FIGHTING!!!

YOU'VE GOT TO GET UP AND TRY!

I had been sitting here, starring at my computer monitor for about an hour and wondering what point to begin from. Well, an apology wouldn’t be a bad start I guess. Accept my profound apologies for last week, I was on transit. Seems like 2013 is on rocket speed! I thought 2012 was fast but right now, I am thinking not so fast. About three weeks ago, I was cajoled or better still, certain coercive measures were imposed on me by my very mushy sisters to watch a Korean love story. I hate love stories but a Korean movie is definitely a NO movie for me, so imagine the horror and disgust that was coursing through me when I sat sandwiched between my sisters to satisfy their misplaced generosity. They eminently thought they were doing me two mammoth favors- softening me up and helping me relax. Well, I did oblige them and we began the movie, a series of about twenty three episodes but something happened.

My initial disgust and horror began to fade as I changed my sitting position from uptight to something more relaxed. I thought the movie was hilarious, and the female lead was an incredible lunatic! But what I didn’t realize at the moment was this- the crazy Korean movie was about to become my source of inspiration, encouragement and strength in a potential adversity.

With hopes as high as the Himalayas and sparkling ebullience, flowing like the long Mississippi, I embarked on a journey to the “Heartbeat” of the nation in a bid to experience the birth of a dream that had being conceived and nurtured for precisely seven months, enough time for a fetus to fully develop and be able to survive on its own. Unfortunately, I met with a still birth instead and at that moment of immense despair and frustration with tears gliding down my eyes from beneath my sunshade as I watched the heart wrenching plummet of my Himalayas of hope with a flinty expression, a temporal amnesia took hold of my cerebrum but only one word depicted all constancy. It wouldn’t fade into the stream of agony and regret. All that resonated through my nerves and veins was “FIGHTING”.
I was lost, it didn’t make any sense. Desperately, I tried to calm down and understand why I was hearing only that word. At first my thoughts seemed incoherent but a few minutes later, a nerve sparked somewhere in the intricate wiring of my nervous system, a quick lightening provoked a thunder that sucked me into a hundred and sixty eight hours before the present and it all became crystal. I jolted out of the waves and for the first time after I beheld the stillbirth, a weak smile played across my lips. “FIGHTING” was the family slogan of the female lead I earlier described as an “incredible lunatic” in the Korean movie I coaxingly watched but you wouldn’t comprehend how the word became my solace and haven until you meet GEUM JAN DI who equally was bestowed with the epithet “Wonder Woman” by the cream De la cream of the Shinwa High.

Born to a very humble and struggling Korean family, Jan Di worked at least five odd jobs to support her family whose only source of livelihood was a dingy dry cleaning outlet which also served as an housing facility for the family of four but poverty never broke their spirits. Jan Di was smart, vocal and had zero tolerance for injustice, oppression and intimidation. As a kindergarten kid, she dealt with bullies regardless of the differential in size which always was prejudiced against her.

The cleaners lived in inexplicable joy and peace in their little world until an incident that would in the future take them through innumerable hardships and hazards occurred. With her fighting spirit,

BONNE ANNEE 2013!!!

TAHQUAMENON FALLS, MICHIGAN

As the year 2012 closed up, I became a cocktail of emotions- a tremendous euphoria sprang up on my inside simultaneously as a sense of sadness over goals not achieved. I became nostalgic over the trip down south I was about to embark upon. Consequently, I was a cornucopia of feelings. I felt joy, laughter, sadness, peace all unique feelings for respective circumstances. I was in the car, journeying down to the South West after the quickest year I had ever experienced when an incident that will soon make the positive feelings gain ascendancy took place. We were driving on the right lane facing upwards since the road was not a dual road and a Toyota SUV  was racing downwards on the left lane but suddenly, this car lost control and was swerving into our lane, my uncle was at the wheels and was quick to respond with admirable aplomb. The SUV somersaulted into a ditch at the other side of the road, when it eventually stopped, all it's four tyres were facing the air, the windshield was gone!

We parked at a distance and hurried to the scene, it was near a village and so the villagers also were dashing out of their houses to the rescue. Pride welled up on my inside as I thought how great a people we are as Nigerians! Inexplicably, the driver and only occupant of the SUV came out without a scratch! It was a miracle and as we continued our journey, I received an epiphany that brought about a transmogrification of my thoughts and obliterated the ingredient sadness in my emotional cocktail as I again affirmed that the greatest gift of all is the air we freely breathe.

Of a surety, you made strategic plans at the beginning of the just concluded year as I did. You mapped out realizable goals and had unwavering hopes that dreams will come through. Maybe a few you achieved and many began to seem impossible and as the month of Immaculate Conception waned, your agitation grew like mine when it seemed like the dreams had faded into oblivion. The resultant effect then becomes a cocktail of emotions- sometimes you are up, excited, ecstatic even until you remember goals not achieved and your ebulliences collapse but have you thought about the greatest gift of them all?

LIFE!!!!!!!!!! Your ability to breathe guarantees that those dreams would and could still come to birth.  I would then like to welcome you to a year that dreams come true! The brand new 2013 whose womb is over fraught with greatness and my wish for you as well as my wish for me is that the blessings interred in the womb of this brand new year will be delivered to you and I without pain or labor. You and I will partake significantly of the greatness embedded in the heart of this year and it will be for us all a cornucopia of unprecedented events that will cause us to smile from deep within.  Get inspiration and stay inspired this year, it is all right here on THE INSPIRER.