As you go through life and come across its attendant highs and lows, you can either associate your experiences; the successes and/or failures, to factors you have control over or to forces outside your control. Whichever disposition you choose has a direct influence on your long-term success or failure.
Everything we do is driven by something. Some of our actions are driven by love. Some are driven by hate. Money is also a powerful driver. Some people also act based on their religious sentiments.
I was recently reminded of another powerful driver, Fear. Having the opportunity to meet with a lot of people from different walks of life on a daily basis, I peer into the psychological depths of many of them and see all kinds of emotions on their faces. One thing that is constantly reoccurring and almost impossible to ignore is Fear. These faces are adult faces, so the fear I see is not fear of the dark or of monsters. It is a fear that paralyzes us to act.
Life is messy. Every day we meet series of activities that compete ruthlessly for our time. We spend a huge chunk of our day struggling, often unsuccessfully, to squeeze in all our responsibilities at home and at work into the time available to us. Not to forget the time we spend on our most common obsession, the social media.
A new-born starts life being carried around; soon he becomes unsatisfied with being carried around, and begins trying to sit on his own. When he has mastered sitting, still unsatisfied with his level of achievement, he starts learning to crawl, then stand, walk, run and in some cases fly. Not being satisfied with a status quo has been the starting point of all advancements. Every worthwhile achievement and invention has always started with “not being satisfied”; it is a force that pushes us to be better and do better. It impresses in us a strong desire to make better use of the resources available to us to create a better environment for ourselves. If you are not “not satisfied”, you will not have any desire to invest any time or effort in improving any aspect of your life or achieving any objective, actually, you will not have any objective. You will simply not care; you would be satisfied.
He doesn’t know it yet but on January 4th, at 79 years of age, Ifeanyi will be laid to eternal rest at his wife’s side. On March 4th at 29 years, he and his wife will have their first child on February 4th, when he is 26, they will be married. Today, December 4th at 24, he will meet his wife.
