Changes

Fall is such a beautiful season. Photo-unsplash.com

Was going through my drafts and saw this post from last year. At that point I couldn’t share it, but now I’m in a better position to do so.

This year, so many things in my life changed. Ideologies held dear, plans I thought were set and solid, in various strokes, everything turned upside down, inside out. Some things went south, opportunities in some places where opened up. Essentially, in the year I was supposed to be consolidating on life and plans, everything I thought I knew changed. This scared me shitless.

As I waded through everything and handled new challenges, opportunities and responsibilities, I realized that I really cannot predict the future. It’s not in my power to do so. Yes I can try to make plans and decide what I want for myself. But life often takes an unexpected turn and there’s really nothing anyone can do about that.

What this realization did was to help me prepare for surprises, both pleasant and nasty. It’s helped me understand that I’ll make plans, sometimes they’ll succeed, other times they might fail. This is not an indictment on my planning, or a reason to beat myself up. It simply just is- life.

I am afraid of many things. Will some “failures" be too difficult for me to bear? Will the unexpected break my resolve? Will all my work on something sometimes be in vain? I don’t know. I honestly don’t. But I will make the best of my journey. When the unexpected comes, I’ll handle it then.

A few years ago I was having a conversation with someone describing my goals and ambitions for life. He listened and said

“Have you ever noticed how anti-climatic achieving your “goals" can be? At some point WAEC was the biggest exam in the world. Now you’re staring at 200L professional exams in med school, and WAEC seems like a really funny joke. I have realized that many times, it’s not in the goals we achieve or the targets we tick off. That’s important yes, but not as important as the journey to get there, and who we become in the process”

I agreed with this in my head, but never fully understood it properly until recently.

Ambitions and goals are great. Having a 5 year plan is excellent and really helps you be more efficient and productive. But, what happens when life throws you a curve ball? What happens when you get lemons, but no sugar or water so you can’t even “make lemonades"? Do you crumble to pieces? Does it leave you completely incapacitated and unwilling to try something else? What do you do then?

To be honest, I’m still learning this. To deal with changes, to deal with surprises, to deal with situations I absolutely did not include in my grand plan. I am doing that by understanding that “goals are not really that all-consuming". An ambitious mind is rarely ever completely content, it will keep wanting more and more.

This means that there will always be goals and targets in my life. They aren’t going anywhere. But will I let those goals consume me and be the very essence of who I am? Will my need to tick certain boxes make me miss out on the beauty of life, love and friendship? Will I, in my bid to work for my goals, consistently put myself in a place that is mentally and emotionally harmful?

I am learning to tell when a goal is truly worth it and when it is not. I am learning to know when to say “I no do again" (p.s perseverance is not always a good thing). I am learning to deal with big disappointments and say “I learnt so and so from this, so it wasn’t a waste of time". I’m learning to be flexible, to learn where I need to apply more pressure or effort and where I need to let go. I’m learning to enjoy my journey through life, to take periodic breaks from “dreaming and thinking big" to see beauty in each day. I’m learning that life is unpredictable as can be and every day that we spend alive is a gift. I’m learning to not be so obsessed about the future, that I forget there’s only one thing I can be sure of- here and now.