I have had an obnoxious cold this week that has
chronicled inexplicable misery. Each time I sit at my table with a box of
tissue at my side to write, my vision blurs, my head pounds irascibly, warm
liquid drips uncontrollably down my nostrils and I get immensely disoriented. I
however engaged an alternate tactic to put my thoughts together, an
augmentation of the efficacy of the mind and the serenity of the night did the
magic. Who says being a nocturnal homosapien is a defect! Every night this week
I have laid on my bed and with the entire universe snoring, ruminated on what
is to be published today and all I kept hearing in my head was this- “illusions
never change into something real”
In the sanctum of my unlit bedroom, I had begun to ponder on this phrase. These words had become for me a mantra until providence aided me to assiduously revamp them with this pertinent illuminating scenario.
Early this year, precisely in January, I made a trip down west to my Alma Mater, the prestigious African’s most beautiful campus and nostalgia stuck! Walking through an infamous car park at the center of the university, I plummeted down the heights of the memory ladder to a few years before. A reminiscent smile began at the edges of my lips and broadened rapidly, a familiar, distant but very much vivid image stood before me- My elder sister and I, returning from our respective departments after a tedious day of lectures and practicals, chatting animatedly.
Our conversations were always of perfect pictures, illusions that saw all what was wrong in the university and at the same time proffered superlative solutions. All of this we did with our tongues, cackling away like the wren. We were obviously at the zenith of our innovative cycle; ideas came rushing like water that has been dammed for ages and undammed all of a sudden! We had the ability to know all that plagued the school, stupendous ideas flooded our hearts, waves of utterly incredible and apparently laudable tides of “knowing” what should be done rose steadily in our illusions. We knew all that needed to be done and how they should be done but that was where it all ended. In our chatters!
There was this particular space we kept seeing in our phantasm as a dine and dash place, where people could stop by and have hot breakfast and coffee on their way to classes and have some packed snack as take away. We even had a name for it! We were going to call it “Ray’s place” but all we ever did was talk into the air. One tranquil evening, we were walking back from lectures in our traditional manner, prattling as we usually did until all of a sudden, silence consumed both of us. We halted in our strides and starred flinty at the reality before us- our phantasm was staring right into our face! On that same space we had always envisioned our magnificent “Ray’s place” stood “Kay’s chippy”.
My elder sister gasped and spoke first,” they stole our idea! She screamed, someone must have ratted us out she continued, maybe a course mate or roomie that overhead our discussion, this is a piracy of intellect and viable innovation she concluded with a grimace. I didn’t say anything because my initial impulse was of silence, one that radiated from the depth of my soul. I had retreated to my calm space and we continued our work that day but in an abstruse silence, each one of us lost in her respective maze of logic. That was not the end, because as that semester passed, we stumbled on more of our unique phantasms in flesh and blood, and it felt like the apparition of ideas untapped haunted us intentionally.
We soon fathomed out with heart wrenching pain that we were not the only ones who got those spectacular ideas, others did! But these other people did what we were lethargic to do; they crossed to the other side of the ocean. They sailed with their ideas from the sea of knowing and docked at the port of doing while we remained adrift, wishful thinking and alas, the valued file which stratified them from us, was their ability to do.
Ideas, we later learnt in the hard way, are like birds in the wild. Flying with extreme liberty, devoid of a tinge of constraint! They pick a mighty mahogany tree to perch on this moment and the next moment are found roosting on top of a tall building, a mast or a pole but at night, when the king of the day must have retired and the sun begins to set, they tarry for more than a moment and that is the auspicious time to take the current or altogether lose the venture.
Terrific ideas do come; I bet you have had one at a point or the other in life. Fabulous imageries must have vividly played out in your head but what have you done? With them!
Do you just let these perfect pictures blur and gradually fade away till they are remembered no more? Or, do you wait listlessly till someone else brings them to manifestation?
My sister and I have got a first class experience of the latter and believe me; it sure hurts and cuts deeply to watch your bird come alive in another’s hand. I have been down that lane more than once. There is a tide in the affairs of men, take the current when it serves…………………………….
Do not just know it, think it or say it, but Do it!
