Adji Ngathe kebe
As 2022 ended, I mourned all the different versions of myself. They were who I needed to be exactly at that time. With all the foolishness, hot-headed-ness, naivety, thinking I was grown-grown, I’ve managed to deeply value my non-linear path in life so far. For the longest time I was confused. Time could not pass fast enough. It felt like I was trying to push the Earth a little faster on its axis. I had somewhere to be in the future and it was nothing like the present nor the past. I guess, I was waiting to finally see the light at the end of the dark tunnel.
Growing up is very hard to do. You are constantly being challenged, stretched, and pulled apart. All of the sudden you’re a stranger to yourself. What you once knew to be true about yourself is in question. Alice Walker wrote about growth. She said,
some periods of growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before.
I guess there was a part of me in doubt about that largeness. What if I go too far out of the center and I can’t pull myself back in? All of my life, I was creating anchors to sustain myself. I felt as if I could float away any minute. Growing up is asking me to finally root myself down. I genuinely do look at my growth, the way I look at a seedling destined to bloom. We should all see ourselves as that. The seedling needs the most care. For if the seedling is provided with all its needs, it has no choice but to bloom.
We are destined to bloom in different capacities. We should stop wanting it to look one particularly way or another. As someone who has tried to plan everything to beat Ya’Allah to it, I’m always humbled. I stay being humbled. We can’t know every little thing about our journey. I don’t think we should. 2022 was planned in my head to be a certain way. I was surprised at every turn. I didn’t like it at the time. But now, I look back and everything makes sense. Humans are very stubborn. We think life can only be one way. I think it’s one of our largest sources of stress. Perhaps I’m in a place where I can finally settle into the earth.The here, while, and the now is suddenly worth it.
