A Near Death Experience

okay, visualise this. It's a very cool morning, you wake up just like every other day (except earlier), it's a public holiday, so you get one day off from the stress of the Nigeria tetiary education system. You realise that it's an opportunity to make some money, so you set out to work for the day.

Being a fisheries undergraduate,you get a fish farm to hire your services for the day to help them sort fishes and you have the luxury of doing it with your friends. That's kind of a dream day,right?

So, you set out with your friends to do the job. It wasn't long, you were completely engrossed in your job, doing it so effortlessly, even though it was a lot of work. It was taking longer than you expect and you were beginning to feel you are being underpaid, but all in all, it still seem like a good day, yeah?. Well, you have been at it for hours, and yeah soon you were done. You thought in your wisdom or foolishness( or maybe one of your friends did), hey! There's an empty pond with a lot of clean water;sound like a pool, we could have some fun. Not having tried out swimming before,you thought there's no harm in learning how to swim (a fisheries expert who can't swim is an abberation, right?). So, why the friend jumps into the water, you jump along( and almost died alone, no rush yet), into the water, while your friend is gliding and floating, you found yourself in the mid-water column, and in place of gliding and floating, you are drinking and breathing water.

( As the strong man wey you be) You quickly tried to get out of the water,still not feeling the urgency of the situation, but between standing up from the water and catching some air, you couldn't win both battles, and in a matter of a few split seconds, you were back down in the water column, until your very "stupid" friend had the awareness to pull you out of the water. Are you still having a great day? I imagine not.

Beautiful fictional story,eh? Wrong; beautiful,yes; fictional, no. That right there was how my day two days ago. What started as a really good day to earn some extra cash and have fun with my friends @Kushyzee and Gaiom took a spin and was suddenly a nightmare. I planned to do a lot of things yesterday, drowning wasn't one of them, never was, never will be.

Right there, we laughed about it, and even after we got home, we kept joking and laughing about it. My roommate was even asking me what I saw when I was close to "kicking the bucket"😂😂(not that I got close to that point)

But I couldn't help but think in that moment, how fleeting life is. It's fleeting nature was made clear to me in the aftermath of that event. If life is so fleeting, it raises questions about how we live the lives given to us by God ( be guided @Kushyzee, I didn't become religious overnight because of the incident😂😂). All the little squabbles I have had of recent all of a sudden lost significance, the worries about tomorrow and the likes.

The human desire for wealth and all the best of things of life has always made sense to me, but in that moment, the human desire to gain these things at the expense of others, notwithstanding the harm caused to these people made no sense to me, as we never know when we will leave this world. A lot of people feel if they have all the things they desire, they can control everything around them, hence they get to decide whaf happens to them, but i leayrnt that day, that no matter whom you are and what you have, there are lot of things that will always be out of your control or decision, like when you join your ancestors.

Closing thoughts

This incident has forced me to reflect on my life and see all the parts of it where I am failing and making excuses for myself. It helped me re-priotise the things in my life and interestingly, a lot of things that used to mean nothing have true meaning now, and some of the things that I used to hold dear now seem so trivial. The bottom line is that as we drive to achieve our dreams and goals,we should try to live right for the things that truly matters, and everyday when you wake up, thank God for a new day, and think about the kind of legacy you want to leave behind when you finally kick that bucket.