My Last Memory of 2013

I was but in the middle of what qualifies for a good sleep, when such fun was snapped by the sound of an alarm my very hands had set. I reluctantly woke up, not very much aware I had just enjoyed my last sleep for 2013. I staggered around very much like a drunk, only this time without the influence of alcohol. I literally had to hold my eyes to check the date and time. The readings on the alarm struck a reflective nature in me, a mood I have carried all through the day. I am sure I had only seen what the billions of people saw at the beginning of today, "31st December, 2013". 

In as much as I was indifferent about today's uniqueness, I soon had to come to terms with the fact that, the future year I saw in 2012 had come to an end. The reality of how time flies and the illusions of the future had dawned on me. I do not write this in any way to credit this year as a good year for it was obviously not so good for some people neither do I write a dirge to weep a terrible year because it was indeed good for a lot more people. The indifference I share extends beyond personal boundaries. The ups and downs of the year we are gradually burying in time is a story of all men and women in all generations and race.

The days and year just passing had seen men and women hustle to attain a dream in the light of hope and pursuits. The history of the year however, presented pain and laughter, election petitions and legal precedents, deaths and births, tales of scandals and heroism, profits and losses, strives and peace, etc. It is in these maze of conflicts that I had only woken up with the sun not shinning any brighter neither was it any less than I remember it years before. 

Do I therefore write only to tell how indifferent I am to this year and perhaps by extension all other years? I am sure not! I do however share landmarks lessons that will help our transition into a new year.

1. Change is inevitable. Human beings as we all are can be persons of habits. We love comfort simply because our nature and persons become used to the old environment and we attain what psychologist call, 'cognitive ease'. Task become relatively easier because things are familiar. Tinkering with familiar and ease produces the natural conflicts initiations of change face. It is however important to know change happens every passing minute and therefore maintaining an attitude which is open minded and not neophobic is paramount to success. I have noticed that, success consist of once ability to adapt excellently to the changing times and seasons.
2. Hoping for the best yet planning for the worst is a key strategy in life. Hope will always play an important part in life's pursuits. We can not hope any less that things will get better. We can not dream any little, we shall not assume a consciousness of any purpose less than what God has called for us yet let us tender such hopes with a plan that takes care of all the what if. Let us boldly dive in the deep uncharted waters having understood the depth and breath and a life jacket if possible. The year has taught me that, We may boldly assume the risks, however finding the wits to manage the risk prudently makes the difference between those who perish in pursuits and those who triumph.
3. Love is not overrated. Virtues like passion, enthusiasm, care, compassion and humanity is still central to life. I hold firm that it all comes down to people.

Let us all end the year with the euphoria  but in the silence of our hearts and minds, let us pause to know 2014 will present diverse unfamiliar circumstances in which an aptitude for adaptation is needful for survival. Let us also remain increasingly visionary tampering such dreams with clarity of planning and above all let us adapt to love for God is LOVE.

Home is Solace

This was a sight I chanced upon some months ago when I had a vacation and was going home to my family. Just a little knowledge of Accra will reveal this is a location close to circle, (The Central Business District of Ghana, if I may call it so). This looks regular, and may of course not bequeath any curiosity until further inquiry. It actually reveals to be the home of a trader who finds it a place to keep his stock as he ply the trade of hawking to survive in Accra. The sight stirred a lot of thoughts which were heightened all through my journey. My expression of hope in Ghana gets challenged greatly in times like this when the place we call home cannot be a place to be proud of. Hope keeps on keeping on however because it is only in hope there is promise of change.

In the article "The Day of our Independence", an article written on Ghana's independence day (http://theagleswingfoundation.blogspot.com/2012/03/day-of-our-independence.html), I concluded by writing "I dream of home I can call home, home I can be proud of, one that is an example of what it is that faith can achieve. Let us gather around thoughtfulness and avail our hands to prudent work, our attitude to beneficence, our hearts to love, our minds to diligence and our culture to excellence." It is quiet evident that Ghana my home is far from the ideal and this article seeks to find out how we may build a home from where we may receive solace.

