. Those in the shindig celebrate the beginning of another 365 days journey with grogs, beers, wild jokes and prostitutes garbed with cheap cosmetics. It’s a new year after all; they did not get smitten by the cold hands of death.
Thinking is hard. It is often impossible to keep a ten minutes devotion to the cause – the application of the thinking faculty to realizing the big steps to the big dreams. Most times, we get a little lost in thoughts and our ideas become blurry. We become indisciplined and maybe even punished by God or our own nemesis. It’s such a world with lot of faces and challenges; it may not be a matter of indiscipline but the excuse of an overwhelming need to adjust into realities. The big steps can hold on! The big dreams can work another year that becomes years or buried in never lands. Most times, there are no big steps and the hackneying outcome of flowing with the tide is an ill thought-of conjecture with pointy ends scarring the flesh of many. If the guess is good, then the year ended with God’s good graces assured – the adulation of a wise headless cock that ran away from 365 knives. The preacher gets a fat ram, another convulsion follows.
Another year, yet the problems never left. The problems in us needing urgent fixing followed us and even screaming with much excitement about a new era. Say an era of exacerbated bottlenecks for the little lost souls. The problem is in the identification of mere symptoms to the problems and living a life of untruths or ignorance – not forgetting but guaranteed that the problems have been resolved. You see, the problems are enormous and one of it isn’t the problem in identifying symptoms. Being stuck with identifying symptoms is a drag back in readiness to facing the real problems. Identifying the real problems is one thing, finding answers is even another. Bottles of beer from a tonk barely buys time with a hangover guarantee; the odds not in our favour. At large even, many ordinary minds with potentials put themselves out as experts in solving key societal problems when in fact they discovered the symptoms from a lot of research papers. Everyone is in a hurry.
There is a robust line between envy and motivation. Its distinction is often less appreciated and narrows it down to a frustrating conceptualization, “the thin line”. So when the preacher gets to that point of we putting our dog-eared papers by the altar, the motive behind the cry for Heavenly help is often the motivated envy springing from success stories of the young millionaires around. The desperation grows like tumour and it kills slowly. But then, the motivations could be good-spirited and the year still a seemingly big joke with lot of sad moments – unsurprisingly, the sad quotes in the phone’s gallery have saved the heavy laden. For even the right motivation is not enough! It is to be a dovetailing of persistence in hardwork and assistance from things unknown – fate, good fortune, right twists, perfect paddling, stroke of luck or what more synonym from a drawer of mystery much to the chagrin of motivational speakers.
A little lost in a phase because the pressure is exhausting. The familiar temptation of putting selves out on the media to pass the message of wellness, brews. The decision to believe that the sad endings you are choking on was conceived from not a single error from you – the pain, probably, was an experiential knowledge of life happening. At least, that is what we might have told ourselves and maybe it is fine. You know…anything to fight the pressure because even the comfort is in the lies. The pain appears beautiful if we take hints from how much we publicize our wounds – “the modern day masochists” is the silent chants on the streets; the consolation is in the reassuring from injured like minds. Other times, the consolation is from the reaffirming lips of the successful few of our godlike skillset. In the end, the choice is ours. Time just keeps taking shots and moving to the next year. It has zero feelings and it performs its banal rituals…sometimes, it comes with the unexpected heavy downpour but it does not care who gets soaked or which house drowned. The thunders probably mock but there is no theorem on that. Time just passes.
Time passes and it is the greatest historian. It has seen all kinds of beings and it has watched them die. It has seen the poor who became rich. It has seen the poor who became rich and found his closing chapters in abject penury. It has seen the rich grow richer, the poor poorer. It has seen people die in their hours of breakthrough. It has seen the crowd live lives of wasted years. It has seen it all and it keeps passing. The few who understand the times and seasons may make in life… at least they will surely live a sober life albeit placing focus on the necessary matters of life knowing full well that death comes quickly and even money won’t spare our lives. The hopes run bleak for a lot of troubled minds but the lack of exposure to testimonies never outweighs life’s greatest reward, the gift of life – the biggest miracle. Say life gives us a reason to keep the dreams alive and it is enough reason to park when the tempestuous travails of life storms us out of our desired routes. Say we don’t park regardless because we could end our chapter as a melodrama leaving the ending with exceedingly exciting events.
The wild chants, “new year, new me” is a lie. It requires heightened deliberateness to live right. It is arguably precise to conclude that such deliberate rightness is a subjective interpretation — for one becomes or can only speak of the much he knows. But then, it is probably acceptable to the enlightened that a basis to rightness is moderation. If the right attitude is sieged by the right attractions, there may be a good chance to reaching an expected need. Sometimes the result does not come and there is a permitted misgiving and cursing but that frustrating path is the path to good success. It is not frustrating to everyone on that narrow path and it typifies how we singularly must bear our crosses.
So maybe we are a little lost because we have reached a good position up the ladder but not comfortable with how the top is lonely. Say we are little lost at sea swallowing large amounts of salted waters as the tides grow boisterous. Say we are ageing and tired of all the birthday wishes that have not come true. The answers out of frustrations are found in many good books but nothing beats experiential knowledge as even the propounders of theories are persons who document the successful part of their quizzing. The problems in the answers lie in the multitudinous nature of solution lines and at other times, the right way to apply the only way out. The journey to these answers take longer years for many, short times for some…the answer comes either ways. If death comes first, time records and the burial rite is brief with weeps lasting a short while. If death comes after, then it follows same ritual save the impact we left behind keeps us forever alive. In the end, it is about values despite sad songs – the only way to defeat the common enemy, death.
In my head, I am such a pretty picture. I keep no mirrors in my bedroom, destroyed all my side mirrors and take no single photograph of me. My breasts are full in my head, but my eyes see tiny dots surrounded by minute flesh. I am skinny and ugly but my name is beautiful, I am Diana. 
