Life has open its cards one by one. It takes great courage and perseverance to sail through the roughest of the tides on one’s determination to succeed.

The journey has just begun but they have been moments when you question your own capabilities. There are times that my instincts tells me to relax the hassle, after all, I shall be nothing but a mere dust in the eyes of the Maker. However, another powerful instincts tells me not to disappoint or fail the generation of my onlookers whose success will come from my actions or inactions.

Well! Another powerful-weaker instincts tells me that the Maker is the sole determiner of faith and thus, man must relax. In all these circumstances, I draw inspiration from the teachings of Socrates and Confucius - to me, they are my life philosophers par-excellence.

As a young lad who has been cleaning the shoes of elderly but wise men in society, running errands for them whenever necessary and holding or supporting a bowl of food for elderly men to eat. I’m not doing these because of financial assistance but to seek for the future wisdom that can’t be gotten with money.

There have been lots of places I tumbled yet stood right back up crying and limped through the journey where the wounds healed themselves with time. This is a mark of perseverance and an indication that life shall always prove to be challenging till we are call to the Maker.

Life has taught me that it isn’t those who always smile at you are your lovers, neither are those who always ask ‘how are you?’. But they are those for the sake of Allah who truly cry and pray for you in silence when you are going through challenges.

There is no doubt, I mean no doubt that the best gift my dad has given me is the habit to read. This is the reason why I’m never bored or lonely as I always have a book that I look forward to read.

The best gift my mom has given me is to be compassionate and always ‘keep a promise-to-a-promise’ without letting even the most precious metal to buy-off my commitment to a promise with the poor. This gift of my mom has never depart from me. It always comes to mind when assisting someone in dire need of something through me. Though I would admit I’m not even close to what she is, but I try everyday.

In this world full of less compassionate beings, there is definitely going to be euphoria over happiness, melancholy over sadness and happiness without true happiness. This is a true picture about this earth planet, a picture about me, about us, about our times on this land, our political and chieftaincy power bequeathed us and how we actually governed with sanity, fairness or impartiality to cementing our place hereafter.

This is a reminder to us about our struggles on this ‘fake’ earth, our continuous struggle for worldly artifacts whiles turning a total blind eye to the possibilities hereafter. This is about how the struggles for luxuries bonded us and morals divided us. Things that startled us and moments that can never be taken away from us. This is about our lives as strangers on this planet.

Whenever I remember about the final abode of man hereafter, then I feel different from everyone. The interpersonal struggle with figuring out who you are as a person and wanting to secure a good seat with the Maker hereafter while continuing to wrong others in silence, left me thinking about the televised bureaucracy of judgement and weighing of our sins against good deeds to determine our final everlasting faith.

Dear brethren, I leave you with this from my pot of childish wisdom that Our Sailor with his Captain, Crew and Mate has chosen never to be late - so you must not also be late in preparing a good place in heaven for yourself before you are called by our Maker.