Poser of the Day:
‘You lost ten years (1995-2005) of your life doing menial jobs. Now, you fall in and out of depression feeling that nothing can make up for those years. Is that normal? Can you ever feel fulfilled in life especially when your achievement is not commensurate with your age’?
Introduction: Welcome to ASK THE BOSS, the platform that fields questions on socio-emotional issues troubling you, gratis. We glorify and magnify the Big Man who sits high up there for the wisdom and the understanding. To avail yourself of our services, simply inbox me a concern or two you may have. If too private, please plead anonymity; otherwise send plus including your preferred photo.
2.0 Preamble over, let me now grant you full access to what we are looking at today. ‘You lost ten years (1995-2005) of your life doing menial jobs. Now, you fall in and out of depression feeling that nothing can make up for those years. Can you ever feel fulfilled in life especially when your achievement is not commensurate with your age?
3.0 ‘After my first attempt at WEAC, I started working in restaurants, companies and bookshop. This went on up until 2005. That was the year I gained admission. I don’t seem to live past the decade lost.
4.0 ‘I am so bitter about those years. Is it normal? How do I encourage myself to move on, appreciating that time lost can never be retrieved? I feel depressed whenever I reflect on that time of my life’!
5.0 My Take: About time we turned to the lady responsible for this entry. Dear Mrs. Udeme Inyang, many thanks for taking the trouble to write in as well as for being so bold about it. I trust that your home and Eket where you stay are doing you good. The first thing I want you to understand is that Life is a series of events: the good, the bad, the ugly.
6.0 Life is not -has never been and SHALL never be- a bed of roses. Never. To expect that you can reinvent the wheel of Life and get it to work the way you want is an exercise in futility that no sane human being should contemplate let alone undertake. So, today, I plead with you, Ma: do your own and allow Life do its!
7.0 Furthermore, Ma’am, Life is about tomorrow, not about today and certainly not about yesterday. In fact, yesterday has only one function in Life setup. Yesterday exists for history, experience and education; nothing more. To continue to fixate on yesterday, which I consider the dustbin of Life, is to remain a child, and illiterate and stupid.
8.0 Grow up, Pretty Ma, grow up; and only learn from yesterday. Never carry it along because it’s useless even for bragging rights and worse for regrets. Let yesterday remain what it was and still is: a starting point, your wilderness, your past. Wait to remember it after you must have arrived!
9.0 For now, while your Life is still going somewhere to happen, totally ignore or forget your yesterday. If not, you stagnate the gear of your Life in permanent reverse and God forbid, hurt your marriage in the process. Occasionally, if the gory pictures of yesterday succeed in forcing their way into your mind, smile and tell them: ‘get thee behind me, Satan. I shall overcome thee, and thou knoweth it’. Cheer up yourself 25 hours every day, and with your mind’s eye, create, see and focus on the big picture that you need!
10.0 Encourage yourself always by always telling yourself enough of depression, because you see: every glory has its story. For instance, all the glory you lavish on Jesus today, do you remember His yesterday at all? Just to sit on His own Father’s right hand, He had to go through the humiliation (hereinafter addressed as yesterday) of being born of a woman, living like a human being and unthinkably, dying like a criminal. If that happened to Christ, with all the one-to-one connection He had/has with Lord Total, can’t you see that there’s no reason whatsoever for you to misconstrue or perpetuate your past when a glorious future awaits you?
11.0 Before we go, People, please listen to The Boss. In the Name of God or all the things you believe in, please eschew bitterness and regret. By the way, failure is not abnormal; failure is normal. Rather than be deterred or frustrated by failure, see it as a normal speed bump which stops nothing (on your way to success).
Conclusion: That’s this episode of ASK THE BOSS. Keep believing, keep pushing. You can lose a decade in time but gain a century of success. And, whatever happens, always be happy because your father is the Referee in the match of Life; which should reassure you that you can never lose.
God bless Nigeria!
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