Thursday, 27 June 2013

SOME HAPPINESS...



By Isaac Ihekwoaba.

I sat down in my den, to reflect on life; on the crosses we must bear; on the burdens we carry to our Golgothas. I thought of life pursuits - the desire for glory, and fame, and treasure, and love.

I thought of rich men endowed with all but satisfaction; of kings and nobles with immense powers but lacking in health. I thought of young men and women with no vision of tomorrow; of dreams dashed and hopes crashed.

I thought of the lucky few- those who get to make something out of their lives. I saw the struggling masses, to eke a life out of scorched earth they seek. Everyday a struggle, every hour a challenge I saw hopelessness and anguish and extreme poverty; of denudating and debilitating impoverishment the sight of which is injurious to the soul. I saw despair and resignation to the forces of life as they pummeled dreams into submission, and men became defined and imprisoned by their environment. I saw those who refused to go on, just because the sap is gone, the gut is sapped. (Sometimes the effort needed to start to succeed is so much that we are discouraged. To give up before the start of the journey is disembark before we embark). Life does have something in common with death after all: Life can be cruel. Life kills wills.

As I reflected, this phrase came to me- "some happiness...." I realized that what i desire, what I want is, Some happiness....

It is a momentary interlude from the grind of life. It is a man at the end of a long night who finally sees the sunrise. It is a traveler across sands and dunes who arrives at a coast. Some happiness...... that's what we all desire.

She my friend a fellow traveler told me of her mother who used to use the same phrase. She would say, all I want is Some happiness....This after many failed suicide attempts. For life is one long struggle for many. For yet others, it is one long struggle too much.

Life is a soul journey as we seek what we know not. We pursue fame, and gold, and power, and glory, and wealth, and life. Yet in truth all we seek is Some happiness..... We seek a respite, some love, some reciprocity of affection. We seek those who would truly appreciate us and then those who understand our being, our wants and desires. Unfortunately, our desperation often corrupts these noble passions into lusts.

And when we can’t have what we want, we seek the available that want us. The wife you want, that love you seek, that longing you have, that understanding you crave, that cuddle you desire; the holding of hands, of head on his shoulder in submitted affection in the dark of the movie theater; the stoking of the strands of hair that are not out of place as you caress the flesh of who you hope will be, all these, and many more, is called Some happiness.....

And when we find the fleeting shadows of Some happiness.... how we cling in desperation. We temporarily lose our senses and let down our guards. But soon we begin to see different, and logic and rationalization creep in. We begin to doubt whether the broad shoulders on which the head was placed in the dark of the night, in the black of the movie theater, at the row at the back is Mr. Some happiness..... We question whether it was just a mirage we experienced as our souls traveled the desert desperately in search of an oasis. How many times have we prayed, hoping against hope that that one week old lover is Some happiness.....? How some men desperately wish for the wife to be Mrs. Some happiness.....

In the pursuit of Some happiness...... some have become dangerous and deadly, climbing the corporate ladder with spiked shoes. Some have sold their souls. Some are lizards hugging the ground with their bellies full of pain. We've become who we're not and became who we are.

We keep on seeking, searching, knocking. From one alley to another, we tumble and stumble, and dash our foot against stones. We besot our hearts to the undeserving, we date the unavailable and then the too available we’ve made friends with the imperfect, we've broken hearts and committed mistakes all in search of Some happiness....

I am not sure, if Some happiness....... is sustainable. The very fact that it's called Some happiness....connotes it's transience both in time and form. We can’t hold on to it and it doesn’t last long. Such is the nature of Some happiness.... But we keep on searching anyway, you and I, after all, all we seek is Some happiness....!

The writer is on twitter @isaactez

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