The New Year has started with several prophesies of death. But one thing that drew my attention is not about the prophetic death or who will die that matters, but how we die...How would we remember the prophets prophesying the death of notable people in society today supposedly they rather die?

How we die is my subject today; being a prophet or notable personality in society.

At a very tender age, my very responsible dad used to put up a mantra that he won’t die like the worm but he will die the death of a millipede. That saying however didn’t make sense to me as the eldest of his children, let alone my younger siblings.

As I grew up, I began to ponder more and more on this subject. I began to analyze how the worm and the millipede die. In my curiosity as a child, I placed a dead worm and millipede on our backyard for about a week. Afterwards, I found out that, the worm degenerated into total dust and had left behind no remains. Unlike the worm, the millipede, though equally dead, I found that its bodilyrings still remained and lives on. For almost a month and over, I still noticed the remains of the millipede at our backyard while the worm was totally lost.

From this experiment, I concluded; the worm dies and leaves no remains for its memorial; the millipede dies and leaves on an evidence of its existence. My dad’s parable was adequately interpreted to me hence. Yes, what we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others live on forever.

The end of a matter is better than its beginning. How we die matters to the world. Our lives are found on purpose. Our daily efforts must draw us a step closer to that great purpose we carry.

Happy new year

Raphael Nyarkotey Obu,

..4Ounder40 Achiever & CNBC Africa AABLA Finalist 2018