I am turning 25 in three months time. To say that this has been a smooth ride would be a great travesty of honesty since like most people out there, I have had my fair share of trials, tribulations, rare happy moments and lately, a life crisis characterized with confusion.
It is a confusion that springs from a recently acquired pessimistic attitude towards life. In the Bible, I recently read a chapter that questioned the justification behind virtually everything we do, why do humans struggle to amass great amounts of wealth, make beautiful art, engage their time and resources in pursuit of the finer things in life, if in the end all of us are just but rather sojourners in this place we call earth. In the end, all of us breath their last and go to meet the creator. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, you may be lucky to add a few years to your life by following a strictly monitored diet sanctioned by the best dieticians out there but in the end it all in vain. You die just like everybody else. The absence of permanence is a very depressing prospect.To cut a long story short, all is vanity. This is my dilemma.
Back in college, I was speaking a different language. A language where everything was worth it. From gazing at the sunset to watching children play. Every day brought it own share of joys and challenges which I partook in with a lot of gusto. It was a period of great discovery.
I discovered love, that insanely sweet emotion that could turn bitter any moment. I relished every moment I spent touching and speaking to a woman.
I discovered that I was a potential Michelangelo or Picasso. Spending countless hours drawing everything that apparated inside my memory and with so much zeal; I almost went mad. I breathed and ate art. Every time I closed my eyes, images and pictures danced in front of my eyes, begging to be drawn. Sometimes, the seduction would be complete and giving care to the wind, I would spring out of bed at an ungodly hour and feverishly start drawing, insanity gleaming from my eyes. I drew for anybody who seemed remotely interested. Money or lack of it did not matter more than the deep satisfaction that ran through my body when people would with unbridled awe, stare at my handiwork. They would wonder why I was wasting my time in boring Literature classes when I should be working in a big grand studio, churning out masterpieces.
I also discovered my strong orientation to music when a friend introduced me to digital creation of music. I remember clearly one day as he brought this amazing software called FL Studio 8 which could create music within a few clicks of a computer keyboard. I have to admit I took to this software like fish to water. For the next one semester I almost forgot to eat, to drink, to sleep and even pushed my girlfriend to the nether regions of my priorities. FL Studio 8 was my wife, concubine and lover. It’s no wonder that my weight reduced drastically because of a Spartan diet consisting of a banana and a few slices of bread.
Fast-forward to two years after finishing campus and here I am. An enduring lassitude has manacled my body and spirit with such determination that I have taken the decision to go along with it in total submission. Nothing will convince me to swat a fly from my cheek. After all, all is vanity. I struggle to pick a pencil and draw a rudimentary representation of a face. I think love is very overrated. Somehow sending and reading a love text seems perfunctory. The little silly nothings I used to exchange with my girlfriend require a huge investment in terms of effort. Fl Studio 11, the latest version, seems like a complicated ensemble specially engineered to cause a headache. Whenever I open it, I suddenly feel an alarming sense of being lost.
Because I am afraid after my exit, all my artwork, music productions and love interests will come to naught, since I will not be there. I am realizing that this is a very selfish point of view. And when I look at Martin Luther King, Michelangelo, JFK, Mahatma, Mandela and Isaac Newton, the more I am tempted to think I am wrong, that the great deeds they did were not in vain. Not for the millions in the subsequent generations who continue to date, to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Somehow their effort seems justified when you consider the impact of their deeds to humanity as a whole. But was it worthy for them? I think this is a question that cannot be answered until we find out what happens after death.
Do humans assume an intelligent but spiritual body after death? The reason I am praying that intelligence and perception be part of this new form is because I sorely wish that the dead can interact with the world of the living as far as seeing, listening and emotions is concerned. Then maybe I will probably have the assured satisfaction of watching my legacy positively impact the subsequent generations. I realize I am daydreaming.
I am also tempted to justify my lack of motivation to a normal disorder, which according to life psychologists, all of us must go through. The quarter life crisis. The psychiatrists online agree that the feeling of confusion, lack of purpose, lack of motivation and pessimistic attitude towards life could be legitimate symptoms of this crisis. Life at 25 years is far from what I had envisioned when I was a teenager. They say that the pressure of a young person struggling to fit into society and the sudden independence could lead to this. I am tempted to believe them too, since they continue to say that in two years time, somehow the patient (me) has finally managed to fit into society and everything is meaningful again. They better be right, since this is the easiest escape I can find. Then maybe I will be mad again about becoming the next Picasso.
See you again on this in two years time.
mathuganiojakwa 