METAMORPHOSIS

I am a youth and I actively relate with my ‘kit and kin’ at least on a daily basis. I grew up in the midst of young people and I have had contacts with elders of varying chronological ages. I love to discuss, I love to plan and I am curious to the bones. It’s what keeps me going. I live by seeking out better ways to live better.

What baffles me in this my generation is

I mingle with youths of all ages and profession and one thing is sure. We are actively-blooded. We are strong and proud of our strength. We are determined and restless. We may lack experience but we do not lack zeal or motivation. We may lack patience but we do not lack company or friends. We may lack wisdom and the application of it but we do not lack information or discuss.

A youth will never remain a youth forever, he or she must change. We grow daily and just as the food we eat determines how much we grow physically so also the moral, intellectual and mental food we consume determines how much we develop inwardly.

We can never become wise elders when we have no sound knowledge as youths. We will never give what we do not have. We cannot profess what we haven’t attained. We cannot live as elders what we haven’t practiced as youths. We cannot give birth without becoming pregnant and we cannot be pregnant unless we first conceive.

If we must be wise and seasoned, if we must become mentors and leaders, if we must be the models that the youngsters of tomorrow would emulate, if we hope to pen our lives’ history to change the growth dimensions of posterity, if we would want to be quoted as having accomplished despite the odds in our days, if we aspire to be influential even in death, if we would want to be assured we did our best when our bodies have become frail and wrinkled, then there is a metamorphosis that must take place.

We as youths must visualize the future we want, not just for ourselves but for those we would bring upwards us. Martin Luther King jnr. visualized and today we have seen his visuals. Bill Gates visualized and we live to testify of his influence. We may be the ones to spearhead the vision or we may not even live to see it come to pass in our time but it ill-behooves us not to envision it or live towards it.

As a youth, let’s learn all we can, let’s practice every right we can handle, let’s push ourselves in our present strength and engage in profitable discuss. This world rests on our shoulders and our mind’s strength. The world may not give us audience, they may not give us the opportunity or the chance to show forth but they should know where we stand and what we can do, given the slightest of chances.

We cannot sit all day before televisions and computers and expect the world to change. We can’t neglect the reading culture that grooms great minds or the scholarly protocols that have fashioned geniuses and expect to become famous legends in the halls of change.

We sing shallow lyrics and dance to beats generated by machines, we no longer think to write songs or study to make music, our focus is on how many people have the song as their ringtones and how many times it is aired on the media. We fight to get more likes on social media sites and ensure our website traffic causes a jam. Yet we neglect the content of whatever we so dutifully portray!

Our clothes would make us look good and well packaged. Our language would dictate our glamour and perceived exposure but it’s our application of the knowledge we already have and have understood that enforces the change everyone wants to see.

One’s father may be a security personnel but if he can’t protect his son then to this son he (the father) is more of a security risk. He is far from the solution, he is an addition to the problem itself. We have always trusted in our parents until we grew old enough to know where they can be of help and where they can only love us and no further.

We can dictate our future and the future of our future ones if we metamorphose in the manner that is akin to positive, progressive change.

I urge you to look inwards, assume you alone are in charge of all and all depends on you, will you carry all of us further or will you breakdown in due course? Will you even attempt the journey or will you give up at the sound of the gun?

Dig deep, dear youth. Search your heart, scan your brain. Browse through your life as it is now and has grown to be, if you are not satisfied then you need to metamorphose. You need to change in the growth direction, you need to be where you ought to be. This world, your world, is counting on you and the truth remains that even the best you look up to can fail, so why not brace up and gird your loins about you.

Yesterday, you were there, today you are already here. You were single, now you are married…a parent even! You were small, now you are big, you will get bigger still. How time flies! Invest in yourself. Learn. Grow. Time is ticking, life is advancing and the day of reckoning draws near.

I tick angrily when some elders talk or counsel me. Reason? It’s always obvious when one has nothing to offer, age irrespective. When one has nothing to offer, he would only waste the time you should have invested in some other endeavour.

I would stir in my grave to have a youth sneer at my corpse and say “Thank God, the problem of the world is less by one man” or insinuate such. I do not live to accumulate complements at my death for men in themselves are fond of speaking no evil of the dead.

I rather live to change myself and the ones I have influence over so that the glory of God can be exemplified here and now in whatever I do and say and act likewise. I would be dead and know nothing of this side of the world come one day but now that I yet live, I live to live better and speaking with utmost sincerity…it makes a lot of sense to live with neighbours, good neighbours! Will you be my neighbour?