It was time for a seven-seater. A red Ford Explorer, I thought. I pasted a picture of it on the divider in my workspace; right beside my monitor. All of a sudden, it seemed Ford Explorers were everywhere. I finally went to the showroom to closely examine one. It had most of the interesting and exciting features I was looking for but two things made me change my mind – it was too large and it was beyond my budget. A Santa Fe eventually did it for me – everything I desired in the right size and at the right price. Perfect!
So, you! What are you dreaming of? Where do you see yourself in two, five, ten or fifty years? What will you be doing? What would you have achieved by then? What would you like to be known for by then? Ask yourself ‘How do I want my life to be at age 25, 40, 60…?’
‘The path of the just is as the shining light, that shines brighter and brighter unto the perfect day’. That’s what a wise king said to his son. We should be getting better and better, continuously progressing toward a pleasant endpoint – the perfect day.
What does your perfect day look like? Imagine it. Dream about it. Make a picture of it and paste it on your mirror or another surface you look at a lot. Even better, make it your screen saver.
Albert Einstein said imaginations are a preview of life’s coming attractions. This is one way we influence our future, a way we make input during the ’roundtable discussion’ of what the future will bring us. If you’re not already dreaming, planning, and imagining your future, I encourage you to start now. If you don’t dream today, you will have to deal with whatever life throws at you. If it’s bad, you can only blame yourself.
No, I didn’t want to leave my sweetheart… but I had to. It was a painful decision to make. I had experienced a miracle and now it was time for me to do my part.
I always wanted a Masters’ degree and after the required exams to study in the US, I was asked to send my result to three schools of my choice. A few weeks, later, I got a message from one school to pay a fee of seventy five dollars for my application to be processed. Believe it or not, $75 was an impossible amount for my family to come up with at that time. If we couldn’t even pay the processing fee, how would we pay the tuition and handle the other financial needs?
I prayed a simple prayer in the bathroom when I got back from the cyber cafe… God I want to do my Masters and the only way it will happen is if you make a way because we can’t afford it…. I also put in a few lines about what I would like to study. Some weeks to months later, my sister found out about a scholarship opportunity. I got the forms, took the test and was one of the hundred awardees that year. The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) handled all the application processing and logistics and they covered every single expense – air fares, lodging, feeding, warm clothing, computing devices, communication costs and so on. We were totally pampered by the Nigerian Government.
So off I went to Europe. Kingsley, along with my family and a few friends, saw me off to the airport. Many big hugs later, I joined two other scholars and we boarded the plane. I had a picture of Kingsley and myself nicely framed. I wasn’t going to forget his face for any reason whatsoever. It had a permanent position on my bedside table. I also went along with all the love notes he had written to me. I think that is a fine art that is getting lost in this era of much easier communication.
I took time to write down my dream for 2007 – from graduating with distinction, to returning to Nigeria, getting a job, getting married to Kingsley, and so on. I pasted it on the wall in my room. A friend of mine came into my room and had a good laugh when she saw it. Then she asked the rest of our Nigerian colleagues to pray for me so Kingsley wouldn’t break my heart. They all knew where my heart was.
Staying in touch was hard. At first I had to go out in the cold to make calls, then later we had skype in Europe but it wasn’t really working back home… then I started getting tired of having to recount my experiences over the phone. I wished he could be there to share those moments with me. So I prayed again. This time I said, ‘Dear Lord, I really want to live with my husband after we get married. I don’t want to have to do a long distance marriage. I don’t want us to be apart… Please make a way’.
February 2007 came and I returned to Nigeria. My fellow scholars and I were super excited. People wondered about that. I don’t know why the others were excited but I was going to see Kingsley after so long and remember my dream? All those wonderful things were to happen in Nigeria in 2007. So, yes! I was excited.
I fell ill. Wow! This usually doesn’t happen to me, but it did. The height of it was the moment I fell to the ground while trying to get from the hospital bed to the restroom which was only about 10 feet away. Someone helped me back to the bed and a nurse assisted me to the restroom.
The amazing thing about this experience is how normal I felt in my mind, I could say I was mentally sound, but physically incapacitated. I knew everything that had to be done, and that I would have loved to do, but I also knew my body was unable to handle any of those at that time.
Now I am well and totally excited about it. All the pain’s gone and my strength is restored. I feel great. I can move about and do what I want to do and I am thankful for this. But in retrospect, I learned something from this illness. I feel like I had a peek into how it feels to be advanced in years, especially if you didn’t take good care of your body when you were young. You become more aware of the fact that your body is a container, a house, a case, a shell… and you experience the frustration on not having it respond to you as you would desire. It’s like pressing the accelerator of an old car and the car’s just not responding.
They say time waits for no one, and we all get older as the years go by. I do not want to realize in my old age that I am yet to do the things I’m meant to do in this lifetime. I want to know them now and pursue them now; now that I still have zest and vitality; now that I can think it and my body can respond accordingly to produce the result I desire.
Time waits for no one indeed. Take time out to review those things you’ve said you’ll do and then begin to strategize and take bold steps towards achieving them. We have to WAKE UP! and get about our business today. We don’t have time to waste.
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