SAVOR EVERY MOMENT!

I remembered the look of disgust on my mum and elder sister's face when they got home one day and saw my fingers. I mean I thought they looked pretty but errrmmm, apparently not. I had gone to look for my mum's nail polish only to realize she had probably hidden them from her very vain younger daughter (yours truly). Undeterred I found a correcting fluid (Tipex) and painted my finger and toenails white. Please don't judge me...I felt super cool like that 😚. 

Maybe it was growing up among adults and siblings who were way older than I was or just the fact that I hated being my age because something about the future seemed more appealing than the present, I could not wait to get there! I wanted to be grown already!

Oh, how I longed to wear those six-inch stiletto heels I saw women wear in the magazines. I could picture the way and manner I was going to carry my below-the-butt weaves. I wanted to start driving at thirteen. There was an insatiable hunger in me to get as far away from home as possible so I could gain "my independence" as I went to College. (By the way, there is no such thing as independence: it is overrated and even anti-nature- gist for another day). 

The bottom line is,  I could not wait to get out of one stage in life to the next. Was it such a bad thing? Maybe not. Looking at life in retrospect, I just wish I enjoyed every stage, like making the best use of every moment, because guess what? The next stage was bound to come, whether I longed for it or not. Right now, I will literally trade my left pinky toe to be driven by someone else. I have fixed and painted my nails with real polish so much so that I am now on sabbatical. I wore those very long braids until I decided the pain of making and maintaining them was more than I bargained for. Right now,  I love them super short 😅😅, plus the heat in Nigeria gives me very few options.

Interestingly, this is the same attitude we take in relationships and marriages. We can't wait to be in relationships, we can't wait to get married, have kids, build houses, own cars, then what next exactly? Some people can't even wait to die (no jokes). Word for today, stop and savor the moment! If you are single, I advise you to flex that "singlehood" until you exhaust the single in singlehood. Those who are dating, kindly enjoy what you two have and stop putting yourself and your significant other under so much pressure to "move to the next stage" (except of course you see "the signs" - next topic of discussion). Please, you are neither a wife nor a husband until you are one, so stop acting like one. In the meantime,  enjoy what you both share and stop trying to fast-track the process by doing those extra chores with the intention of manipulating the other to "see" you. Trust me, it only complicates the present. You have a whole lifetime in marriage to do those chores until you get fed up (ask me about it later). 

The one time in life I decided to relish the moment, is one I have not regretted to date. After we got married, we decided to wait for a year before having kids. By the way, that is one of the most difficult decisions any married couple in Naija can make. The pressure was enormous, you have no idea. We just wanted to be a married couple first and enjoy the freedom of just being by ourselves. We knew that having kids was a game-changer on another whole level entirely - one that could not be reversed. So the decision to wait was the best thing that happened to us, and we are forever grateful for it.

What we know as life does not just happen, we make it happen. Every stage in life presents an opportunity to make a decision that will affect the next stage of life. In other words, tomorrow is built on the choices of today. Whether you long for tomorrow or not, it is bound to come, but whether you enjoy tomorrow is totally up to you, and depends a lot on how you savor today. The worst way to spend today is to be anxious about tomorrow because sometimes, tomorrow never comes. Live today to the fullest so that if tomorrow never comes, at least you have the fun of your life today. So the word for you today is this - make every moment count, have no regrets.

Remember, the best things in life are not things, they are moments - memories.

I celebrate you!

Cheers!

Adindu Chiagoziem