“Boy: Dad I am almost
done packing, I can’t wait to go on this vacation with you!
Father: Sorry to disappoint you son but this time am totally impeded. No matter how hard I try the reality is you can’t come with me, you would have to stay at your grandpa’s. Please understand.”
Father: Sorry to disappoint you son but this time am totally impeded. No matter how hard I try the reality is you can’t come with me, you would have to stay at your grandpa’s. Please understand.”
The teenager was devastated; he sulked all the way to the village. How could he
survive a one month vacation stuck with an oldie? Though his father assured him
severally that it won’t be an ordeal and his grandpa was cool and very wise.
The boy had no dissensions with his grand pa being very wise but the cool part
had to be a fallacy he imagined, how could an oldie ever be cool!
They arrived at the village and as the boy got out of the car, he gave the compound a surreptitious glance. Spic and span as always, the more reason the hair on his spine stood at attention and cold shivers ran through him every time he thought of staying at his grandpa’s, the old man was far too meticulous! Well, he had no choice in the matter, his father left him the next morning with the following words:”wisdom is in a bag but only the wise can fetch out its content. Your grandfather is an epitome of wisdom so since you are here, you might want as well devote less attention to your play station and extort at least one word of wisdom from grandpa” he bade him farewell and left.
The scenario of watching his father’s car fade into the horizon was surreal for the teenager until an aged voice made him realize it was really happening.
They arrived at the village and as the boy got out of the car, he gave the compound a surreptitious glance. Spic and span as always, the more reason the hair on his spine stood at attention and cold shivers ran through him every time he thought of staying at his grandpa’s, the old man was far too meticulous! Well, he had no choice in the matter, his father left him the next morning with the following words:”wisdom is in a bag but only the wise can fetch out its content. Your grandfather is an epitome of wisdom so since you are here, you might want as well devote less attention to your play station and extort at least one word of wisdom from grandpa” he bade him farewell and left.
The scenario of watching his father’s car fade into the horizon was surreal for the teenager until an aged voice made him realize it was really happening.
It turned out that the only fallacy was that of a hasty
generalization he had about oldies because on the contrary, his grandpa turned
out to be really cool. Four weeks passed with a rocket’s speed and as he
prepared to leave the next day, he remembered his father’s words but was not
quite sure if he had got that one wise word from his grandpa. A knock at his
door startled him, grandpa beckoned on him to come along. He took him to the
topmost part of the building; the teenage boy was awed at what he saw. Bemused,
he starred into the perfect night and the extraordinary sky. It was disparate
from the perspective from his balcony back at home. Here, the sky appeared so
close and the stars twinkled vividly, he could almost reach out and touch the
sky. This is beautiful he began, why didn’t you bring me up here before now?
I was saving the best for last. Tell me, what do you see?
The boy rattled off in confidence, I see the stars arranged in their galaxies, some small, others bigger. They radiate a stellar light and the moon over there illuminates subtly, he concluded. Grand pa gave a short approving nod and probed further, this time close your eyes and with your eyes shut tell me again what do you see?
The boy chuckled, how could anyone ever see anything with their eyes’ shut? It is impossible! He exclaimed, all I see is gross darkness!
Then it means you are not looking with your heart. The boy was startled and thought well, grandpa is weird after all! The mind has got eyes of its own grandpa continued, give apt attention to what am about to divulge, this happened remotely, I was a little boy at that time but I remember this occurrence like an event of yesterday.
There lived an industrious palm wine tapper in those days, and each time old men gather to share a calabash of palm wine this tale inevitably comes to life. This young tapper was supernaturally endowed with the skills and mastery of tapping and so was his father before him. He belonged to the ancestral line of superlative tappers and something was peculiar to his genealogy- they never fell off a palm tree in a life time of tapping.
On a beautiful morning, he set out with his climbing rope and calabash to do that which his ancestors had bequeathed to him. That day was no ordinary tapping expedition because the wine was to be used at the king’s party the next day. An auspicious day it seemed until tragedy struck. A young boy came charging as though he had encountered wraiths to announce that the infamous tapper tittered at the brink of falling off the tree, his rope had broken!
Abomination! The elders screamed as a panic stricken company of men, women and children matched to the forest. At the scene, petrifaction caused immediate but temporal paralysis; people’s legs could no longer carry their bodies. Great perturbation took over, wailings and murmurings and just before a chaotic melodrama ensued, the women and children were banished from the scene leaving the elders, stoics who would collect the shattered body from the imminent fall. Suddenly, a great thud hit the earth but to the uttermost astonishment of the prepared braves, there was no shattered body to be collected, all the tapper had were bruises on his chest and palms. He was taken to the king’s palace in exigency where he narrated his ordeal.
He said to had shut his eyes the moment his rope broke and in his mind’s eye he saw two pictures- one of elders carrying his remains to the king’s palace and the later of a feast held to celebrate his triumph over death and suddenly it occurred to him that none of his ancestors ever fell off a palm tree and died, they all tapped wine till they grew old and died naturally in their sleep and then he resolved that an epoch of a fallen tapper will not begin in his time. With his eyes shut, he saw himself at the base of the tree unscathed and when he did open them, he was there indeed but only with a few bruises.
The king ordered that a feast be held to celebrate his triumph and it happened just like he saw it in his mind’s eye. After the feast, unwavering and undeterred, he climbed that same palm tree and tapped the best wine in the history of this village. He is forever commemorated each time a calabash of wine is shared anywhere in this village.
You can be assured that the teenager boy got more than a word of wisdom; he received an epiphany that night that propelled him to heights unimaginable because he saw only with his mind’s eye from that moment on.
