By Chol Peter Majoh
There’s no rest in this life under the sun. If there’s any rest, I think that’s death. From birth to death, life is toilsome. It’s routinely about putting food on the table, paying school fees, clothing, sheltering, public service, and others. But those who have not understood but are yet to understand this truth go about fretting, stressing themselves over why they have to keep toiling day by day.
Sometimes, it appears like there’s a time to be totally free and to enjoy without further toil, but the Bible calls this foolishness. Remember the story of a man whose story is told in the gospel of Luke, chapter 12:18–21?
This man’s only anxieties were wealth and rest. He wanted to make enough food so that he would later have time to enjoy it without any future hardship. He thought he would rest and be free for the rest of his remaining days of life. However, he received an expected response from God. The story goes: “And he said, this will I do, I will pull down my barns and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.’ And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, thou hast many goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry’. he told himself.
After he had harvested enough, he concluded he was done with hustling and that the next step was to “eat, drink, and be merry in his own words.
But because life’s struggle is a daily routine (24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year), this biblical character never understood, and God called him a fool. “God said unto him, you are a fool; this night your soul shall be required of you; then who shall those things [you have made] be, [things] which you have provided? says verse 20.
That story aside, there’s no time to waste, no need to procrastinate, and no excuse for life. Once you are born, just know you are born to struggle to make a living. It won’t ever be easy, but you can make it a little easier. You need to struggle to have a certificate, a roof over your head, and to put smiles on the faces of your loved ones. This is what constitutes life. Perhaps that’s life itself.
As long as you still hold a breath of life in your nostrils, struggle, never fret, and accept the challenge and beat your odds without any complaint.
Life hits us in the face. When it hits you in the face, never remain down. Get up and chase after the wind. I mean, live life. Solomon calls life chasing after the wind. There is no rest in that. The wind does not stop and has no single direction; it never goes anywhere. It moves all around and around.
Look, it was at birth when you started feeling and thinking that when you later began to crawl, things would get better. Not later than five months, you began to sit on your own buttocks and also started to crawl, only to discover that you needed more than crawling. That pushed you towards another hope. The hope was that when you started to walk, maybe things would change.
Again, it came to pass that you indeed walked, but life increased the volume. Instead, things started to be touchier than before. And you realized that education was the only way out. Thanks to God, your parents took you to school.
You began your education at pre-school level one (1), also known as baby class, and you managed to beat some odds and pass to primary. There, hope never ceased. You told yourself that maybe at high school or after it, there would be change, but to your dismay, there was nothing. Absolutely no change. Things remained the same.
Okay, because you were somebody who didn’t want to give up in life, with the help of your parents, relatives, and friends, you managed to go up to the university level, where you earned a bachelor’s degree. With all these struggles, life still presses harshly upon you. Getting a job has become another issue, another battle to fight. You keep asking yourself why such things are happening, but no one even seems willing to offer himself or herself to answer you.
Sometimes those who sympathize with you say it’s life, or that’s how life is. They don’t give you answers that are satisfying. You are anxious, perplexed, and confused, but there’s no solution. Life proves to be harder and harder as the days pass by.
Biological growth is another thing that never wants to favor you. You are aging without any achievement, not even marriage, but what can you do? It’s life! Dishearteningly, the political and economic situation of your country is worsening day and night; hence, your hope is diminishing, and there’s nothing you can do.
Absolutely, that’s how life is. And sadly, that’s life. There will never be a single day in life when life will say, “Thank you. You have lived up to my expectations.” Never! That won’t happen. Of course, you will get a job, but problems will multiply. They will increase. There will be bills to pay, people to support, houses to rent, school fees to pay, and so forth. That’s life!
In the past, I had the idea that there’s a level in life when one gets rewarded for his or her sweat and that life there, at that time, is appreciated, but this idea is an illusion. There’s no such thing as a day in life. That, perhaps, has been your thought too. It has always been the hope that people keep, but it’s a never-ending hope, for there is no day this world will ever exist without problems as long as paradise is still in heaven. This is the secret behind why mothers manage to forget all the problems they succumb to during pregnancy and labor pain and cast their hope on their children. They believe their problems won’t again be the problems of their children. But is this true? I don’t know.
What I now hold is a new idea about life, and this idea is that life is all about fighting or battling a series of problems, one after the other, without giving up until death. Each day presents a problem in order to prepare you for the next day’s problem. Problems are endless! Today is different from yesterday’s, and tomorrow will be as well.
In fact, and that’s an absolute truth about life, strong people are always up because there’s a burning problem to solve. Whether it’s school fees, a challenge, mockery, abuse, criticism, illness, or whatever problem they face, these folks seem like they don’t care when indeed they do. No rest: life is a 24/7/365 struggle that begins at birth and ends at death. Never give up; keep struggling.
Reach the author via: cholpetermajo@gmail.com, cell/WhatsApp: +211(0)922295373.