Journey (The Story of Our Lives)
The Yorùbá people; one of the largest groups in West Africa, are known for the beauty of their language amongst other distinctive features the ethnic group possess.
There are two Yorùbá words however that are used interchangeably and on peculiar occasions where people are to embark on a journey.
They’ll say O dabọ (Until you return) when a person is leaving a particular place for somewhere else and they’ll say E kaabọ when a person arrives at his or her destination or returns back from the journey.
A swinging pendulum is a fitting analogy for our lives. But more than the kick off point and the landing point, the space between is where we do all that matters.
Pat’s desire to become a renowned surgeon drove him to enrol in medical school. He got in, started the journey but took a detour in third year when he couldn’t fight the burning desire in him to work with healthcare agencies in reducing the spread of fake and expired drugs in communities.
As a kid, he lost his uncle. His uncle had died of ingesting expired pain reliever. He witnessed how the sad news broke his parents. Is this enough reason for Pat to take a detour from the path he was on? Why did he even think about expired drugs and medications? The latter was because he read a chapter of his friend’s pharmacology textbook and the former is only left for Pat to answer. While there’ll be no “welcome” for Pat at the doors of renowned surgeons, there might just be at that of pharmacists and community activists.
People, places, situations, challenges, stories, difficulties, excitements, failures, successes, ideologies, knowledge, power, influence, perspectives, changes, highs, lows, and many other factors have the ability to detour a journey we’re on. Sometimes you can help it, sometimes you can’t and you just take left or right because that’s the only card you’re dealt.
We’re always on the move. Our needs are insatiable and our abilities are limitless. So we exert all we have on the inside towards taking on new journeys. The moment we arrive at one, we’re picking up the next one. That’s if we’re not even juggling some simultaneously. It’s in these journeys that we do the things that give us fulfilment and a sense of living.
Mat wanted to be a renowned surgeon after standing on a stool and watching “Gifted Hands (The story of Ben Carson)” through the windows of a house in the neighbourhood. The scenes from the movie kept playing in his head and while he shared them with his widowed mum, not only could she not comprehend it, she also couldn’t help him fund that dream. Mat had to settle for the most convenient journey that was presented to him.
Sad!
Some of the journeys we’re on aren’t the most pleasant ones and we will turn back and get on different paths as quick as lighting if presented with the opportunity to do so. But sadly, the journeys have become the reality we have to live with everyday.
The space between “fasten your seatbelt” and “we have arrived at” is when we indeed truly live. It’s now left of you to make the best of your journey.
Life guarantees us all a welcome one day. The welcome that puts a definite end to all other journeys you might want to embark on. Best if you make something good for yourself and your co-sojourners while travelling as much as you can when you still have the privilege to.
A quote by a dead man:
“We must decide what manner of men we wish to be and what calling in life we would follow and this is the most difficult problem in the world”.
- Cicero
Safe journey!
