Fire and Ice

I was born on a Thursday with my thumb dipped in ink, bolt of poems are patched on my life’s pages with a golden pen God has made of me. On each of my life’s page, beautiful Salem of words that numb the world of its pains is carved. I have become a word budding fruit, blossoming with treasure and gleesome memories, words of fine tapestry to free shame’s sea.  I write to find my artistic flow and to tell my story of Ice and Fire. I do not just with broad strokes knit words but with careful narrow details to share valuable stories my two-scores and eight has taught me. 

    Indulge my most recent story, on 28^th October, yesterday I mean, a day just to when I celebrate my birthday, thieves broke into my house, stole my phone and tablet, about my only possession, items I had become pretty dependent on. I’m still figuring out if this experience was one of ice or fire particularly since it’s left me spending my birthday with virtually no calls because I’m yet to buy a new phone. Fire and Ice is a popular phraseology associated with Robert Frost in his most popular poem. I however do not use it in the context as he uses it, but I write of it as how the strongest of swords are forged, through ice and fire. The strength of the sword on which the mightiest warrior depend on is one for which the test of fire and ice did not break. The colder and hotter the contrasting elements of fire and ice, the stronger the sword. I am a grandson of of a blacksmith, speaking boldly of my strength as I am forged by the lessons of ice and fire: 

1. I’ve learnt how to be rich from poverty. I come from a humble home as the poor always want to put it. Of course my faith allows me to say God has being good, but that is the kind of goodness for which we barely survived from hand to mouth. I have out of such great need learnt to prioritize time and to push the most effectiveness out of it. Need for survival forges strength in greatness. 
2. I’ve learnt confidence from labelling. My birthday poem today was called, No Labels. I have always being the one picked on from nursery school because I was almost always the youngest and smallest. I have being given the worst of names from primary school, through high school, survived terrible rejection because I do not flow with everybody and particularly since my brain is the best proxy to finding me. I get even more now, the terms of weirdo, nerd, strange, from colleagues. This is an experience that can break the strongest of souls. I will tell you, the best strength I find sometimes is in tears. The longest poem I have ever written is called, The Crying man, a poem I wrote weeping terribly when I was still in third year at the university. The experience has taught me to look at people’s categorization of me with humour and pity for their narrow-mindedness. I have learnt confidence in spite of all the things that stood in my way. 
3. I have learnt love from loneliness. I learnt to call it solitude, although I found my ink to write from such solitude, found the depth of my mind and strength of will in my spirit from being alone it was never without the fangs and taunting icy grin. I learnt the first thing to love, to love yourself. I also learnt to love people not because they were good or bad, but because of our common humanity. I learnt respect and kindness because of my own lack of it. 
4. I learnt compassion from pain. I have known pain. My tears have not being for me alone however, it has being a guide from which I draw to bathe others, those who are in need of healing from stone of tears. I have a very tender heart and rightly so because life has broken all meanness, my experience in life has taught me compassion to our common humanity. I have glow that soothe like balm, a gift I received from pain himself. 
5. I have learnt patience from endurance. Forbearance is a gift that yields great results. If anything were true about life, I will reckon that life is a marathon. Execution requires all the tact you can gather from careful planning and detailed craftsmanship. You do not learn patience as a boisterous youth; you do that through the calm corners of endurance. Hunting is a great art- you must learn the art of speed but most importantly, the skill to wait for the calm to strike. I can go a little longer than the average, sacrifice yet a little more, be prepared to risk yet a little more and to be a bit more courageous. That I have found through learning patiently every single minute. 
6. I have learnt leadership from service. I have learnt to do the things nobody wants to do. I learnt to build service hours which only gave me credibility; credibility forged a reputation for excellence and consequently I build dominion. I am a prevailing alpha but one entirely by serving. 
7.  I learnt courage from Adventure. Yes I am afraid sometimes to, even to write or to talk, the two things at least I love to do but I get doing them anyway. I am always trying new things, I have experimented with writing, talking, trumbo, trumpet, guitar, organ, photography, law, science, business, risk management, hiking, driving, acting and recently singing, etc. I have failed in quiet a number of them but have succeeded extremely in others too. I intend to sum up my life in one word, possibility! But the only way I get to show all is possible is by trying all. I will always keep trying new stuff always having the youthful enthusiasm to learn something new. 
8. I have learnt purpose through passion. I have been driven to where I must be only by following what I am passionate of. Sometime mere circumstance have being the reason I found I could do things, but that was a long time ago, I push consciously and with passion, a day at a time. 
9. Life begun with faith. I was still not sure about my life until that accident on 5^th June, 2006. I found faith from which I pursue a legacy bigger than anybody but God can offer. 
10. I have learnt opportunity from preparation. How often we all want luck. I remember growing up, the day I do not get to school early, there will be a punishment for late-comers. Luck is not my good friend, although grace, mercy and favour are. I heard of story of planting the field before asking for rains. Opportunity for me has being created through usually the brow of sweet. God grants me grace to create opportunities one at a time for indeed horses are prepared for battle but victory is of the Lord. Horse must be prepared my friends!

