Part I: The life as we lived it

The life as we lived it. I walked up the hill road for the first time since I got into this town. It wasn’t a new road; I usually ride a motorbike from work but today I walked. I walked up, then down to the school. There is a public and private school around the area. It was good seeing so many school kids after a long time. It was not that I never met them, I never saw them. Wrapped up in selfish life, I just choose to pass them as they walk back home to school. But today, I saw them. I saw how they acted on this Monday, I listened to whatever they shouted about, and I stopped here and there telling them to hurry back home.  

Doing this reminded me of two things; 

• Life as lived in and through those small bodies, what they saw, how they saw it 
• Dreams, visions and hope wrapped and stored in those little bodies waiting to be achieved, manifested and brought to life one day and 
• The people who are helping them on their way to becoming

Life as we lived it 

Life for many of us has turned out to be life, one that is lived on. With love and loss; pain and work; peace and war, we have lived through it all with hope and understanding that it will go on.  Going through good times and struggles, we either choose to believe or lose the belief itself. We either hold on to faith in God, the Almighty or with everything within us deny Him and choose to believe in what we see. 

We once were young; can you believe it? With everything we went through in our childhoods, here we are standing today. Proof that everything we have been through is a part of us, a drop of tears, pain, and hurts that one way or other strengthened our choices for change for the better and because we did not give up on LIFE, here we are. 

That kid’s life as they live it

4 pm was the time we left school for home during my primary year’s days with the exam classes, classes 4, 6 and 7 (std 4, 6, 7) finish classes at 6 pm. If you were in an exam class, you could only think of getting home after classes because you had an early day in the morrow as you should be at school by 6;30 to 7 am clean and neat. So yes, you could only think of walking as fast as you could (public schools).  

For non-exam classes, you could waste as much time as you could on the road, playing with friends as you walk back home. And with most kids having busy parents, and working away from home, it really didn’t matter. Only the wise, fearful kids could up from school to home or extra studies time (tuition) or those in churches for church classes if they were at the right ages. 

In those busy years of schooling, with some of us in schools where discipline meant fear and fear was an actual trembling. It is funny now thinking of all of it. But the trauma and the mental pressure during primary school years were really but now looking back you learn something. But as Maya Angelou said, looking back forgivingly.  

Questions to ask yourself in this lived life

It was in those years we were taught what we could or could not do and along the way, we were molded into people with dreams, thoughts and hopes. These thoughts and hopes were likely molded positively or negatively making us either love what we were seeing or not. From then, our thoughts beliefs and actions molded who we are today. 

Looking at those school kids reminded me of how young we once were. It reminded me of dreams and thoughts if I had any at all then, and it reminded me of how words could build or destroy us and the traumas we walk carrying to this age.  

Are we free of everything we experienced while we were young? 
The people that surrounded us then, did they surround us with love and positive impact?  
Are the people surrounding our kids right now a good influence on their 20-year-old self? 
How important is it for a parent or guardians’ presence in shaping the kid’s life? 
Are our kids the only responsibility we have? 
In communities where life is not my kid, not my problem, does everything you are busy with, really matters as a parent? 
Does it help to believe? 
How important is it holding on to hope and faith that, all is well? 
Is God really to you? 
Is God who He says to you? 
Can you trust in what He entrusted in your care? 
How important are your prayers? 
Ever thought of how impacting your words are? 
How can you show, display and love your kids in a busy and fast-moving world? 
Have you forgiven and let go of whatever held you, as a kid? 

So many questions but…

We love children. We have children. But are we committed enough to mold and help them become who they are brought to become? 
How limiting are we to our kids because of the experiences we have? 
Life is life. A day is just a series of sustained breaths we take and everything we do in it is because we live. 

What can be done today? 

There is so much we can talk about how we have experienced in the young and early years of our lives. And there can be so much fear of how we can have kids who can just be kids in today’s world. Also, we can wonder so much about how our lives turned out to be how they are. But there is good news for there is hope. There is hope that it is not just our responsibility to live but to help others know it is worth living. 

It is not because life is perfect or we have everything we can ask for or ask for, but because we all pray and play a part in impacting others. And, it is our responsibility how we choose to do so.  As much as life is lived well in us, it is important for us as parents to understand and seek a better way to raise those little people. And as the Proverbs says, Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Of course, we can not know everything. But with the help of God, church and community, we can shape those dreams and visions to become.