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THREE FASTEST WAYS TO NOWHERE


Life can been likened to a journey, with all of us being its passengers. Hence, as we daily live, we are making progress toward reaching our various destinations. Our destinations are largely determined by the routes we daily take, and the route we daily take largely reflect our choices and priorities.

Every journey has a predetermined destination, and every process of a journey is guided by established rules; adherence to these rules don’t only make the journey easy but meaningful, failure to do so will make the journey a torture.

Practically, I have seen, observed and experienced three express ways that if taken in the journey of life, can lead people nowhere fast. We all have plied these routes at one point in time of our lives, and sadly but certainly, some people are still speeding on these express ways only to arrive at nowhere. Hence the need for this piece.

Express Way Number #1: COMPARISON
This is one of the most traveled highways in life. We often find ourselves on this route in a very subtle or covert way, without us even knowing we are speeding on it. Young people are often susceptible to traveling this way. It is so easy for us to compare ourselves to others, what they have that we don’t have, what they have done that we haven’t, and who they are that we aren’t.

Comparison makes you live your life a copy, always longing and desiring to live someone else’ life.  Once you are travelling your life on this express way, there is always something someone has that you don’t have and it eats you from inside, there is always something someone has done that you haven’t and it gives you sleepless night. Nothing steals your peace and fulfilment in life as comparison, it keeps you on an endless mental circle of figuring similarities and differences that saps your creative energy yet adds no value to your life.

Jonathan McReynolds in one of his songs: “Comparison Kills” gave us some salient facts worthy of latching on. In a paraphrased form, he said comparison makes you chase what’s not meant to be chased, it makes you spend all night admiring pictures because they make life look perfect as they should but you don’t know the story behind them. He added that the grass was fine until comparison makes it look greener on the other side; hence with these constant pressures and heat come mirages – comparison subsequently kills.

Express Way Number #2: COMPETITION 
We live in a consumer-oriented world where possessions, material acquisitions and social status are the major parameters in defining personhood and not personality, character and influence in people’s lives. Therefore, a world as this is laced with constant competition and the desire to always be ahead of others in acquiring the latest technology, fashion and stuffs like that. We all can remember and relate how we were first instilled this competitive mentality while growing up in, hence the constant fight to be the first in the class; sadly, we end up growing with this distorted mindset of “me ahead”.

The Encarta Dictionaries defined competition as a process of trying to beat others: the process of trying to win or do better than others. Inferring from this definition, one can see that the large chunk of the attention and effort was given to beating others and not to developing oneself. In the journey of life, competition don’t only take your eyes off  what is essential to your own life but saps all that is meant to make you a better person and redirect it to the desire to beat others. Competition has wrecked lives and left them unfulfilled, this is because life is not meant to be lived alone and ahead of others but with and alongside others. Any attempt to compete should be against yourself, life has nothing to do with position or being ahead of others but everything to do with what you leave behind and inside people.

Express Way Number #3: COMPARTMENTALIZATION
Of all the fastest express ways that lead nowhere in life, this is the most covert, yet with overt consequences. It is so conspicuous how we compartmentalize our lives, ensuring religiously that one compartment don’t overlaps with or into another less we  experience chaos. Truth is, when you live a compartmentalized life, you live an expensive and cost intensive life. This is simply because every compartment requires its own kind of budget and maintenance. Nothing is as exhausting as living your life in compartments.
It was Dr. Myles Munroe of blessed memory who said compartmentalized lives are the opposite of lives lived in integrity. He posited that life of integrity is an integrated life, where your words, thoughts and action are aligning regardless of place and time, and none betraying the other. Sadly, in our generation we have religion/church life, social life, home life and other compartments in which we have so fragment our lives into. The more you fragment and compartmentalize your life, the more expensive and costly your life becomes and ultimately the more unproductive your life becomes. Compartmentalization takes you nowhere fast.

Avoid the triple Cs like a Pandemic

In your journey of life, set these three before you: Comparison, Competition and Compartmentalization. Not to travel them but as a constant reminder that they are fastest express ways to nowhere. Travelling these routes give you the feeling of irrelevance and dissatisfaction. Compare yourself with no one, be comfortable in your own skin and live your life to the fullest because you are the only one there is. Compete against no one but yourself, to outstrip your yesterday’s record, outsmart yesterday’s performance and push yourself towards becoming a better person. Work at integrating your life into an indivisible whole, and be the man of your word.
Run your race, slay in your lane, do your own thing, learn, love, grow and live life to the fullest.

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