In conclusion, I write this to end a project I started exactly 2,555 days ago. It was on a Thursday just like this seven year ago when I committed to letting go everything to pursue the strength of my mind, depth of my spirit and the independence of my soul. God has formed a persona in me I am so proud of, I can only look forward to the future with hope, I did not write all about me for the words sake, but to let you for a young man from Agogo who grew most in Duayaw Nkwanta, God indeed is no respecter of persons. I look forward the next 2,555 days with a global impact. Watch this space…

Artistic Chaos

GHphoto

I happen to have a window office on the last floor of my office building. The building is located in Airport City, perhaps the evolving Times Square of Ghana. I will usually stand by the window during lunch time to reflect considering the philosopher I would have loved to be (Who wouldn’t like a legacy of him as a man in a big chair with a pipe perhaps).

My flow of thought was interrupted by the images you see in this post, chaos may be the kindest word to express what was going on. This is unfortunately not the first time, most Ghanaians reading this may find this usual, a story from which no particular insight may arises. With my passion for speed cars and adrenaline rush, I apologetically am not strange to enjoying the thrills of some terrible driving but this post is not about the traffic necessarily neither is it about the dangerous driving. It is really about the artistic nature of the chaos. Indulge me to share my insight of this scene.

1. A roundabout in a lawn: A look without effort reveals in the lawn a practice where people change direction. The picture reveals a car driving across the road. The thought on my mind is, why in the name of beauty will we create a roundabout in a lawn? I presume one person did it for the first time without being questioned, then the second person followed and gradually Ghana has officially instituted a traditional roundabout in a lawn. After all, what is the cost if we drive through the lawn? I wonder as the many who may have used the lawn as a roundabout do. The pictures however provide sufficient answer, we pay the price of chaos, drive across when we ought to drive to the left or right, we waste everybody's time, frustrate everybody and eventually create on our road the drama of rage from which the consequences are countless.
2. It is also interesting to note that, majority of the cars in this scene were drivers of private cars. Presumably, this chaos is caused by drivers whose trade is driving for a living. If a man's trade is to drive, let him drive with honour. Assuming the all the drivers don't even drive well, we may find hope because we may conclude, only our drivers have a faulty thinking. But if the private cars mean that they are not drivers by vocation and have other contributions to life either as employers or employees then I shudder to imagine the thinking pattern in executing whatever their jobs maybe. Politician drive through this, doctors, teachers, everybody of any imaginable profession and yet as a people, we find this normal. I pause without many words to ask if a dual lane becomes four lanes with no specific order and when chaos become a way of life, where shall the hope be?
3. Finally, you may observe in the picture a middle aged woman selling. I can in my imaginative mind hear her with all certainty thank God for creating a market this afternoon that she may perhaps feed her family. This blog is dedicated to Ghanaian stories for change. This is not right, but can anyone blame her? Of course not, if we could create for her a market, and create the order so as to aid the traffic flow, people may have driven peacefully in few minutes to that market and perhaps she may have made more. She may save herself from the scorching sun just to make perhaps less than she truly needs to survive.

