A Tomorrow Not Promised – Is Life Overrated?

One moment you have it; the next, you lose it – no prior notice, no time for preparation, no time for goodbyes; it’s all gone in a flash. We all might know this eerie feeling and experience but rarely do we listen to the warnings and the lessons to be learned.

On January 17, 2020, I was faced with a situation that inspired this piece. It was around 3:30 in the morning and I was at sleep when I felt someone tapping me to wake up. It was my mom. She looked calm but wore a faint smile. My eyes were half-closed as the light had been turned on. She told me my uncle’s house had caught on fire. I didn’t know how to respond as I was tired, sleepy and confounded by the news. She asked me to dress up so we could leave. I insensitively suggested that the damage had already been done and that we should wait for the morning before going. She then, while being still very calm, told me that some of my cousins had left in the fire. I was dumbfounded but immediately woke up, dressed and we left the house.

When we arrived at the scene in Congo Town around 4:34 AM, the house was still burning. The cause of the fire was still unknown and my uncle was talking out of his head. We were then informed that we had lost four persons in the fire. My uncle repeatedly mentioned these words, “Everything I have worked for, I invested them in my children and the devil has taken everything tonight but I’ll survive it.” Two of the victims (girls) had gotten their college degrees in the space of a year. Then my uncle went on to say “…Why didn’t the house just burn without my children? If I had known they hadn’t escaped the fire, I wouldn’t have gotten on that ladder to come out. Now, I have to live without them for the rest of my life.” These words broke me.

Now, I haven’t written this piece to garner sympathy or condolence messages from you, just to be clear. I wrote this to rather inspire you. The truth is, life is overrated. When you have something this “precious” and you can’t determine whether you’ll have it the next second, minute or hour, you question the value of it. Imagine someone trying to sell you a jewel for a very high price but at the same time admitting that the jewel can vanish anytime and would never be seen again. Would you pay that high price? I think life is similar to that jewel. Had my uncle known that he wouldn’t see his kids after that night, he definitely would have spent more time with them. He would have shown them more love, care, and attention.

Unlike my uncle’s kids, you are still here. You too have one way or the other lost people you loved and cared for. But you still have many more around you. You have that father or mother of yours you won’t forgive; that family member’s call you won’t pick or return because you are “too busy”; that idea that you want to actualize but you keep procrastinating; that person you have feelings for but, for fear of being rejected, you won’t make the move, thereby robbing yourself of that chance you might have to make great memories; that friend you keep turning down to meet; that loved one you wont make time for. All the people you take for granted. 

It’s funny how we plan in our minds to show love to people at some point like we have somehow seen our death certificates somewhere and therefore we are assured that we still have a lot of time to accomplish everything we plan. We underestimate what we do with our lives and overestimate the mere fact that we are breathing, not realizing a good life is measured by the quality and not how long it was. The choice is yours, you can either keep pushing everything for a time that isn’t guaranteed or you can act now before the inevitable happens and remember like Muhammad Ali once said: “Live every day as if it were your last because someday you’re going to be right.”

Authored by Jay Hoff

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