My Prerogative

It’s been 8 years since I turned 18 and almost 5 years since I clocked 21 and graduated from the university. I refer to those points in my past ‘cos they are years when my life seemed to brim with anticipations and dreams. 


At 18, I was a fresher in the university and the world seemed to be at my feet; begging to be explored. At 21, fresh from the university, it was the money-spewing world of employment that beckoned. I got visibly excited when I thought about all the money I was going to make once I stepped in the rat-race and starting swapping labour for wages. I didn’t know the going rates then, I just had a hunch it would be good and I definitely didn't dwell much on the labour part of the exchange. Oh, I forgot to mention that though I wasn’t thinking seriously about marriage back then when I was 21, I had set the peg at 25. I figured that by then I would have had ample time to sow as many wild oats as my principled heart would allow me (please don’t ask!).

It’s 2010 and I’m 26. I’ve worked for 3 years (if you count my recent 8 months unemployment window), but have yet to find the money bag that was rumored to be flung around every month’s end. All I have encountered in its stead are the bathed breaths with which we anticipate our stipends, praying that ‘false labour’ would not be pronounced. The grey area of labour has been adequately straightened out for me and I now know that there’s nothing even in the labour-remuneration proportions. How else does one explain the copious workloads or the fact that though a company policy states 5pm as closing time, the boss gives you the evil-eye when you pick up your bag to leave?

It’s 2010; 8 years after I took my first adult steps into a world that I was confident I would explore to wear-and-tear and I still have one of the slimmest circle of friends. To add salt to my injury, I’m thrown in with a set of girls just like me; girls who play safe and try to live by the book.

Every now and then we confess knowledge of the fact that our lives are boring but don’t do anything to enhance them. We kid about alternate lives where we’re living on the wild side with men, booze, sprees and all the works then we comb our hairs in conforming ponytails and head out to our dreary jobs and other things that do not feature in our fantasies.

I’m not married. I’m in a relationship that’s heading there, but a fish bone is not a fish, so…despite my carefully outlined plan, I’m not married! (Forgive me, LOML). It doesn’t help the least bit that every day that I log on to Facebook, I discover a newlywed friend of mine flaunting her rings as if to say “Look what I got before you!”.

I doubt that I need to spell out that a lot of things have not gone according to plan. Today, I have learned that though planning is important, it’s best done in pencil, making provisions for amendments to the original bills. But more importantly, through it all, I have learned to be happy! Someone recently said how we tell ourselves that we’re be happy or content as soon as we start earning that 8 digit salary, or move to a really grand house in Victoria Island that overlooks the lagoon, or marry that person of our dreams. But in truth, chances are that those attainments won’t bring the joy we think they would. But even worse, is the fact that we would probably never attain them and so would probably never experience peace till we die(if we hinge our happiness on these things). Let’s face it, there are only so many houses in Victoria Island and we can’t all live in them!

So maybe I’d be rich (I’m keeping my fingers crossed) or maybe I’d always just be about comfortable. Maybe I’d live in the kind of house that I’d want to take everywhere with me or maybe the ceiling for me is a 3 bedroom apartment somewhere unimpressive in the outskirts of Lagos. For all of these things, fate kind of has a way of wrestling it out of your hands. But over my state of mind, I have absolute control…so I choose to be happy and content not tomorrow, not when I meet the targets, but right now, right here!

What’s your decision?