IN QUEST FOR ANSWERS

As I write this my mind can’t seem to find one single line of thought. But, walk with me, this is important. It shouldn’t take longer than six minutes or there about.

Sometimes I sit and look back at my life when I was younger and compare it to what it looks like now. It is almost as if everything started to go wrong when I began to claim some degree of freedom. But have I accepted the mistakes that I made when I was younger? Not only that; I also think about the broken relationships in my life. Have I taken responsibility for them? I am only learning now that to take responsibility does not mean to be at fault, even though sometimes it does. Whatever the case, I have had a role to play in the way my life looks now. And I have to fix things myself.

Sometimes I sit and look around me. Everyone seems to be giving life their very best. I have friends starting businesses, solving world poverty, while others debate the decisions of politicians. I love being at school because it is so overpopulated there that the state of my life is irrelevant in a place of that size. There are so many people there with stories that matter that I can hide my inaction in listening to what they are doing. There I am invisible. Unimportant. And I love it there. But here, back at home, at a time when we’re all supposed to stay inside, it sometimes feels as though the walls are screaming for me to step outside my comfort zone.

Other times I sit and look at the way I view life. I think to myself about whether I answer life’s difficult questions in the light of truth, if I even answer them at all. From questions like what the meaning of my life is, where those we love go when they die, to, whether there exists wrong and true Christian denominations. You know, those questions that keep you up at night. Was I given ways to answer them when I was a child and now believe those ways so much that I view them as true? Have I searched for meaning and truth? Am I using the time I have been given to ask my own questions and seek my own answers? Am I still living a life that was decided for me? What if I have been wrong this entire time?

Sometimes I sit and think about my life in the future. I ask myself often these days, ‘what do I want out of life?’ What does a successful future look like for me?

I used to want to be an entrepreneur and make a lot of money so much so that if you came to visit I would say something in the lines of, “hey, I’m heading into town, if you need anything you can make a list and I’ll get it for you.” But then that comes with hard work and sacrifice. I am not lazy- I am only beginning to see that certain things I will never get twice: like time that could be spent with those I love. Life’s too short to go chasing things that don’t matter. I grew up in a middle income household. We had everything we needed and cornflakes. We all made it to grade 12 and university. My father drove a 1994 Toyota Rav4 and never was there a time that I wished I was walking instead of riding in it. And now I ask myself what a lot of money is for if time, that can’t be recovered, is lost in trying to get it and more trying to keep it.

All things considered, there’s a reality that I have to face: as I get older I am pressed with more limitations. It becomes harder to change careers or move to a different town or to marry a different person. I don’t want to, one day, crave the freedom of youth out of regret. I’m just saying, maybe all I want out of life is a home filled with books and travel souvenirs. All I want is to have walls lined with old and new photos of friends and family. Maybe all I want is to leave home and go to a job I can grow a passion for and return to a person I truly love. I’m just saying that maybe that’s the dream I want to sweat for. Is it too little to ask out of life? I want to allow money to have a proper place in my life and not a throne. Money will not be the yardstick by which I’ll perceive myself.

And then I have times when I sit and think about how quickly time is passing. This then leads me to think about my death. This is an issue that has, with time, become more existential to me. My time here is limited; death is inevitable.

I think to myself that if I died now would anyone remember me? Of course most of you reading this would -although not for a long time- but what about the people who are not. It’s not that I want a statue of me to be erected in my honor but have the wings of my life flapped so hard that I’ve caused hurricanes around me? If not, what am I doing about it? What am I willing to struggle for? Have I began to see my life as more than just my own? Do I wake up every day trying to make the world around me a better place? 

Even though I don’t know what I am doing, these are questions I can’t keep on ignoring. Ignoring them would only make me rudderless and directionless in the long term.

I am a card carrying member of the human race. I have been given the permission to admit my own doubts and to ask my own questions. Now I think, what would I do if I weren’t afraid to make mistakes, to be rejected, to look foolish or even to be alone? I am not young anymore, can’t afford to be.

For me and for you,

Akwasi Dzifa