He sat outside listening to the trees. He observed the wind gently move the trees. As this unfolded, he sat on the outside bench. His mind was being ravished by cortisol. The caffeine he was drinking was only pumping more adrenaline into his already stressed body. His mind was pondering on his choices, wondering whether he was forcing himself to accept the consequences of his actions or to regret them. After all, he quit his job for the tiniest of reasons. So tiny the reason that an hour after the Teams meeting, the issue was resolved. As heavy as his mind was, the wind seemed to chip away the heaviness bit by bit.
He continued to ponder about his resignation. The life he desires, he knows that he’ll never attain with employment. On that front, he has no regrets over his decision. As much as he loved his job and enjoyed every single ounce of it, at the end of the day, his heart yearned for something outside the confinements of a classroom. There are no regrets he thought to himself.
But there are consequences. One of them being that the income that he had relied on for the past odd 5 years had come to a stop. He never got to enjoy the large payments that his friends mentioned when they left their occupations. Oh no, what he got were the scraps that multi-millionaires left for him. Like the racist rich boss who waltzs about his fat stomach and demands praise for giving his slaves a bone to lick after he had finished the meal. If it were not for the laws of the country, those multi-millionaires would have even kept the bones for themselves.
From the gate it was tough but he managed. He pulled through and was blessed with the “beginner’s luck” phenomenon. Like the beginning of a new day, the world is awakened by a warm and beautiful sunrise. However, as the day continues, the sun might hide behind clouds. Those clouds can further swell up and shower the world with rain. So it is after making a decision. At first, the universe and everything in it will reward you with blessings. The universe and everything will congratulate you on your decision and provide a preview of the pleasures that await you. But only that, a preview.
Shortly after that, the preview ends and the movie begins. The actual ending he realises will require effort and work. Like most individuals in today’s world, his mind has been skewed by social media. He too has been affected by the short attention span and the impatience of working for success. Social media has rewired his mind to believe that success is as quick as weight transformation that happens in a 60-second video.
The reality of this misconception occurred to him when he was burning up the fireplace for his parents. You see, in his mind, he knew that he would light up the fireplace and quickly chop the big log outside. In his mind, he envisioned all this happening in less than 30 minutes. So frantically he ran all over the yard collecting the twigs to begin the fire. Success as the fire quickly caught fire. Beginner’s luck. With the same pace, he ran outside to quickly chop the dead log. The moment he tried to chop the log, he quickly realised that there was no way he’d do it in 5 minutes, let alone 30 minutes. He failed as the saw did not even reach a third of the log in said 30 minutes. He gave up and collected the regular wood that was in storage.
You see, as he sat outside, he could hear the wind telling him that that was God telling him that things take time. That was God telling him to forget the future but live in the present. For in the present, he would have realised that chopping down dead log was not going to take 30 minutes. In fact, there was no time to tell when he’d actually be done chopping the log. But within chopping the wood, he would have connected with the log and the log would have gladly shared a bit of itself with him.
As the wind blew gently on his face, he could hear the wind tell him and remind him that God was alive. That there is no regret in the decision taken. That the cortisol pumping in his veins is the needed evil to revitalise his soul. Sometimes you need the bad to get the good. We need to burn dead grass to see new grass. It is the death of a tree that gives us wood and coal to warm our hearts and bodies. Job had to go through the brutal test of torture to realise even greater riches than he had.
Indeed, there are many things about the world that we’ll never understand. And it is not our prerogative to do so. However, like the birds who just live, the same hand that feeds them is the same hand that feeds us.
He realised that as much as he felt lost and confused about the direction of his life, he knew that he served a living God. This God he continues to hear in the whistles of the wind and in the mundane duties like chopping wood.
At this point, the wind blew a gentle yet stern whisper that it was leaving. And with that, with the cortisol still drowning his mind, his soul threw a lifeline.
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