According to Jack London , ‘The proper function of man is to live,
not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use
my time’. A man’s life is like a flower, here today and
gone tomorrow. No one comes and lives forever. No one is that powerful to
reject the call of death, when it is time to change state. Every man has his
own time, destiny and moment to live.
This is the major reason why the
three moments of every living being is very important to him or her and his/her
destiny. You wouldn’t just joke with your morning, afternoon and night. Each of
those sessions has its own purpose on earth. Every man or woman has his own time.
It doesn’t matter whether you live long or not, whether you died at 10, 20, 60
or 150 years. The moment you come to
earth is your morning, the moment you start making decisions is your afternoon,
and the time you start seeing the results of your decisions is your own night.
According to Alexander Pope, ‘the vanity of human life is like a river,
constantly passing away, and yet constantly coming on’. You have little or no impact or influence
on the time you are called up yonder, but you have so much influence on the
things you are able to do and achieve before you are called up yonder’.
Morning
According to Alberto Moravia, ‘modern
man can never for one moment forget that he is living in a world in which he is
a means and whose end is not his business’. The moment you were born is the
moment your journey begins. Always remember, the moment you stepped on earth, that very day your number of days on
earth start counting and it keeps reducing till you leave.
The morning of a man’s life is the
moment he starts learning the things he needs for the journey. Xerxes I says, ‘I am moved to pity, when I think of the brevity of human life, seeing
that of all this host of men, not one will still be alive in a hundred years'
time’. The moment you know you have
little time, that moment you take your morning very serious. This moment shows
how serious you will be in life. That is when people start to see what you want
to become in life. From your elementary, to the secondary, just about ages 0 – 18
years, you start seeing the things you like to do, what you have passion for. At this moment, pay a very close attention
to the things you love, things you admire.
Read a lot of books at these
moments, have particular good shows and people you follow, admire, and will
like to walk their path. Have strong reforms on what you want to become. Remember, your morning has a very great
importance on your afternoon. Once you get it wrong in the morning, once you
followed the wrong path, once your reforms are ones that are against your
passion, your afternoon might become so rough even if you will later get it
right.
Afternoon
According to Eugene O'Neill, ‘none of us
can help the things life has done to us. They're done before you realize it,
and once they're done, they make you do other things until at last everything
comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self
forever’. This moment is the most integral part of your moment. It greatly
determines your night, and it is the moment your actions and inactions are very
important. Even if you got it wrong in
the morning, please, never let your afternoon slip away. This is the moment you have the greatest
strength in life; it is around the ages of 18 – 40. This is the moment you
start to learn the skills you need for the night. They are the days you must work hardest in life. They are the days your
sweat is very important and they are the days you must roll your sleeves and
work dirty.
Whatever skills, software, or education you need in life,
they will come during these moments. They are the days you don’t waste the
money you get. You must study so hard and work so hard to prepare for your
night. If you don’t just want to suffer in your night, then toil in the day.
Read as much books as you can, meet with people, study so hard in school;
whatever job you find, give your all, see it as an avenue no matter how little
to acquire skills, gather money, savings, have a lot of investments.
This is the time you start getting a lot of money that come
quickly and also want to leave immediately. Trap those money; save as much as
you can, invest as much as you can, work as if you want to retire at 40. Don’t
mind getting into the mud just to get a life. If you want to, get a man or
woman you love, make sure you don’t get into the wrong hands as well, so your
night don’t get destroyed by marriage. Look before you leap; make sure all the
decisions you make at this point are the best.
Remember, whatever decision you make in the afternoon, the
results won’t come in the afternoon, but at night. Every of the step
you took in the afternoon, the rewards would smile at you in your night whether
good or bad.
According
to Norman Mailer, ‘every moment of one's existence, one is growing into more or
retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit’.
Night
Well, is it the most important?
maybe, but I can’t really say. I would say it is less important than the
afternoon, because the afternoon most times determine what the night can be,
however, some people find their feet at night. And I would say it is most important
because that is when you prepare for your exit. The end of a thing is more
important than the beginning.
Our hustles in the afternoon start to pay off at night. Our
sweat, start to bring returns, our pains start to make ways for us, and our sacrifices
start to bring us to stardom. This is about 40 years and above. Remember, all
the sacrifices you refused to make, all the hustles you refused to do, all your
profligacies, unnecessary spending, stupidity, inactions, indecisiveness,
hatred for hard work, laziness, will also start to pay off at night. Even the things you
never enjoyed would also be added to your bills.
According to Minna Antrim, ‘Experience is a good teacher, but she sends
in terrific bills.’
Aside enjoying
the toils of your sweat, this is also the moment to clean up your mess in early
days. If you worked hard in the morning and afternoon, congratulations. If you
didn’t, well, it’s better late than never. What you refused to do in the
morning and afternoon, then, you might have to start at night. It might just be
unfortunate you would be working for those that should work for you.
J. William
Fulbright says, ‘Science
has radically changed the condition of human life on earth. It has expanded our
knowledge and our power but not our capacity to use them with wisdom’. While
your struggles and investments start to pay off, then, start to invest in other
people. You will soon leave this side. According to Albert Schweitzer, ‘the purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the
will to help others’.
Remember, while you are climbing the ladder of success,
life, you met so many people on the way. Some threw jabs at you, some hated
you, some discouraged you, some looked down on you. In fact, many told you that
you can’t make it. Why don’t you thank those that discouraged you and made the
journey rough for you, if not for them, you might have relaxed and be
unserious. They are the ones you remember their words daily, and worked harder
to be who you are today.
You also remember those that encouraged you on the journey,
those that gave you 1001 reasons never to give up. Those you look up to
everyday and made sure you become YOU. Similarly, you must raise people up. Carl Gustav Jung,
‘as far as we can discern, the sole
purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being’.
You won’t be remembered for the number of houses you built,
the estates you had, but the number of lives you touched. Your joy shouldn’t
be that you are at the top of the success ladder, but that you brought a lot of
people to the top with you. What is the essence of the high walls you built to
surround yourself instead of building a long bridge to accommodate everyone in
your goodness. Remember, you only have an influence on how your acquisitions
would be managed when you are alive; when you are gone, management is in the
hands of those that are alive.
According
to Walter Savage Landor, ‘Fleas know not whether they are upon the body of a giant or upon one of
ordinary size’. Exactly, your wealth are not going with you into the grave.
This is the best moment to settle with your creator. This is the moment to put
things in place for safe landing. This is the moment to put wrong things right.
Your wealth at this moment should go into making people
happy, building lives, building families, nations. A dollar in your money is
not entering the grave with you. The flies, maggots do not know whether the one
they are feeding on is rich or poor, big or small, so why should you bother so
much about your wealth when you are gone.
Rather, use it to build lives. Edna St.
Vincent Millay says, ‘Man has
never been the same since God died. He has taken it very hard’. Prepare for
HOME-COMING. Nobody lives forever.
Finally, I leave you with this poem
by John Edwin;
A
man's ingress into the world is naked and bare,
His progress through the world is trouble and care;
And lastly, his egress out of the world, is nobody knows where.
If we do well here, we shall do well there:
I can tell you no more if I preach a whole year.
His progress through the world is trouble and care;
And lastly, his egress out of the world, is nobody knows where.
If we do well here, we shall do well there:
I can tell you no more if I preach a whole year.
John Edwin
orcid.org/0000-0002-7574-6582
1 Comments
Very inspiring
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