Engraved Words

Sometimes no matter how strong-willed you may be you need to pronounce your convictions out loud for them to be inscribed on your heart. 

THE ROLLER COASTER

Sitting under a thick tree to catch a nap after a good day’s work at the farm, I tried to take a bite at the last slice remaining in the basket to stuff my rumbling stomach but this was barely done for I saw a remarkable thing happen that forced me to abandon my meal and bleed the spectacular event onto my note book, for it was worth more than my hunger.

There before my eyes, a fully ripe grape fell into the stream that ran downhill to a big fish pond. And there it started its ride to the fate. I watched it “swim” past some bumpy rocks and finally fall into the pond. There in the pond it was crushed between the jaws of a merciless fish.

How terrible it must have been to have such a bad ending for so sweet a grape. And as I was thinking about this, another grape fell into the river but at least it got luckier for it got stuck in some overgrowth beside the stream. Yet its luck did not last a minute, for other grapes that had simultaneously “plummeted” into stream sent a couple of ripples towards it and once again the stream championed out and drove it into the mouth of another fish.

This caused a series of questions to overwhelm my brain.

Why did all the grapes have the same fate?

Why was the second grape’s victory so short-lived?

Why was its course so deceptive?

If it were human, could it have hauled itself out of the water?

The more these thoughts stirred up in my mind, the clearer my perception became.

I had finally nailed it! I realized man was not in any way different from these grapes!

We are naturally on a roller coaster. What lies ahead we don’t know, for we dare not plan or maybe we are too lazy to do the planning. We let our life rule us and not us rule our life. Yes indeed our brains have gotten a little too obese to stir our own ship towards our destiny, our very own goal.

Laziness seems to have demagnetized our compasses and procrastination has rusted its axle.

Yes indeed I am no exception either. We all wait for life to do what it has to do for us while we stay in our cabins and wait till the ship is wrecked. Our creator generously gave us enough wits to man our lives but the more our little success buttered up our bread, the more our brains clogged with the toxic oils of laziness.

We are really a great bundle of patience. We wait till every luck flies out of the window before we realize we had it.

Every time seems not to be the best time to make that right move but when are you ever going to take that first step? When are you ever going to stop bellyaching and stitch up those loose seams?

Success is never going to walk right into our homes if we don’t invite it. And we can only invite it by putting an end to this excessive patience; procrastination in disguise so it is rightly called.

It is one draw back that shutters all our aspirations. I remember having once fallen victim recently for I too am not a good manager of my own time. It took seven months for me to resurrect my Blog(Website) from dormancy and each time I thought of cranking it to life, there was always one thing that made every moment not a good time for that. But I later came to discover it was I who was the problem not the circumstances. And I finally realized circumstances are only external factors that hinder success, the main stumbling block to every success happens to be man himself.

This is one special element that is missed by many. Imagine how we manage to override external factor when we desire something that isn’t right ours. Which thief ever thinks about how many people are present at the would-be crime scene? He always finds a better way of using that number(crowd) to his advantage.

When we look back at our past and recall how many portions of luck slipped through our fingers we always justify our failure by convincing ourselves that we were either  too over ambitious as every young person naturally is or we only ring a consolation bell in our heads saying “that wasn’t meant to be and maybe you could have stepped into knee-deep trouble if you took that direction” is this really a perfect assumption, arrived at after series of page-flipping in your book of wisdom? I think not, I think is the fox’s assumption of sour grapes after failing to pluck any from the tree.

Despite all this, I believe man is at times only a shout away from turning failure into success. It only takes a word for things to change and life(and God) only waits for this word to pull one out of misery. A little less complaining and a little more action is what it takes to pan one out of the roller coaster and make him a perfect captain of his own ship.

Life is like the old genie in the lamp, you never get what you want until you spell it out.

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Life is like swimming in new waters, you never know what lies ahead and which way you are going.
The best is halting for a while, sticking your head out of the water to view the “lay” of where you are coming from and assess what lies ahead, lest you get eaten by crocodiles.~Just like in preparing a well-seasoned tasty meal, perfect success is only baked by occasionally “tasting the food” while on the stove because nothing to salty or too bland can ever be corrected on the table.~

You focus on the island ahead and no matter which way the waves toss you, you still keep the island within sight.