THE THINGS WE DO NOT COUNT
Life is a gift we sometimes take for granted. Life altogether. Sometimes when the burdens of life bears down on me, I find myself wishing I was a duck, or a swan, gracefully floating down the stream with no cares at all. Sometimes I feel being human in all of its glory and most of all, its challenges and difficulties was unfair and could have been a choice, but then I couldn’t question the creator even if I wanted to. What if I wanted to be a cat or a dolphin? but no, I was made human. But that isn’t the point, at least not anymore.
Have you ever choked on food or water? Have you ever had nasal congestion and you had to breathe through your mouth? Have you ever been caught by your zipper and in that split second you freeze, you break hot streams of sweat, your brain stops, practically dead and phew! Some relieve? Have you ever rammed your leg into a bed frame, or your head into the wall and you instantaneously go blind, see stars and the next moment you regain yourself? Have you ever had water in your ear or a ball of cotton stuck in your ear?
I reflected on these things recently. It is one thing to critically examine a thing, and another to be able to express it in word. Permit me to give a shout-out to an elite group of super-humans, whose minds work like clockwork, always finding angles and seeing perspectives, going places, taking roads less traveled by the average mind; writers. I reflected on these things recently when I encountered a mishap with something many would have dismissed but gave me a different aspect of things.
Bone in Throat
The bare necessities and the little luxuries of life are rigged with things, damning traps and poisons. You know, we are in a lifelong simulation of death; where everything we do, eat, and nearly all of our activities potentiates death. There is a double edged sword swinging back and forth waiting to catch a head and it does. Of note is, the more inclined we are to luxury, the more likely it is we get caught.
Let me simplify this; I love fish. Give me fish, fried, smoked, grilled, I will devour it leaving no bones. In my head, I say, eating fish bones was extreme sports and I, being an expert, I am the daredevil. I relay this in reference to luxury in the humblest form of gratitude to God that I can afford fish. I loved it to an extent that sometimes when I cook, I steal from myself (lol).
I had just finished a sumptuous bowl of a popular Ghanaian recipe and I was attending to the fish bone when suddenly I choked. You see, the smallest strand of fish bone escaped mastication and went and lodged itself in my throat. It was the single, most painful, most discomforting thing I have ever experienced. For days the bone nestled in my throat. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t swallow and every attempt to relieve myself proved abortive. In those 6 days or something, I realized I had been an ingrate all of my life. Threatened by a single strand of fishbone, I realized, of the things we take for granted, a perfect health and a sound mind chiefs them all. I realized as little as a congested nose, a sprained body part, an itch, an infected body part and in this case, a bone in throat could be so discomfiting that it affects the body and mind. I spent my time awake poking and prodding and whenever I got a break to sleep, I was haunted even in my sleep. A small strand of fishbone defeated me in all my bulges and protrusions (if you know you know).
I read about people who died from infections from similar situations. People who fell from and the trauma led to their deaths. People who became amputees or lost limb functions from domestic accidents, people who lost cognitive abilities or motor skills from head injuries and I realized a lot of things we do not count are things we ought to be grateful for. Foraying even in a country with a low life expectancy, the odds are stacked against us and it becomes a matter of chance to come home to see ones loved one every day. Partially blind aboki riders, hypertensive and seizure prone cab drivers, poor structured buildings and many things on the precipice that could maim or kill and every day we venture, ingrates on the face of God’s earth.
Today till the end of time, I will be grateful for life, for living, I will count everything and make everything count. Life is a gift I do not take for granted.
