Lilian rushes out of the house, panicking, and silently praying that she made it in time. It was a surprise that she missed her alarm as a light sleeper, but anyone who was subjected to so much stress the day before will fall into a deep slumber.
She got to church in time to submit her prayer request just before her phone rang. It was mom.
“Lily o, my friend’s daughter Chioma just got engaged!”
Donald is taking those pills for the third time today. He is not into drugs, it’s for his anxiety. Donald panics whenever his phone rings, and if it was ringing again, it was most likely his family or a friend but definitely someone with a bill he was required to foot. Donald earns $500,000 monthly, but he looks worse.
It’s 7 a.m. Toyosi will kiss her husband before he leaves for work and then proceed to the bathroom to cry her eyes out, while she wonders which of her wrongdoings has resulted in her barrenness. Some miles away, while her husband drives to work, he wonders what made him impotent.
Patrick is an angry young man. He would be 27 in a few months. He had plans to leave this country at 25 for his master’s, but he is stuck in an academic loop. Patrick got into school at 19 and got admitted to study a 5-year course, but he’s yet to graduate. He comes online and sees that his friends from secondary school have convoked, and his irritation grows.
WHAT NEXT?!
A child is born, goes to school, gets a job, gets married, has kids, caters to the kids, and dies. The cycle continues with those kids.
Somehow society has mapped out a fixed time for every phase of this cycle (sometimes gender-based), and this has brewed some form of unhealthy competition among humans.
The life of a stranger becomes the yardstick to measure our success.
Imposter syndrome has us in a chokehold because my future success counts as someone else’s past, so why then do I celebrate?
Some persons have been driven mad with ambition, the vices of life have become their hanging thread.
My mummy would say, “your generation has done nothing new, you only have the advantage of the media”.
This is not a call to be mediocre but to reiterate that “human wants are insatiable”, a perfect state of existence doesn’t exist.
For balance to be, good and bad must exist side by side. Every phase of life has its own cons, and hence the need to move up the ladder.
There’s always something better, someone better.
You keep chasing the star while the earth rotates, sooner or later you will break and the world will move on.
By all means, hunger to be better, take up healthy challenges, grow yourself, and up your life.
In all these, remember to be content with your present state while you work towards being better.
Writer: Suzanneh
IG: su_zanneh
Twitter: sue_zhaan
