On my way
back from church yesterday, my eyes flashed through an obituary as the
commercial vehicle I boarded slowly crawled- by. I was forced to alight from
the vehicle so I could confirm what I saw and behold *drums rolling* my eyes
zoomed to the part of the obituary that read “Aged: 223yrs”. I was taken aback,
I couldn’t believe my ears eyes.
223yrs old!
I screamed, seriously! I just couldn’t help it.
Immediately
I tried finding out the year she was born and it dated back to 1790,
Do humans
still lived this long? Is this for real? How come I have never read about this chic
woman anywhere before now? Why is she not on the Guinness books of records?
All these
questions begging for answers flashed through my crazy curious mind. I
never realized I had spent close to 20 minutes staring at this obituary with my
mouth agape. Not until an elderly man beckoned to me.
My mouth
snapped shut when he drew nigh and he continued “buroda ki lo shele mo ti wo
yin lati aro, se ko si oo” (I have been watching you stare at this obituary,
hope there is no problem). He said some others things which I never understood
because my Yoruba wasn’t that good enough- how I wished I hadn’t skipped those
classes when I was in high school.
I replied
the little way I could and he offered me water. Although my throat were dry,
but I was thirstier for answers to my questions; how I wish I had met the old
lady. She would have had answers to some of my questions, questions I might
never get answers to.
Nevertheless,
the old man told me some things about her, he even said she could still use the
toilet herself before her demise. When I asked how she died, he replied saying
she called all members of the family (great-great grandchildren inclusive),
took turns to hug them and died right on the “apoti” (stool) she was seated.
When I asked
if I could get some of her photos, the old man took a deep breath and said
something which I never understood. He finally opened his mouth to say
something I understood, he said the woman never had a photograph apart from the
one they used for her obituary and they were actually surprised when she told
them she wants to take a photograph.
When she was
asked why she needed a photo of herself? She said she wanted them to always
have her around after she is gone to join her ancestors. And not more than a
week after this event, she passed on.
This woman
practically lived before Nigeria was formed; she was about 170 years old when
we got independence. She practically knew the foundation on which this ‘great’
nation of ours was built. She even experienced both world wars. She lived all
these things I have read in journals and books- from slave trades, to the civil
war blah blah blah…. she was a living museum.
I couldn’t
help to think about how life looked back then- there was no internet, (at least
not in this part of the world), cell phones; technology was still dragging its
feet then.
If many of
us were to time-travel back to that century with the kind of exposure we have
now, I doubt if we would last a day.
Yet with all
odds on our side we still f**ked!
We are
exposed to more information daily than our fore-fathers have been exposed to
throughout their life time and instead of us leveraging this technological
advantage, we prefer f**king sitting back with our legs crossed relying
on the achievement of others.
It is our
duty to keep evolution going and we can only be at our best when we create a
landmark so the next generation coming after us can appreciate what we had
achieved and continue from where we stopped.
Life is very
weird. We might not have the chance to live 1000yrs like the old woman
did, but we have something greater, something she never experienced.
We have
something greater than a thousand years; we have all the necessary materials in
place to get us wherever we wanna go if only we could tap into them.
What do you
wanna be remembered for when you are long gone? Why settle for less when you
know you are much better than what you are doing right now? Why not pursue your
dreams in a context of happiness?
Let these
crazy questions run through your mind.
Life is not
as long as 223yrs any longer.
You can only
manage it by living each day as if it were your last.
Don’t you
wanna die doing what makes you happy?
Life is
crazy….
Sadiq Daniel is an crazy Nigerian hustlerpreneur and public speaker that blogs about life, marketing and branding. You may pursue him on twitter: @sadiq_daniel where he tweets daily on how you can make billions per hour
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