“Change is the only consistent inconsistency of life”
immediately he spoke those words, he commanded my attention. He accessed the
recesses of my hitherto walled mind. I immediately began to ponder over these words
that would soon gain ascendancy in my life philosophies, I didn’t know that
then. It was a Monday morning and I was seated quietly but with discontent on
the third seat at the last row of my English class, watching languidly as the
teacher blabbed away or so I thought. I was discontent because our English
teacher had been changed and replaced without prior notification. The entire
class was in some kind of mourning state, inertia was created. How much we
loved his predecessor!
He related adequately with us dealing with us as intelligent teenagers not a bunch of spoilt brats contrary to the other teachers’ assertions. In that spirit, the class unanimously paid no attention to the new guy. I was drifting amidst the crowd too until I heard those words. A few years have passed and I have stopped being that teenager that sat on the last row of my English class and amused everyone by asking the new English teacher “Emmanuel the immaculate” he called himself, all manners of questions, really brilliant questions though. I was his major and only challenger not because I sought to display my wit but simply because my company and I were trying to find out how witty the new guy was compared to our famous teacher.
Those years are long gone now, the company had been remotely dissolved and everyone has taken different routes on the path to destiny. No one knows where “Emmanuel the immaculate” is at the moment but those words did linger and the more I ruminated on them, the more they became crystal, touching me at the very core of my being. In the past years, I have spoken them and shared them often. They have become one of my major philosophies of life not until they met with a storm. A fierce tornado almost obliterated these words that I have nurtured and believed in for far too long in a space of half a year.
What happened? Follow me closely……………….
This conversation ensued between a man and his wife last week; I would share the conversation first and later unravel what chronicled the conversation. This conversation is the end of the beginning of my story. The storm my philosophy came face to face with.
Man: “why now????? Why are these people doing this?” these people should cease their light! I am tired of it. What is this nonsense?
Woman: laughs………….behold, the metamorphosis of PHCN! Please adapt.
That was my aunt and uncle in law. Last week, something phenomenal happened at our neighborhood. We experienced uninterrupted power supply at high voltage for 72 hours. We were practically begging PHCN to hold power as usual. The change was a little difficult to adapt to.
My first time in Jos was in October 2008. I had come for 300level industrial attachment training and I fell in love with the plateau. From 2008 up till this moment I have basically been in and out of Jos anytime the opportunity to travel surfaced. After passing out from the NYSC scheme October last year, I decided to explore the plateau. I have since been in the home of peace and tourism, a beautiful place indeed with a perfect weather but my neighborhood faced terrible power challenges. People supplement on generators under normal circumstances but here in kankang, an outskirts of Jos town where I live, we live on generators!
The entire neighborhood powered their houses with their individual generating sets. No one remembered PHCN existed in kankang because there was never power and even when it surfaced, it was never up to an hour and at a really low voltage. This year the situation grew increasingly worse. We didn’t even get the low voltages in 6 months! I was irked and decided to stage a one man aluta thanks to my alma mater; I have inculcated the rudiments of a protest. I matched to the PHCN office and delivered my immaculate script. The manager saw a subtle irascibility in my diplomacy and promised that something will be done in 24hours. Did he keep his words? Of course, but only for 30minutes. I got exhausted and I gave up! For me, the residents of kankang were doomed to a lifetime of incredible diesel and petrol expenditures. I concluded that some things could never change, a classical example being power supply in kankang.
A conclusion that warred with my highly esteemed philosophy of life, as the storms raged and threatened my belief; I consoled myself with the scientific claim that to every rule there is an exception and accepted defeat until Sunday evening. The leister went off just as I loaded the blender with pepper and tomatoes. We were out of diesel! That was the end of “Solomon Grundy” for the unprepared stew I thought but as I passed the corridor heading to my room, I saw a miracle. The PHCN indicator on the wall beamed brightly. I screamed, it was not the end of Solomon Grundy after all! 72 hours passed and the indicator kept beaming, my uncle in law could hardly believe it. I was stupefied too.