The rewards and joys are interred in “doing” but regret and pain struts in just “knowing”
In the sanctum of my unlit bedroom, I had begun to ponder on this phrase. These words had become for me a mantra until providence aided me to assiduously revamp them with this pertinent illuminating scenario.
Early this year, precisely in January, I made a trip down west to my Alma Mater, the prestigious African’s most beautiful campus and nostalgia stuck! Walking through an infamous car park at the center of the university, I plummeted down the heights of the memory ladder to a few years before. A reminiscent smile began at the edges of my lips and broadened rapidly, a familiar, distant but very much vivid image stood before me- My elder sister and I, returning from our respective departments after a tedious day of lectures and practicals, chatting animatedly.
Our conversations were always of perfect pictures, illusions that saw all what was wrong in the university and at the same time proffered superlative solutions. All of this we did with our tongues, cackling away like the wren. We were obviously at the zenith of our innovative cycle; ideas came rushing like water that has been dammed for ages and undammed all of a sudden! We had the ability to know all that plagued the school, stupendous ideas flooded our hearts, waves of utterly incredible and apparently laudable tides of “knowing” what should be done rose steadily in our illusions. We knew all that needed to be done and how they should be done but that was where it all ended. In our chatters!
There was this particular space we kept seeing in our phantasm as a dine and dash place, where people could stop by and have hot breakfast and coffee on their way to classes and have some packed snack as take away. We even had a name for it! We were going to call it “Ray’s place” but all we ever did was talk into the air. One tranquil evening, we were walking back from lectures in our traditional manner, prattling as we usually did until all of a sudden, silence consumed both of us. We halted in our strides and starred flinty at the reality before us- our phantasm was staring right into our face! On that same space we had always envisioned our magnificent “Ray’s place” stood “Kay’s chippy”.
My elder sister gasped and spoke first,” they stole our idea! She screamed, someone must have ratted us out she continued, maybe a course mate or roomie that overhead our discussion, this is a piracy of intellect and viable innovation she concluded with a grimace. I didn’t say anything because my initial impulse was of silence, one that radiated from the depth of my soul. I had retreated to my calm space and we continued our work that day but in an abstruse silence, each one of us lost in her respective maze of logic. That was not the end, because as that semester passed, we stumbled on more of our unique phantasms in flesh and blood, and it felt like the apparition of ideas untapped haunted us intentionally.
We soon fathomed out with heart wrenching pain that we were not the only ones who got those spectacular ideas, others did! But these other people did what we were lethargic to do; they crossed to the other side of the ocean. They sailed with their ideas from the sea of knowing and docked at the port of doing while we remained adrift, wishful thinking and alas, the valued file which stratified them from us, was their ability to do.
Ideas, we later learnt in the hard way, are like birds in the wild. Flying with extreme liberty, devoid of a tinge of constraint! They pick a mighty mahogany tree to perch on this moment and the next moment are found roosting on top of a tall building, a mast or a pole but at night, when the king of the day must have retired and the sun begins to set, they tarry for more than a moment and that is the auspicious time to take the current or altogether lose the venture.
Terrific ideas do come; I bet you have had one at a point or the other in life. Fabulous imageries must have vividly played out in your head but what have you done? With them!
Do you just let these perfect pictures blur and gradually fade away till they are remembered no more? Or, do you wait listlessly till someone else brings them to manifestation?
My sister and I have got a first class experience of the latter and believe me; it sure hurts and cuts deeply to watch your bird come alive in another’s hand. I have been down that lane more than once. There is a tide in the affairs of men, take the current when it serves…………………………….
Do not just know it, think it or say it, but Do it!
The rewards and joys are interred in “doing” but regret and pain struts in just “knowing”
“If to do were as easy as to know where what were
good to be done, chapels had been churches and poor man’s cottages, princes’ palaces.
It is a good divine that follows his own instruction” Shakespeare said this in
“the merchant of Venice”.
As you continue in this special 8th month of year 2012, make sure you stop knowing and start doing!
As you continue in this special 8th month of year 2012, make sure you stop knowing and start doing!
No comments:
Post a Comment