#30DaysWritingChallenge: Day 4

When your only strength is to stay alive, what do you do?
January 2018, my father called me from the village. The call was unexpected. My father never called if something wasn’t wrong or have some message to pass on. This day, the call was different. I asked if all is OK, he said yes. He’s cool and nothing bad has happened. I was taken aback and for a second, I searched through my head what the call would mean.
“Are you OK”, he asked.
Suddenly, I could feel my heart leap and I was frozen. Wait! What in this world would make my father call me and ask me the how-are-you question? I knew we’ve had the best time we could but my father haven’t thought I needed help. He never thought things could be bad and not OK with his son. He saw in me, a grown man, who has all his life figured out. So I think. So, I literally grew up being a man even as a boy. When the question came to me, my thoughts stammered for a second and the best it could get was the usual line; I’m fine. I was not going to bore him with my life in Lagos. The traffic. The sun. The stress and the training; how it’s been killing me literally. The brown water in Lekki. I don’t want to tell him how I’m buy a bucket of clean water for N50 and how the rent is crazy. In other to avoid the worst, a panic, I left him with the “I’m fine” line and that saved his airtime.
Did I mention that I offered to call him back so he could saved his airtime, he refused. My father, a rare breed.
I didn’t have issues with my father while growing up but I sure didn’t have the best time growing up with him. We had the typical African father-son relationship. There are rules of engagement and our communication is limited per time. He’s a man of few words and direct instruction. He doesn’t have to argue with you about anything and should you decide to, better be intelligent enough to wow him with your ideas, else you’d be ashamed why you started. He doesn’t take a no for an answer from anyone and you don’t dare him. 😂
2018.
I’ve just moved to Lagos to search for a new life. Just off a relationship, I was emotionally wrecked, psychologically unstable and you could literally see through my pain. Lagos was boring. I knew no one really. The far relatives in Lagos were very distant and my father, being a hard nut to crack, has always been a pain in the ass for many of them. These are relatives who are vastly interested in nothing but how to sell your piece of land in the village and run to Ghana. We aren’t really family. He damned it.
I was basically alone in Lagos and I was lonely, too.
“I want you to be strong. Don’t ever give up and don’t ever assume that nothing is impossible.”
His words were direct and alive.
Literally, I could feel the fresh air and strength pass through my veins to my heart.
“I want you to succeed and you will surely succeed. Don’t ever think you can’t make it. Where I failed, you will succeed. And take care of yourself.”
“Alright sir”, I muttered and the call ended. I lost my voice.
For the next 10 minutes, I was transfixed and my thoughts raced through time and found one thing; tears. It flowed endlessly and for the first time in my life, I cried and prayed to be the best father.
6th July, 2018. I traveled to the village to see him upon his request. He was sick and he requested I should come around. My father is never the type that’s sick all time. He’s rarely sick and when he is, he wouldn’t want the whole village around him. He’s strong man. This time, he called me to be with him and stay around.
“I want you to come back and stay with me”, his words.
14th July, 2018. He died. He got cold in my arms. I fed him that morning and bath him too.
12:45pm, he breath his last.
I cried.
A time just ended.
His time ended.
When your only strength is to stay alive, what do you do?
Time is the gift for living.
A dead man has no time. His time is up and its has just stopped ticking.
Time is the essence of life. Take away time, we won’t be here. Every human actions and inactions are tied to time and its functionality is weaved to our growth, exposure and experience. Time doesn’t seek for our approval. It goes on and on until our time is out. When it’s out, we are out. You are out!
It doesn’t inform you when it will be and when it will not. It happens and we cry and mourn. And that’s it, that’s our time.
I believe strongly that my father knew his time was ticking up and at 65, he knew he needs to right his wrongs and just maybe, inspire his son to stay alive and strong while he’s gone.
Well, he did.
Purpose is tied to time. Efficiency is tied to time. Growth is tied to time. Knowledge is tied to time.
Time is the universal strategy to success and failure. For if there is time, change is permissible. Anything is bound to happen and fate becomes obsolete.
Every young adult and old, men and women, all have time. We all do. To win or to fail, there’s enough time. Our chances of survival gets to be crashed if our time is up. And then, you are free.
Living becomes purposeful, intentional and strategic.
…because TIME.
Everything you can imagine you could do is possible within a time. And when it’s pass the time, it’s gone. You can’t take it back.
It becomes imperative that all actions and inactions of today be driven with time-focused attention. Understanding, a time will come, we can’t be able to do all that we’ve wanted to do and to the degree we want to do them. We now understand that every step to the top should be intentional to leave a mark for TIME happens anywhere. We are humans and humans tap out. We don’t live forever. Nothing does and nothing will. Time changes everything.
The consciousness of time will make you want to do that thing you desire to do now because a time will come, you are either to old for it or to late to it. You understand that to procrastinate peace, love and care is to procrastinate living. A little “I’m sorry” could save many years of bitterness, rancor and hatred. It saves time. Maybe a phone call could save the marriage, the relationship, the friendship and a lot more you can imagine and you can’t get back in time.
Time is everything.
Just as important as the air we breathe, so is time to our lives. Winning isn’t being happy only, it’s also about salvaging time. Success isn’t always personal, it’s also preserving a generation and saving their time.
The pains of today we go through as young adults could have been be less if our parents saved TIME by investing into it rightly. And the best we can give to our children and children-children, is to save lots of time for them by saving it.
Fulfillment of time is the destiny of the human race.
Selah!
🌸