What do you see?
Ultimately, the quality of our lives, our victory, exploit, success and triumph is a resultant effect of the augmentation of our speech and sight.
Seeing right is itself an impeccable elixir capable of getting us through life’s numerous hurdles unscathed and its efficacy cannot be strained. Show me a man that has achieved the impossible and I will unravel to you a boy that saw the invisible but the invisible is never visible to the outward eye because the outward eye is constantly plagued with a myopic defect, its scope is ephemeral and its perspective but a mirage. There is only one place that has the ability to see the invisible and it is where I intend to expose to you today -the mind’s eye.
When all hope seems lost and everyone seems to have abandoned you, when you feel like you are in between the devil and the deep blue sea, when the woes of life confront you and the fiends of distraught haggle at you, when all you see is chaos, fiasco and futility. That should not be the time you throw in the towel or wave the white flag but the time to shut those eyelids that see all of that negativity and strive desperately to employ the constancy and unwavering penetrative strength of the mind’s eye. It will be for you a light that paves your way through the darkness when every other light has been extinguished. It may initially seem imperceptible but if you persist, focusing adamantly, a perfect picture will emerge out of the obscure and when you eventually open your eyes, you will find the world watching spellbound the enthralling image you saw in your mind’s eye. It may tarry but it will be a reality that will linger. Look for that speck of light, see it and see the world see it too for it begins in the mind but it never ends there.
The boy rattled off in confidence, I see the stars arranged in their galaxies, some small, others bigger. They radiate a stellar light and the moon over there illuminates subtly, he concluded. Grand pa gave a short approving nod and probed further, this time close your eyes and with your eyes shut tell me again what do you see?
The boy chuckled, how could anyone ever see anything with their eyes’ shut? It is impossible! He exclaimed, all I see is gross darkness!
Then it means you are not looking with your heart. The boy was startled and thought well, grandpa is weird after all! The mind has got eyes of its own grandpa continued, give apt attention to what am about to divulge, this happened remotely, I was a little boy at that time but I remember this occurrence like an event of yesterday.
There lived an industrious palm wine tapper in those days, and each time old men gather to share a calabash of palm wine this tale inevitably comes to life. This young tapper was supernaturally endowed with the skills and mastery of tapping and so was his father before him. He belonged to the ancestral line of superlative tappers and something was peculiar to his genealogy- they never fell off a palm tree in a life time of tapping.
On a beautiful morning, he set out with his climbing rope and calabash to do that which his ancestors had bequeathed to him. That day was no ordinary tapping expedition because the wine was to be used at the king’s party the next day. An auspicious day it seemed until tragedy struck. A young boy came charging as though he had encountered wraiths to announce that the infamous tapper tittered at the brink of falling off the tree, his rope had broken!
Abomination! The elders screamed as a panic stricken company of men, women and children matched to the forest. At the scene, petrifaction caused immediate but temporal paralysis; people’s legs could no longer carry their bodies. Great perturbation took over, wailings and murmurings and just before a chaotic melodrama ensued, the women and children were banished from the scene leaving the elders, stoics who would collect the shattered body from the imminent fall. Suddenly, a great thud hit the earth but to the uttermost astonishment of the prepared braves, there was no shattered body to be collected, all the tapper had were bruises on his chest and palms. He was taken to the king’s palace in exigency where he narrated his ordeal.
He said to had shut his eyes the moment his rope broke and in his mind’s eye he saw two pictures- one of elders carrying his remains to the king’s palace and the later of a feast held to celebrate his triumph over death and suddenly it occurred to him that none of his ancestors ever fell off a palm tree and died, they all tapped wine till they grew old and died naturally in their sleep and then he resolved that an epoch of a fallen tapper will not begin in his time. With his eyes shut, he saw himself at the base of the tree unscathed and when he did open them, he was there indeed but only with a few bruises.
The king ordered that a feast be held to celebrate his triumph and it happened just like he saw it in his mind’s eye. After the feast, unwavering and undeterred, he climbed that same palm tree and tapped the best wine in the history of this village. He is forever commemorated each time a calabash of wine is shared anywhere in this village.
You can be assured that the teenager boy got more than a word of wisdom; he received an epiphany that night that propelled him to heights unimaginable because he saw only with his mind’s eye from that moment on.
What do you see?
Ultimately, the quality of our lives, our victory, exploit, success and triumph is a resultant effect of the augmentation of our speech and sight.
Seeing right is itself an impeccable elixir capable of getting us through life’s numerous hurdles unscathed and its efficacy cannot be strained. Show me a man that has achieved the impossible and I will unravel to you a boy that saw the invisible but the invisible is never visible to the outward eye because the outward eye is constantly plagued with a myopic defect, its scope is ephemeral and its perspective but a mirage. There is only one place that has the ability to see the invisible and it is where I intend to expose to you today -the mind’s eye.
When all hope seems lost and everyone seems to have abandoned you, when you feel like you are in between the devil and the deep blue sea, when the woes of life confront you and the fiends of distraught haggle at you, when all you see is chaos, fiasco and futility. That should not be the time you throw in the towel or wave the white flag but the time to shut those eyelids that see all of that negativity and strive desperately to employ the constancy and unwavering penetrative strength of the mind’s eye. It will be for you a light that paves your way through the darkness when every other light has been extinguished. It may initially seem imperceptible but if you persist, focusing adamantly, a perfect picture will emerge out of the obscure and when you eventually open your eyes, you will find the world watching spellbound the enthralling image you saw in your mind’s eye. It may tarry but it will be a reality that will linger. Look for that speck of light, see it and see the world see it too for it begins in the mind but it never ends there.
