the journey of life

The challenges of life are full of lessons, lessons we can learn if only we remain still and acknowledge the greatness we carry within (Image). Lessons that are thrown our way to teach us vital truth about life. Life is the best teacher, she knows what and how best to teach us what we need. There are many ways to learn, you can be taught something by a teacher in a class and before the next 2 minutes it has flown out through the window of your ear, infact, sometimes it does not even enter the ear come to talk of flying out- this is one of the reason some people are O O (“ogbu oge” an ibo word meaning killer of time) in every class or NFA chairperson(no future ambition). But when we experience things, the lesson of those things remain with us almost forever.

Life chooses to give us experiences so we learn all by ourself, when we are ready to learn  (when the student is ready, the master will appear this also means if the student is not ready, the master will not appear. As long we are not ready for a truth, it will be hidden from us but will unfold from within when we are ready). This means one can have an experience and it will be meaningless for years until he takes the time to contemplate old experiences then he will see the role those previous experiences played in shaping him then if need be, he will be empowered to live the benefit of such experience from a conscious way thereby extending the benefit of the experience.

In my primary 4, i had a close friend, we were so close, i used to visit him at home. Then in the first term of primary 5,i  was made a class captain. In our school then (Aladumo educational center, Port Harcourt), management enacted a rule that class captains could punish their fellow students if they misbehaved, they even had the power to order another class member to write names of noise makers and afterword, the captain will flog these noise makers. But many class captains did not enforce this aspect of their responsibility cos maybe they didn’t see it as a good thing to flog the same people they will play with later. They tampered justice with mercy, but i was differentia made sure i flogged every noise maker, many times some students murmured about me, some said i was wicked, some said i was a devil some even tried to influence management to change that decision but they were unsucexful.

Then in our second term, there arouse a protest to change me (it was a culture to select a new class captain every new term if the class wishes to, so some classes changed but most did not) some people who knew me were protesting that i had to leave the office of class captain, our class teacher was reluctant to get a new captain cos he liked the fact that i implemented discipline without favour to anybody, for i even flogged my own friends if they made noise, though i lost some friends to this, i didn’t care, cos to me, the fact that someone was my friend did not give him the privilege to misbehave.

As the protest to remove me arose, the surprising thing was that it was my own closest friend who was the leader of the protest. We were still friends, but i did something which till date i cannot tell why i did that- i never confronted him to ask why he was the one leading a protest to sack me from office. Though within this period, he started avoiding me but i still went close. Finally, my class forced our teacher and he conducted an election and i still won by a close margin. The person most pained by my winning was my closest friend, he was so pained he wanted to say the election was a fraud but thank God it was not one conducted  INEC, everybody voted and it was counted in front of everybody and i won so there was no room to say it was a fraud.

This event did not really mean anything to me for long. Later in my JSS1, i had a neigbour who was a senior student in my school. The school was a tough one so i looked up to him to protect me from the bed seniors, though i had never had any reason to go to him, i still felt i will need him someday. Then one day our path crossed in school, he called me to come, when i got to him, he asked me to go pluck a cane, i thought he wanted to flog another person but when i gave him the cane, he flogged me, his reason being that he was my protector so he had the right to flog me whenever he wished since he will be the one to rescue me whenever i was in soup.

He never knew what damage he did to our friendship because from that day, he died within me, everything about him was dead in me, he died because I asked, “why the person that was supposed to protect me was the one inflicting pains on me”

this lead me to recall the event with my classmate in primary school. This recollection marked a new beginning in me, i began not to expect much from people.

From the above, we see i had an experience that yielded a seed later in life. Prior to the experience, i was expecting much from people but when i learnt the bitter truth about life, i stopped expecting much and till date, i don’t expect much from people until they prove to me that they are to be trusted. This simple fact has guided much of my interaction with people, even when people feel betrayed by others or feel let down, i do not because the person in question had not proved his worthiness to me.

In the school of life, every experience and everybody is our teacher, they teach us by the experiences, trials, challenges and triumph they bring come our way.  Some people are a blessing while some are a lesson.

? What lessons have you learnt from the school of yore.