Who the World Needs To Behold
Ever wanted to ask a question or some questions & you are scared about the response you did get? That fear that bleats in between your thoughts leaving you helpless, if not restless, in a state of mind you cannot describe still you know how much you will like to have it tagged as something far from fear. It is like deciding to read a part of the Holy book & you are stuck with a popular verse. You do your best to read this scripture over a million times only to end up emptier with your knowledge about this same scripture you can recite off heart. The drill, the shivering & cold feet unbalancing the best of you in words & actions make you wish humanity was just a phoneme. I, for days, have been stuck in between what really is & what should have been.
It has been simple & difficult, in a nutshell. I have had to cry myself all through the night & also laugh the best of me into jokes many are quick to call encouragement. Sometimes, it is good to be broken. In being broken we get to see the embedded strengths our weaknesses possess. It is like a warring soldier who before the war prepares him or herself for some unseen battle & he or she gets to the war front with nothing but memories of rains of bullets, deaths, shouts, blasts & even injuries that never leave. These dark days melt into courageous moments & the best of what is better becomes the fuel for the stories of his or her survival. Let’s imagine this soldier makes it home alive, wouldn’t it be great to tell the stories of wars with a cup of coffee & two pieces of unequal spicy French fries disappearing behind his or her fairly oiled lips? Yes, it is fair to know that all we go through in life draw us closest to the beautiful parts of who we truly are & are meant to be.
For many years as a child, I was too scared to face the world with all I had as my story. It was hard being me, harder being someone else too. I feared death was easier than staying alive but I stood back relinquishing every flooding thought that crippled me each time someone spittles my uniqueness into my face. It was obvious that all didn’t work out for me as it did for the guys in the Forbes or Times. I knew I had more than a long walk to freedom to demand the attention I needed. It wasn’t all about being alive, there was something more than being — I needed a reason to live as me. For all the places & people I came across, the narrative was as simple as silence or “you are good”, that is it.
I know this even if they never told me but I needed evidence to prove I was enough for myself. Like everyone drowning in those shady corners where no one sees you, I let down my guards & became a baby to life. The grunt of knowing too much might increase your chances of being heard but check it if what announces you doesn’t fill the gap inside you, you just might need to rethink the why behind what you do. I loved writing for the attention it gave me but I never liked it because it proved to me that I could only be heard on papers. I felt empty each time I had to scribble my opinion on something before someone gets the full gist of what I had to say. Most times, I end up not saying anything because I felt it was safer to be unheard. I, for years, allowed the best of me see writing as a mocking medium for who I was & not who I could ever be. I was too quick to judge myself with my past that I easily became blindfolded to the future that aligned itself with my present. I grew colder & colder with what should have been my safest way out of problems. Dusk to dawn, I feared God might someday peep into my inner conversations of how I wasn’t sure he did the right thing bringing me to planet earth in the first place. Sometimes, I just take pleasure in knowing that God was God, nothing more.
This period in my life was threatening. Every part of me felt threatened. My faith, my academics, my relationships, my family were all threatened. I needed answers to the very me, I wanted to know why it all didn’t pan out the way it did for my friends, my siblings, my parents & other persons I came across. How was it that they had good oral projection & I didn’t? Why do I have to repeat myself multiple times before someone grapples the obvious idea behind my nasal projection? This life wasn’t any balanced neither was the truth inside me. I had always nursed the thought that I wasn’t good beyond the shadows I entrapped myself. The best I could be was a good boy who never let himself to be attracted to street life. I became the church boy who knew the litany & left out the routines of living as prescribed by the scriptures. It was too much being unaccepted by myself & a few persons who labelled me different. Blending God into this would be me asking for too much, I always let myself conclude.
The narrative only changed one evening I visited a friend’s house. There, I met with this new friend who for the first few minutes I tried to avoid. It was obvious that things were awkward between us but the more I avoided her, the more she stole my thought with her smiles. Then, she stood up & adjusted her red round-neck polo before sitting directly opposite me. I knew this wasn’t a coincidence, she had chosen the sit there in other to unsettle me. I grumbled within me but she again pierced into my thought with her smile. The words — “why are you so silent? Do you talk? I know you are not a boring person? I just know you are special. Even if you don’t believe me, I choose to believe that you are not boring but special” — unscrewed my rigidity. For some split seconds, I couldn’t doubt everything she said. Then, the floods of all the negative experiences I had had in the past started dismantling her words but as they crushed on one another, this lady continued to replace them with more reassuring words. She continued to tell me how fascinated she was with my uniqueness & I still don’t know how we hit upon my love & dislike for writing.
We laughed about each other’s awkward moments in trying to express ourselves to strangers & how it felt being different even without being impaired. She was simple with every word she spoke still all she left with me that night was that “you are a rare gift to the world, the best of what is to be you. If only you can own this experiences you have gone through as your weapons for empowering yourself as well as others in similar condition, what you think isn’t enough is the galaxy of miracles you never can exhaust in a lifetime”. Yes, these words sank deep inside me. They changed my life & the way I saw things afterwards. Are you also in that boat wherein everything is crashing down so far? Are you in that dark space & you still don’t believe there is a galaxy of wonder & miracle in all you are passing through? It is time you drop the weight & dust off the dirt of being not good enough. You are the best there ever can be, there is a starlight inside you waiting to be celebrated outside here. The past will always unfold, they will always flood in — that is the best they can do but you & I have got to hit the mark, we have got to change the narrative by shining brighter than the scars inside us. We are the galaxies of miracles the world needs to behold & we cannot do that hiding behind the shadows, we need to outlive the questions & own every bit of who we were, are & can ever be. That’s the divine plan, God knew this & that is why He chose this time to remind you — “you are a galaxy of miracles.”