I can only write of what chaos we've created, and hope we find such time wasters unnecessarily painful, a life drag so burdensome that we may build order in this country. God bless Ghana.!

Artistic Chaos

The Adventure of Life

I am a collector of memories, as I assume every living human being is. The recently passed week added to my collection very interesting stock to treasure. It was particularly enlightening because it offered me the opportunity to reflect on memories. Like a photo album, I tirelessly watched the floating memories of time in my mind and my words.  The best part of the reflections was that, I had to share the accumulated snapshots for the last twenty-seven years. Yes, share with a group of curious creative people who will not wait but eagerly gulp on every memory, sip every word, analyse every life’s screenshot and perhaps categorise you into any lot they find fit. For whatever it is worth, I enjoyed the mirroring exercise with very little concern for the category I fitted in if any at all.

Permit me to digress, only for a paragraph, for the sake of the overall objective of this article. In my professional career, I have had the opportunity of taking some of the most advanced personality test intending to aid career progression and succession planning. The last one I took was the Myers Briggs Personality Test. This test as much as many others have something in common, to profile the subject. As a Risk Analyst, I appreciate the concept of profiling thoroughly. Categorisation offers the bases from which complex decision are made and I am sure the enquiry helped guide others as to what their opinions will be if I ever came to the picture. The profiling was however not done by others only, I got the opportunity to re-examine if at all I could fit somewhere.

Before I share the three key lessons from the exercise let me be quick to say Myers Briggs gave me the same score for introversion as much as extroversion, this results is not unique to Myers Briggs, other tests I have had suggests similar things. I do not find these results surprising after all, I love Neil Burger’s film, ‘Divergent’. In my mind I am ‘Four- Tobias Eaton’ or even better, Beatrice Prior, 100% divergent!

• All things are possible is not a mere rhetoric: As I went through the stories of strength and weakness, good and bad, happy and sad, regrets and lessons, one key lesson which stands out is the possibility of time. From a humble background in Duayaw Nkwanta Local Authority Junior Secondary all through to a Masters  degree and an ongoing legal education, that can only point to possibility. No one needs emphasise, we are the sum total of our experiences, knowledge and summarily our exposures. The hard truth however lurks, our future is in our mind, howbeit subject to what we can imagine from the past we have had. Whatever the past has being for whoever, my life tells a story of possibility if only one will be focused enough.

• Fear is made of nothing: People are often afraid to open up to new ideas, people, places and challenges. Interestingly the rule of nature is, adaptation. Tides and times are ever evolving and survivors have the best adaptability. I have seen worlds in my few years and I intend to see many more. I have seen the handwork of poverty and have equally seen the testimony of wealth, I have seen righteousness as much as sin and I have tested knowledge and stupidity. I do not suggest what I have seen is anything close to a percent of what there is to know but from what I know, I have learnt shedding fear is key to living fully. A challenge to confront one's fear at a time leads to discovery of purpose. We all love to be secretive because we are afraid of confronting the past fully, I dare to confront every dark and light within me without fear, I hope that inspires somebody to at least embrace life as an adventure from which we must tell a story of legacy 

 

• Be limitless: I do not fit into any categorisation. Since I was a child, I have never fitted and I have stopped struggling to. It is good to have people place you in a bracket but that’s just not me. I thought I was wrong till I heard Jesus suggest same in John’s epistle, third chapter and eighth verse. As a wind, my promise to myself, refusing to be categorised by anybody under the sun. 

I conclude only with the hope that somebody finds the courage to know themselves thoroughly beyond any impossibility, fear or limitation. I was once asked to find a title for a book, song, movie which will adequately summarise my life’s story. After a long stretch of thought, all I could agree on was ‘Adventure’, a life not defined or relapsed to a model or rules but one leading the course of life to find a new path. I hope this helps somebody embrace their race to pursue their own adventure.