Society: The invisible ‘record-keeper’ we live and die with

Most of us get one, even dudes, even those who complain that they don’t ever get anything but a hard way to go. Most of us, however, don’t know what to do with it. In fact, most of us live day after day never knowing that we have it, that we have in our control something so mighty, something with so much potential that the possibilities startle the mind. What we all have is an invisible best friend that we never realize we have. From the time we’re born until that decisive day each of us will take our last breath, our invisible best friend is always by our side, serving as our ultimate running buddy, charting everything we’ve ever done, everything we’ve ever said. Its sole purpose is to be our life’s keeper of record, to compile the good, the bad, the victories and the failures in our life, and when we are gone, present its assemblage to the world as the total picture of who we were. From its place on our tombstone, right there between our birth date and death date, this invisible best friend takes up so little space, that it is hardly ever noticed. But it represents so much. While the two dates simply tell when you lived, it’s the invisible best friend that tells how you lived. Well, this invisible best friend is called ‘life’. It documents what goes on in our lives when we are still alive and it’s the same friend that presents its findings to where we end up in our after-life. So what are you going to do with your life? Are you going to sharpen the end and use it as a sword, slaying all of the challenges and conquering all of the opportunities that come your way? Or will you dull the tip and use it as a crutch, complaining that it’s not like your best friends’, that it doesn’t get treated as well as theirs? Will you use it to complain about the daily battering the haters give to it, or how even ladies don’t understand it? Will you rise to the challenges your life presents, nurture it, respect it, give it the attention it needs to grow? Or will you hide from it, run from it, short-change it, weigh it down with a laundry list of would-haves, should-haves and could-haves? Will you squander it, take it for granted, never realize the true power it possesses? What about using your life to help someone, to love someone, to stand for something, maybe something as significant as looking after orphans, or something local as loitering around the neighbourhood with alcoholics and drug addicts? Or will you use your life to only look out for your heart’s desires. It was only recently that I came to know my life. Oh, sure, I often thought about my life, about where it has taken me and where I wanted to go. But between the daily hustle and the weekly grind, I never thought about the big picture, how daily events added up to become what would be known as my life, how every person I met, everything I did had a certain amount of importance attached to it. In a society that celebrates birth, celebrates birthdays, mourns death and remembers the anniversaries of death, I, like many others, rarely gave life itself the attention it deserved. A friend told me once that the hardest thing that he ever learned was how to be positive, how to take the challenges of life, and instead of letting them get him down, use them to his advantage. Men from an early age have been conditioned to look at many things in a negative way. And who can blame us? It doesn’t take long for us to figure out that whatever is to be gotten out of life, we’re always the last to get ours, that the short end of the stick has our name written all over it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We all know people who seem to be full of life, seem to live every day with a passion, seem to keep an upbeat disposition, even in the face of adversity. What’s their secret? Maybe their secret to living a fulfilling life is the same as an artist creating a beautiful portrait: Assign the utmost importance to every stroke of your brush. If you do that, you might just find that creating a masterpiece is easier than you think. In the end, it all comes down to whether you want your life to be full of achievements and successes, laughter and good times, or anger and frustration, bitterness and disappointments. Will you spend your life complaining about what you don’t have, or treasuring what you do have? Will you spend your life wishing you could change the past, start over, or will you instead choose to make a vow to your family, to your friends, to your lady, to your mother, or just to yourself, to take control of your life, take it in a different direction, one that includes achieving, excelling, realizing your full potential, overcoming your past obstacles? No one can tell you how to make the most out of your life. I can’t tell you. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with mine. In the end, only you can make that decision, because only you have to live and die with it. So, ladies and gentlemen, what are you going to do with your life? jeav202@yahoo.com