ONE DAY TOO LATE

Lately I have found myself lacking a tremendous amount of patience. It seems I am always in a hurry. I find myself internally combusting when for instance someone walks slowly in front of me or salsas around a point instead of just getting to it, or takes two hours to get a five minute task done (slaps forehead). Either the world needs help or I do. Because I do not particularly enjoy hearing a person point out obvious things to me, I shall refrain from putting you through the same. Like starting this entry by stating the obvious fact that I have not blogged in a while; oh, I guess I just did (^^,). Aaanyway, I have been wondering which is loftier than the other. Natural talent or knowledge attained via tertiary education and other learning institutions, higher and otherwise. In my opinion, experience gained from applying natural born talents beats head knowledge any day. This in no way implies that papers do not matter. As long as we are in the world, they do. And the training essentially helps filter the water from the mud and the sugar from the cane of natural born talents. However, having had the privilege to sit on interview panels as well as short listing candidates for positions in different organizations, I have seen experience punch head-knowledge in the face. If you are lucky enough to get opportunities to study and advance yourself, please do so. But do not underestimate the power of your life experiences, or your natural abilities, which often are an indication of what you were meant for. Just as fish do not struggle to swim nor do birds struggle to fly. Many of us, yours truly included, are often held back by the fear of failure. Yesterday, I heard a girl say to an audience, “Danger is real but fear is a choice.” I’m reminded again of what my friend Tia McCready said all those years ago, that “Life is too short to do anything that you don’t want/are not meant to do so do don’t do anything unless you truly enjoy it.” Aside from the fact that I am learning not to speak when I really do not have anything worth hearing to say, I really did not think that I would blog again. I have been away from here thinking. Death has a funny (or not) way of making you think about life and so I have been thinking about life. A friend of eleven years over, with whom I had recently lost touch regrettably, died of a heart attack a few days after I had intended to get back in touch with her. Like me, she was under the age of thirty. Incredibly, presently I feel young now than I ever have. That said, thinking is not all I have been up to lately, I have also been living…well, trying to anyway (^^,). I finally got back on stage, and didn’t hate it =), shared my life & faith in ways that I never thought possible & started counseling people online again. The other day two amazing people I knew, also under age thirty died in a tragic road accident & sent shock waves through and beyond their sphere of influence, which brings me to my next point. I recently attended the memorial service of another young over-achiever friend, more like a brother of mine, who died two years ago. The presiding clergy & one of his friends gave some interesting notions pertaining to life and death. They said we all have the responsibility to touch a life here on earth. At the end of the day, it is not our wealth, the kind of car we drive, the house we live in, no matter the size, that will matter, but our lives, how we lived them & how many lives & in what manner we added (or did not add) value to. Perhaps it sounds a lot less daunting if we say change your world than change the world. One of the scariest things in life, they said, is time; because life can end at any time. We often believe that we are going to have to be gravely ill or grow very old before we die, but no one ever thinks they will die in an accident, by definition, an accident is what it is. Unexpected, rude and interrupting. No one passes into eternity alive, therefore death is a portal. In a talk I had with my pal the analytical-philosophical-insightful crony about his recently deceased best friend the other night; he said that there is no “convenient” time to die. Even if he died later in life, it would have still been a painful experience for the bereaved. A good example that I can give is Nelson Mandela, & perhaps closer to home, as I lie here on the floor in my dad’s study cum Nikki’s “secret” hide-out staring into nothing, I look at all the awards and accolades on the wall & shelves, and I see a man who lived his life to the fullest, achieving enough to be deemed successful by the world’s standards, and died, not young in comparison to some, at 67, yet losing him still hurt like hell. Tia is right. Life is short, worn out cliché though it may be. 2013 has been a year of pleasantries, absurdities, adversities and tragedies. If you are close to me, do not be too surprised if I embrace you longer than usual or like it’s the last time I ever do. We have no way of knowing it might just be. So live now, cherish and “intentionally” (to borrow from my insightful ally again) spend time with and cherish the company you keep, say what you need to say, because, in the words of a Skillet song I have not been able to get out of my head for the past forty eight hours; tomorrow could be one day too late.