If you live long enough…

You’ll feel things. You’ll see things. You’ll hear things

My colleague at work who I’ll simply call Whitehead is a fantastic human being. I’m saying he’s a fantastic person in so many ways, especially because he knows so much.

When a new member of staff joins the team, Whitehead allows them settle in for about a week at best. By the beginning of the following week, he’ll introduce himself to you. He strikes a good conversation. He’s a simple man with incredible conversational qualities.

Whitehead doesn’t just introduce himself, he tells you about the organisation, its politics, the people, and how frustrating they are. What he doesn’t do is small talks. He speaks to everyone. If you don’t like Whitehead, you genuinely have a problem.

On some days, we’d talk about a range of subjects. His scope is broad and he has a great knowledge of everything he should. I don’t like long conversations. I get bored easily especially in the office. When he notices my reticence, he simply turns his chair. That’s Whitehead.

I like listening to Whitehead talk, and on this day, he was talking about life. He’s 55. Old enough to be my father. I told him that the first day he told me his age. He said he’s lucky to live beyond 30 because he lived a crazy life. Whitehead has an open heart to death. He’s not afraid of his exit.

When I told him it takes me a longer time now to recover from football’s stress, he said; “I’ll advise you not to grow older”.

Haha.

That’s typical Whitehead. He says the craziest things and has defense for it.

He said when you grow older, you see a lot of things. A lot of good and bad things.

Earlier today, I was thinking about Whitehead and thought, I can use that subject to write. And I thought about the topic, “If you live long enough”.

My grandmother is nearly a century old, and I knew her when she was 60-something. She was more vibrant and sharp. She’s still sharp. But she needs a walking aid now. She hallucinates now. But when she smiles, she’s still a beautiful, beautiful woman.

Sometimes I wonder how she really feels. So many people are dead. Virtually all of her mates are no more, and she’s one of the oldest persons in our town. That confers respect on her naturally. She’s a custodian of history. But my grandmother cares less about history. She still wants to live longer. And that’s a beautiful way to look at life; separately from Whitehead’s advice.

Both cases are genuine.

If you live long enough, you may see the best things your eyes may ever witness, or declare the worst things your mouth can ever conjure. My grandmother waited long enough to enjoy the fruits of her long years of labour. I know people who did not. Death bested them.

If you live long enough, you may find yourself on the good end of hope, or conclude it’s just a gimmick to keep humans in check. You’ll learn, that’s for sure.

I’m convinced that if you live long enough, you’ll understand why you had to make the mistakes you made, and also understand that understanding it doesn’t mean you won’t repeat it, because you may well live long enough to realise you don’t know what you’re doing. Like many others.

If you live long enough, you’ll accept that to love is to accept foolishness as a shtick, and promote vulnerability as a core strength of your character.

There are many things to learn if you live long enough, not least that humans are as wicked and wonderful, as wild and simple, and as worthy of caution as they’re honourable.

Living long enough gets you to understand that nobody owes you anything. No matter what love means, regardless of the attention the world gives to you, you’re still on your own, in life and death.

How do I then change your mind to tell you that you can’t do this world alone? Living long enough tells you that loneliness is painful, and what people seek is solitude, not loneliness.

It’s why positions change. It’s why people who never hope to become parents change their orientation, and flaunt the bountiful blessing in human form that’s now in their possession. It’s why friends become enemies because they discover they were never truly friends. It’s why enemies become friends because they found out, by accident, that they stood to gain more as friends.

If you live long enough, you’ll understand that nothing you own is truly yours, no matter how frugally you hold things. It’s a concept that exposes the depth of human ordinariness and one that underlines our temporality, regardless of our impact.

If you live long enough, you may have the bitter experience of seeing children kidnapped and held hostage while a sitting government just looks on. Living long makes you see events that beggar belief.

I hope you live long enough to see that nothing you do will mean more than the day you choose to be happy, and stayed glued to that decision, even on your death bed. In the real sense of it, nothing makes sense other than happiness. And choose it, everything and everyone who makes you happy, unapologetically.

By the way, Whitehead isn’t following his advice. It’s why he stopped smoking, he said. Every wrapper of cigarette says smokers are liable to die young. But here’s a man who said he escaped when he thought death was close, and has now chosen immortality, for as long as it lasts.

If you live long enough, you’ll discover we stumble on to greatness sometimes but mediocrity is a carefully-selected eventuality. We have choices but we don’t know what becomes of them. If you care to know, just live long enough.