This saying has been with me all through my life; probably not all through, but since secondary school at least. And since then, life has been much more easier. I handle disappointments very well. I take failure in my strides. I ride on the backs of setbacks. I never let anything put me down; everything is a stepping stone on my path to self-discovery and adventure. I am always happy. It is rare to see me sad. True, I might be angry at times, disappointed, frustrated, but sad? Definitely not.
I attended
Tai didn’t believe in God. He believed in men; in men’s ability to become what they choose to be. He believed in humanity, in the brotherliness that existed between strangers who treated each other as jolly friends. We sang songs not from hymn books but from a book we called The Merry Mayflower. It is the greatest book of songs I know of in the whole wide world. And I’m not kidding. Songs like Out of the Night rang out the rebellion that must be used upon oppression. Out of the night that covers me/ Black as the pit from pole to pole/ I thank whatever gods maybe/ For my unconquerable soul.
The soul is unconquerable. It lives beyond the oppression of man. It outlasts tyranny. In God Give Us Men, we had lines like God give us men a time like this demands/ Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands. We were told that we were the captains of the ships of our lives. We could direct them wherever we wished. I am the master of my fate/ I am the captain of my soul. On our walls were written quotations which we called The Mayflower Catechism. “Be ambitious: he who shoots at the sky aims higher than he who shoots at the tree.” “If you cannot be the sun, be the moon. If you cannot be the moon, be the star. If you cannot be the star, be the very best you can.” We sang ballads; we sang odes. We sang songs of life and learnt from them.
We were taught that no man is indispensable. We sang it in songs: Some times when you are feeling important/ some times when your ego is in bloom/ some times when you take it for granted/ that you’re the best qualified man in the room… At those times, we were told to follow a simply instruction, and see how it humbled our souls. Take a bucket, fill it with water up to the brim. Dip your hands in, up to your wrist. Pull them out and the hole that remains is the measure of how you would be missed. Truth is: nobody would miss you too much. No one is indispensable.
These lessons I learnt from Mayflower have taught me that I can withstand any situation, and so can you. You wouldn’t die if your boss sacks you. You wouldn’t die if you have no money in your pocket. You wouldn’t die if no one believes in you. But you would die when you no longer believe in yourself. You would die when you believe that you cannot survive without working in that office you’ve just been fired from. And above all, you’d die when you believe that you cannot be self reliant.
Change has been labelled the only constant thing in life. It’s an irony, I know, but is change itself really constant, in that ironical way? Perhaps I go too deep? All I mean is that we should take charge of change positively. We should ride on its back to our freedom. We don’t need to be afraid of change, we should gladly embrace it.
Our lives are measured by the losses we incur, not by the gains we amass. We should not measure people by the amount of wealth they have but by what they lost on their way to achieving wealth. We should not be too happy on our birthdays either. The question is: have we gained a year or have we lost one? Are we a step closer to death or a step further away from birth? It’s left to you to decide.
As for me, I would not measure my life by my gains but by my losses. And the only way those losses would count is if I use them well to my advantage.
We measure life not by gain, but by loss; not by the wine drunk but by the wine poured forth.
