Welcome. You can call me Charles, even though that is not my name. I have pleaded with Edima to permit me to write on this platform, and she has finally agreed. Whew. Can you believe that? So, as the previous year has ended, I have a new beginning as a guest writer in Edima’s online home. I don’t live here actually, Edima has permitted me to visit and drop a few thoughts. Believe me, it is a great privilege. So, if you do not see me again, just know this, my thoughts were not good enough.
There is not much to know in the “about me” section. I am male and I have a partner and children, I work for someone else and I am a Christian. So, when I write, you can understand my stereotype and biases. I have lived with them all my life, so forgive me if you notice any.
They say, “time and tide wait for no man (including women)” or better still, ‘time and tide wait for no person’. What does this really mean? As an English saying, it means that time is constantly moving and we should make the best of it as it will not wait for you. This is instructive for people like us, who are chronic procrastinators. Perhaps it is because of people like me that time is divided into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and on and on, so we can learn to number them and know when we have wasted time that we can never get back. Once time is gone, it is gone forever; we cannot turn back the time.
Some of you can relate. When you saw that girl, looking like a million-dollar diamond and you thought so much about what to say and time went by. Finally, when you figured your best pickup line and looked up, there was a guy standing beside her and he never stepped away until you left the club. Or the time the guy asked you to marry him and you did not answer, not even a “NO”. When you finally decided someone already married him. My point is not to blame anyone for waiting to take a decision because I understand that there are lots of factors to consider but make time also a factor because although it is fleeting, it is still one of the most valuable resources we have to work with.
The year 2020 has reached its twilight and 2021 is here. The dawn of another year has emerged, and no one knows what it would bring. So, we have most likely rounded-up our assessment of the goals we set to achieve in 2020 and are planning for new ones to start in 2021. For a lot of us, the end of 2020 couldn’t have come sooner. With the COVID-19 Pandemic, the End SARS protests, increase of fuel prices, the continued killings and kidnappings all over the country and lots more. Again, in this year, Nigerian-Irish teens develop an app for people living with dementia, Africa was declared polio free, among others, but good news does not sell as much as bad ones.
Anyway, my question is: Will COVID-19 end in 2020 twilight? I do not think so. I am sure COVID-19 will continue to assault us well into 2021. It has been around since 2019. So will other issues, and so will most of us. Then why do we need to pause and restart at every twilight and dawn? Why not continue? Why do we need to switch off uncompleted dreams and start all over again? Why do we think that if we could not do it in 365 days, we can do it in another period of 365 days?
I think time is a continuum divided into markers to guide us on how to spend it. Just because a year is ending does not mean we should abandon the momentum we have built for our dreams and start all over again next year. In fact, we can rather spend the twilight re-strategizing on how to deliver on our dreams and objectives based on the lessons we have learnt over the previous period. This is one of those times where failure does not mean repeating. Rather, we re-engineer and focus on our capacity and capability to build on previous efforts and reach for the skies.
This is wishing you a prosperous new year in 2021.
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