ARE YOU PUSHING LIFE OR LIVING IT?

2021. A long journey we had of it.

If you’re a student of Literature and a good one, the line above would ring a bell. If you’re not, I’ll leave you to let your curiosity lead you.

WHY ARE YEARS SO LONG?

Years always come as long journeys because they take a whooping sum of 12 months for them to be called years. Give a period of similarly collated time anything less, and it’ll not meet the standard of being called a year.

Because of the seasons and times a calendar year swallows; and because of the cold, warmth, heat and different weather conditions that inhabit it; we can say that a year has the capacity to be kind, cruel or indifferent depending on the side it turns to every individual that lives through it.

But whether 2021 was kind, cruel or indifferent to you, the fact that you’re reading this means you’ve developed the capacity to see it through. And if there’s any difference in how you handle this New Year, it’ll be with a stronger capacity.

It was like the Magi, on their way to visiting the new born King. No one would be able to tell now what drove them to keep going even after the angels’ instruction. No one would be able to say they’d overcome such desperate conditions if they were to be put in the same situation. And even though their journal showed that they had a rough travel that no one would have prayed for, they documented that they were glad to have embarked on it and would love to do it again, if given another chance.

But no other chance was given them or anyone else ever after them. The journey was supposed to happen once.

Such was the journey of 2021. It was supposed to happen once and it obeyed, like all the years before it. And unless someone tampers with some time machine somewhere, 2022 is also bound to follow suit.

But will you push life this year as you did the previous one? Or will you live life as though it’s meant to be lived and enjoyed?

When the Magi got back home from their journey and narrated the encounters they had, it was as if they doubted their ability to have done it. They couldn’t believe they went and see a birth that was going to shape humanity years to come.

They felt like their best time was when they were with the infant. For when they got back to their house, they fell back into the normalcy of their human life and declared that they were ‘no longer at ease.’ It was as if they went to heaven and came back.

The thing is, we can live life as this and not push it. A life that’s always at ease, despite the unease that’s speckled all over it.

What more can I say. When 2022 ends, what will you say in reply to me when I ask you about the year? What will be in your journal when you write about the year?

‘I pushed it’ or ‘I lived it’?

Stephen Wholesome