Life Is Filled With Ups And Downs

I laugh at that adage that says when life throws you lemons, you should make them into lemonade.

The truth is, you can be so overwhelmed at times that you can't even lift a finger to pick up kitchen utensils to make lemonade.

Life could be interesting at times, but many more times it would nearly frustrate you.

Though we are to internalise happiness, It's our job to make ourselves happy. I don't deny that. I don't even have any evidence or counterargument for that.

But the truth is, you can be happy now, and in the next minute, you could be stuffed with happenings around you.

Nothing is making you happy any longer.

Nobody gets your back.

Your back is just bare on the ground, with your face looking up at the cloudy firmament.

It's at that time that the best of friends become total strangers.

You feel everybody hates you.

You feel like you're the odd one.

You feel you're the undefined z in the system of equations with three unknowns. x represents your family members. y represents friends.

Family members are no longer family.

Friends have turned into foes.

Like an inexperienced pilot, you're left with the paddle to battle with the boat's problems.

And like an amateur driver, you are left on the highway all alone inside the car, facing a heavy-duty truck. And at that time, it seems the little ounce of hope you have for survival is about to be sniffed off.

There is a truth we need to realise:

It's that there is no outcome assured in life—whether good, better, best, or bad, worse or worse.

You could take life-endangering risks that could murder you and realise that you're still alive after 50 years.

And sometimes, on the verge of not wanting to take risks, you end up losing your life.

You could be plying through the most dangerous route on earth and still arrive safe at your destination.

And at times, you die when the highly anticipated luxurious life you want to have shows up.

Life is a lot of hills and valleys.

I'll get married in my twenties.

Give birth to children.

Own the biggest mansion.

Billionaire by 30.

You could have a bucket full of aspirations and pursuits.

Which is fine.

But the sad reality about life is that nothing is guaranteed.

Why?

You're not entitled to anything.

You don't own the world.

You don't come into the world by your will.

You're here because of somebody's decision.

And hence, no matter how hard you try to decipher what life is, the more difficult it will be for you.

Why?

It's a lot of experimentation and iterations.

You don't know what works.

Because the opposite of what worked yesterday could be what we need today.

30 years ago, nobody knew it's possible to stay in the comfort of home and export some cool shit to the internet and make money.

It's at this age that we're realising that.

Now imagine the number of brains inside the grave filled with unimplemented ideas.

Imagine the great transformation that the world would have experienced if we had had a system for the documentation of those vibrant ideas.

Imagine this, imagine that.

That's enough.

If you're finding it difficult today, just relax.

What will be, will be.

I'm of the opinion that you must work before things work out.

However, when it gets to the stage where you start feeling suicidal because your expectations have remained unmet, you have to realise that you'll just die for nothing.

Life doesn't operate on your selfish system.

I call it selfish because the good you anticipated for yourself could be the exact thing that would ruin another person.

Since life proves to be cruel and unbalanced, what should we do?

Good.

Still have your head held high when things persist in being rough.

I know that's tough.

But there is something I've come to realise about this:

The more you hope, the more you want to work to make your hope come true.

When you stop hoping, you become hopeless.

And by doing so, you become helpless.

Many will resort to suicide.

They want to use the pain of death to cure their physical pain.

That's trash.

At no point should you think of ending your life.

The end is not yet here until you have given up the ghost.

Even the end has not yet come when your life has ended.

It ends when your legacy is not able to ascend after your demise.

There is something I'm realising from the last paragraph.

Let me share it with you.

You can live in the world, and your being alive will not make sense to you.

It could start being meaningful to people after you leave the world.

If you are a man of purpose, I stand to confess to you that your hope cannot be lost.

The unheard voice will be broadcast later, when it becomes the only solution.

I heard of one young man who preaches to people.

But people won't yield to his preaching.

He was scorned, treated with disdain, and looked down on with contempt.

His story starts to make sense when he leaves where people are to preach inside the forest.

His story later makes sense because people found him.

I'm not saying this 1% out of the 100% of possibilities will always hold.

That's quite erroneous.

I'm just stating this smart fact: you shouldn't lose hope when the world seems to be silent about your existence.

In conclusion,

No matter what's going on with you, don't lose hope.

It's meant to be.

Economic recession is not meant to be the experience of animals in forests.

It's for humans.

Great mansions and architectural masterpieces are not made for animals to enjoy.

They're for humans.

That's why we shouldn't lose heart when we experience the opposite of our highly anticipated good life.

We'll have our good days.

The bad days? For sure!

I hope this article resonates with you.

If you pick a cue from this article, share it with us in the comments.

Thank you for reading.

— Oluwaseyi.

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