We later learnt that a brand new transformer was installed for the neighborhood and it held a promise of an all constant power supply. I still cannot believe it but each day that I go to bed and wake up with the indicator still beaming brightly, I realize this time without any contradiction that change is the only consistent inconsistency of life. I have come to believe every word with undeterred vehemence.
I would be right to say that the residents of kankang have suffered this ridiculous outage for as long as four years but my aunt and uncle in law would have a different time frame as so would other residents of kankang every claim depending on how long each person have resided in that neighborhood.
He related adequately with us dealing with us as intelligent teenagers not a bunch of spoilt brats contrary to the other teachers’ assertions. In that spirit, the class unanimously paid no attention to the new guy. I was drifting amidst the crowd too until I heard those words. A few years have passed and I have stopped being that teenager that sat on the last row of my English class and amused everyone by asking the new English teacher “Emmanuel the immaculate” he called himself, all manners of questions, really brilliant questions though. I was his major and only challenger not because I sought to display my wit but simply because my company and I were trying to find out how witty the new guy was compared to our famous teacher.
Those years are long gone now, the company had been remotely dissolved and everyone has taken different routes on the path to destiny. No one knows where “Emmanuel the immaculate” is at the moment but those words did linger and the more I ruminated on them, the more they became crystal, touching me at the very core of my being. In the past years, I have spoken them and shared them often. They have become one of my major philosophies of life not until they met with a storm. A fierce tornado almost obliterated these words that I have nurtured and believed in for far too long in a space of half a year.
What happened? Follow me closely……………….
This conversation ensued between a man and his wife last week; I would share the conversation first and later unravel what chronicled the conversation. This conversation is the end of the beginning of my story. The storm my philosophy came face to face with.
Man: “why now????? Why are these people doing this?” these people should cease their light! I am tired of it. What is this nonsense?
Woman: laughs………….behold, the metamorphosis of PHCN! Please adapt.
That was my aunt and uncle in law. Last week, something phenomenal happened at our neighborhood. We experienced uninterrupted power supply at high voltage for 72 hours. We were practically begging PHCN to hold power as usual. The change was a little difficult to adapt to.
My first time in Jos was in October 2008. I had come for 300level industrial attachment training and I fell in love with the plateau. From 2008 up till this moment I have basically been in and out of Jos anytime the opportunity to travel surfaced. After passing out from the NYSC scheme October last year, I decided to explore the plateau. I have since been in the home of peace and tourism, a beautiful place indeed with a perfect weather but my neighborhood faced terrible power challenges. People supplement on generators under normal circumstances but here in kankang, an outskirts of Jos town where I live, we live on generators!
The entire neighborhood powered their houses with their individual generating sets. No one remembered PHCN existed in kankang because there was never power and even when it surfaced, it was never up to an hour and at a really low voltage. This year the situation grew increasingly worse. We didn’t even get the low voltages in 6 months! I was irked and decided to stage a one man aluta thanks to my alma mater; I have inculcated the rudiments of a protest. I matched to the PHCN office and delivered my immaculate script. The manager saw a subtle irascibility in my diplomacy and promised that something will be done in 24hours. Did he keep his words? Of course, but only for 30minutes. I got exhausted and I gave up! For me, the residents of kankang were doomed to a lifetime of incredible diesel and petrol expenditures. I concluded that some things could never change, a classical example being power supply in kankang.
A conclusion that warred with my highly esteemed philosophy of life, as the storms raged and threatened my belief; I consoled myself with the scientific claim that to every rule there is an exception and accepted defeat until Sunday evening. The leister went off just as I loaded the blender with pepper and tomatoes. We were out of diesel! That was the end of “Solomon Grundy” for the unprepared stew I thought but as I passed the corridor heading to my room, I saw a miracle. The PHCN indicator on the wall beamed brightly. I screamed, it was not the end of Solomon Grundy after all! 72 hours passed and the indicator kept beaming, my uncle in law could hardly believe it. I was stupefied too.