1. Let us recognize our woes. It is difficult to do much about a situation we are comfortable with. The picture below shows, the comfort we have train our kids to have fun in a drainage system. This was a sight I saw in my journey somewhere close to Kumasi. We have literally grown numb to the pain and woes and relish it as our joy. The delusion may soothe us today but it gives us no hope to change the plights. I do not speak of not having joy or not been happy, rather I speak of carrying a passion to see our shame and reproach rolled off our shoulders.
2. Let us develop and use our gifts. In the eyes of this children having fun in a drainage system are gifts that will help us transform our lots. Not many of us do with effort seek, mine, refine and use of natural abilities. The time to find and use our gifts is now when we must make the difference and change.
3. Let us build enduring attitudes. When we begin to develop who we are, people who are still enjoying the woes will try to settle us to nothings more that they are doing, so no one sees them as little. We must build an attitude that never gives up, an attitude that never stops to learn, and an attitude that will never relent to help. We must not be boxed into cowardice and intimidation to give up, neither shall we grow complacent and give up growing and learning but beyond all we must be willing to put our hands to wheel.

I conclude with the hope that at least one person will find inspiration in this and will endeavor to build with me a home we may find solace. A home we can gladly hand over to our children and not one that will impel them to take their passports in search of greener pastures. May God help us and grant Ghana home builders, men and women who will make all the changes we desperately need!

A City in my Dreams?

I share an engagement with my imagination as I travelled through this town called Atimpoku in Ghana some few weeks ago. It was not my first time on this road, neither was this my first reflection of such greatness as we could build. My imagination however always slips towards the steep slopes of UTOPIA as I think of such gifts as nature has endowed this land. Sharing my reflections on utopia is a burden I carry, one guided by the touch of realism in order to prevent a wild stray into fantasies. Yet I pray you to indulge my dreams in the light of hope to building, and a passion to pursue such ends such as beauty may behold.

  

 John Keats, the English Poet, noted about beauty "A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness." Even eternal does Dante Alighieri, the great Italian Poet, think of beauty; "Heat cannot be separated from fire, or Beauty from The Eternal". Yet among us, we unfortunately taint the best of beauties; we paint poverty, ignorance and dirt into natures best designs. We bring to naught the many gifts and sorrowfully fail to see the beauty therein. In my reflections, I found:

1. The parable of the talent is more real than we want to believe. One of the common parables of Jesus is known to be of a master travelling to a far country. He gives talents to his servants and upon coming required of them returns. The gifts of each of the servants returned a fold of its own  kind but for the one with the least. He pays no attention to his talent and disregards it by hiding it. The master comes, requires of his talent and the returns and finds out that, this one servant bore no fruits. Such act of 'cautiousness' and 'safe-keeping' of the servant was regarded as wicked and unfaithful by the master who ceases his one talent and gives it to the one with the most. I am tempted to thinking in my wild minds that, this servant comes from my homeland because with all we have been given we do nothing with it. And scared more so, for what shall our judgement of these treasures and beauty be?
2. Fairyland are built from nothing anyway. Disneyland, a story that will always be told. An awe built from but an imagination of a man who visited a park with his daughters. In Walter E. Disney words about the land of his creation, he said,"To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relieves fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenges and promise and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America, with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world." In this story of Disney and the hard compelling facts of our reality of disregarded beauty, I still share hope because change starts with a mindset. Beauty is built with dreams and hopes as foundational Pillars.
3. The gate through which our shame may be rolled off is putting our imaginations to work. I could not imagine people found space within own imaginative space to heap rubbish by such beautiful water bodies. I could barely find something critically thought through that took my breath away, rather I gasped with surprise how much waste beauty has been put to. I do not intend to be unnecessarily critical about this town but to bring to bear the need to put our imaginations to work. This is but a case in point, and in many cases much more severe negligence are paraded with relish. We barely care least notice and do anything about it.

I pray we may find an inspiration to stretch our minds towards that which is of beauty and to press on towards making beauty happen for Africa.

Our faith should be our strength. Let us find solace in Paul's thought that, "God can do immeasurably more than all we ask or can dare to imagine, according to the power which works in us."(Ephesians. 3:20)Let us grow beyond being easily content with lowly things and let's press demand on grace far above mediocrity where it lies now.

I dare plead a cause that we may engage our minds to beauty, and to pursue and create all that is noble, pure and glorious. Let us find reason to press towards utopia for as in the Poet Victor Hugo's words, "To love beauty is to see light". 

Let us reclaim our righteous minds and put it to task!