So Choose Love

There is a lot of perspective I have gained from the humility University Life has so much endeavored to instill in me, and I am still learning my lessons. When I have occasion to reflect upon my High School days, I do it with lots of nostalgia that paints it in a light that makes it appear perfect, when, in fact, it was everything but perfect. It is among the events in my life that have been beleaguered by uncertainty and the fear that things weren’t going to work out; yet they did! Figuring out the directions of our lives is certainly among the imperative yet most difficult things to do, especially when the effort we put in just doesn’t seem to pan out.

Our lives aren’t linear, though most times we actively seek out the opportunity to see or define them as such. The temptation to round off the edges is one that exists for most people.

What if our lives weren’t as messy as they are? What if we were just disciplined the way so and so is disciplined? What if we were in control? Some people seem to have figured out the directions of their lives, most of us haven’t, the truth is that we aren’t worse of for it.

I seem to have a terrible problem with my communication. That means that I have been unable to maintain some of the relationships that were so dear to me. My taciturnity butchered them, my apathy buried them. They have remained to be relics of a passionate past. I still wonder how I manage to clock months without getting to hear of how some of my closest friends are faring on. Though I believe I never love them less even after months of incommunicado, I have been tempted to think that their love for me has waned. But after a while I realized something that has really changed how I see my life today, or how I try to see it at least.

Whatever it is we feel we are not receiving could probably be what we are not giving. While we crave love and attention, are we giving them in the proportions we desire it for ourselves.

The bane of our existence is rooted in our solipsism. Self-absorption earns us nothing but needless anxiety and disillusionment, even in the people who love us the most. Some of the people we want to appreciate us may not be good at it, but that doesn’t mean they spun our achievements. Are we able to appreciate them ourselves? When we only think about ourselves, its so easy to be disappointed. It so easy to judge ourselves and other people, when in fact we could ask ourselves what it is that we could and would do. In order, to give ourselves the opportunity to find peace and fulfillment, we have to teach ourselves how to make heaven for other people. May be the way to find joy would be to create that joy for others, and while we make them smile, we will definitely smile as well. It is more blessed to give.

While our lives are fraught with frustrations and pain, we don’t lessen our suffering when we project this frustration at others. Other people aren’t to blame for the darkness in our lives, neither are we. When we bully others because we were bullied by our bosses we set out a domino effect that causes a mess in the world which in some way eventually gets back at us; the cat spills the milk we worked tirelessly to bring home because he was kicked by the kid who was slapped by her mother who had been insulted by her husband who had been reprimanded by his boss. We are strong to the degree that we can smile at others even when our lives aren’t all roses and rainbows. So many people have come to the realization that the easiest way to happiness is to make others happy. You have no right to claim what you are not giving. You cannot earn other people’s respect when you are rude and patronizing, you have to respect others first. When you do the right thing, when you are kind and courteous to others, it is a small thing when they do not return it. What matters is we do the right thing, whether the world meets it with indifference at best or insults our efforts at worst should not worry us. People don’t degrade us when they insult or slander us, they degrade themselves. To love is the most courageous thing to do; to know that someone will hurt you at some point, but to still love them anyway. Those who don’t want to be hurt cannot love; those who cannot love will never be happy.

It is the same thing with forgiveness. People are not perfect, it is both unfair and impossible to want them to be so. There are millions of people on earth, it is almost impossible not to step on each others toes. What we do not know is we ourselves have hurt many people while we thought we were joking; we have vociferated stinging comments that have harrowed the hearts of our victims to date ―we have caused wounds unable to heal. Yet, when people wrong us, we have never been willing to bear it. We have called it disrespect or even insubordination. To be free we need to forgive. We need to let go and let God in the most literal sense. Vengeance is his; let’s not claim part in it. Forgiveness isn’t what you do for someone else, its something you do for yourself. Love yourself enough to forgive.

With that If I have ever hurt you in any way, in my words, actions,or even inaction, I am sorry. Be kind enough to forgive me.

Life is meant to be messy, people are meant to be messy. We live because we love, and its true the other way round as well.

So choose love.

Simps will see Dust

From the look in her eyes, I could tell that it was bad news. The expression on her face was disturbed and anxious. Her lips were half asunder as if she meant to speak; and she drew a breath, but it escaped in a sigh instead of a sentence. She raised her winsome eyes to mine and gave me a kind of solemn and distressed gaze that immediately sent tendrils of paranoia down my spine. My heart exploded into a frantic crescendo of beats that forced an embarrassing gasp out of me. The world around me had descended into the sadistic and stifling silence of a graveyard at midnight. I desperately searched for assurance in those dove eyes that seemed resolute on dashing and annihilating whatsoever form of equanimity I was struggling to evince.

Still, I was unable to understand how fast I had moved from detesting this angel of a person to desperately yearning for her in every second of my existence. The first day we met at our Anatomy Dissection Table, I loathed with perfect passion the sight of her imposing figure and the impressive mien of control she exuded. In contrast to her riveting poses and carefully worked out intonations that made her explanations astoundingly succinct and wonderfully apt, I hated how I would drone on incoherently while struggling to put together the scrappy and expatiate points in my argument. Her smile and graceful nods then were unsettling and would plunge me into an abasing abyss of discomfiture, as if to emphasize her own indubitable composure set against the backdrop of my pitiful confusion.

Even though I had expected her to be haughty and hubristic, her replies to questions from our table mates were kind and down-to-earth. She was witty and humorous in a manner that disarmed every soul that engaged her in a conversation and made it impossible not to love the salubrious and rejuvenating air she effortlessly infused into her surroundings.

“Henry,” she calmly called out to me one afternoon while I tried to clarify the difference between Crohn's Disease and Inflammatory Bowel Disease. I grunted something close to a reply as I tried to find sobriety at a moment that suddenly seemed so critical. Excepting her glossy hair that was usually held by a black velvet band with a spray of white pearls in front, she preferred to showcase her beauty au naturel, jilting all the overtly adorned features, outfits and elaborate ostentatious styling that was typical of the repulsively coquettish ladies in our class. I did not know for how long I had been lost in the heaven of such incomparable beauty until I had that sweet and familiar voice again.

“You agree with me, right?”

“Yes!” I whispered in my mind, unaware of what she meant. “I agree that I am in love with you!” I shouted silently as a sheepish smile spread over my face and drew the flabbergasted gazes of my colleagues.

For six years of Medical School I surrendered myself at the mercy of insatiable riptides of love and infatuation that lurked beneath the veneer of what seemed to be a placid demeanor. I saw Brenda return her adoration for me in furtive glances that lingered and brief smiles that became the highlight of my long, arduous and exerting days in Medical School. I was only starting to realize how wrong and blind I had been while I knelt before her, having voiced out a proposal that was not a little bit romantic as I had envisioned now that I was being roused to a horrible awakening of my unrequited love and the misery that would mark all my forthcoming days. She shook her head apologetically and I watched her lips settle in shape as I prepared myself to confirm her say the “NO” I dreaded hearing.

“Yes!” She enthused, “I will marry you Henry!” The heart-rending surprise at my sudden felicitous turn of fortune was enough to startle me out of the dream I had been having.

“Oh my goodness!” I gasped involuntarily as I sprang out of bed. When I realized I was an hour late for my Pathology end of year exam, I knew it wasn't Brenda's pretty face I was staring at but the unnerving grin of a Supplementary Exam.