We later learnt that a brand new transformer was installed for the neighborhood and it held a promise of an all constant power supply. I still cannot believe it but each day that I go to bed and wake up with the indicator still beaming brightly, I realize this time without any contradiction that change is the only consistent inconsistency of life. I have come to believe every word with undeterred vehemence.
I would be right to say that the residents of kankang have suffered this ridiculous outage for as long as four years but my aunt and uncle in law would have a different time frame as so would other residents of kankang every claim depending on how long each person have resided in that neighborhood.
I learnt this axiom as a little girl “life is not a bed of
roses” but at that time, all I deciphered it to be was a flawless pink rose bed
I conjured up in my imagination. Though, as I aged, I developed the
intellectual sagacity to fathom out that axiom. You will agree with me devoid
of a scintilla of dissension that life has its valleys and mountains. Its
nights and days, the rains and the sun shines, the floods and the rainbows, the
deserts and the lush greens, the wilderness and the oasis, the good and of
course the bad. There is always a flip side to the times of life. Challenges
will unnegotiably come knocking at the door and no mortal will be exempted from
the battles of life.
They will come charging like freshly exorcised fiends at the rich and also the poor, the knowledgeable as well as the ignorant, the noble and the ordinary will not be left out. All mortals will feel the sting of life’s bite, each at different and strategic angles because life’s trials are inevitable but pertinent evils designed to lead us one step further to fulfilling destiny and purpose every time we surmount them with a pertinacious resolve . I have had my challenges and you have also had a fair share of some raging storm that made your principles cringe and caused you to crower, a tornado that swept away all your resolve, obliterating the faintest tinge of hope and faith that stood on its path. It could have been a turbulence that rocked the ship of your dreams and threatened to sink it, a fog that blurred your visions or maybe an odyssey that got inexplicably arduous with the breaking of each dawn.
Consequently, what thoughts cascaded through your mind? Did that experience leave you thinking that the end has come? Or that those things will remain all negatively constant? Did you wave the white flag and hold on to the white lie that the sun will never shine again?
It would not suffice to console yourself with some ridiculous scientific claim and give up. I sure do not know what your unique challenge is but one thing I know of a surety is that Change is the only consistent inconsistency of life and you will only step into another phase of greatness not until after you have passed that test. If kankang can experience a volte-face in one minute from a dark, powerless neighborhood to a place beaming with high voltage electricity, your challenge is sure about to fade away. Just believe and you will see that change and when it shows up, embrace it fiercely.
They will come charging like freshly exorcised fiends at the rich and also the poor, the knowledgeable as well as the ignorant, the noble and the ordinary will not be left out. All mortals will feel the sting of life’s bite, each at different and strategic angles because life’s trials are inevitable but pertinent evils designed to lead us one step further to fulfilling destiny and purpose every time we surmount them with a pertinacious resolve . I have had my challenges and you have also had a fair share of some raging storm that made your principles cringe and caused you to crower, a tornado that swept away all your resolve, obliterating the faintest tinge of hope and faith that stood on its path. It could have been a turbulence that rocked the ship of your dreams and threatened to sink it, a fog that blurred your visions or maybe an odyssey that got inexplicably arduous with the breaking of each dawn.
Consequently, what thoughts cascaded through your mind? Did that experience leave you thinking that the end has come? Or that those things will remain all negatively constant? Did you wave the white flag and hold on to the white lie that the sun will never shine again?
It would not suffice to console yourself with some ridiculous scientific claim and give up. I sure do not know what your unique challenge is but one thing I know of a surety is that Change is the only consistent inconsistency of life and you will only step into another phase of greatness not until after you have passed that test. If kankang can experience a volte-face in one minute from a dark, powerless neighborhood to a place beaming with high voltage electricity, your challenge is sure about to fade away. Just believe and you will see that change and when it shows up, embrace it fiercely.
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