Sometimes I wonder what life really is. We are born, then we grow up. We learn rules and try to make sense of the world. We work, struggle, fail, laugh, and cry, love, and lose. Then in the end….. we die. Just like that. So what’s the point? That thought has followed me for long now. And yesterday, I was reminded again that life really is unfair, confusing and deep. It goes on like clockwork.
My younger sister and I both attend the same university, but I’m currently at home for my internship while she’s still in school. She called me yesterday with news that a girl who lives in our hostel, the school hostel, had given birth. The girl had been pregnant throughout the semester, she wasn’t exactly my friend but I do see her around. She carried her pregnancy with strength. So, my sister told me she had gone into labour right there in the hostel, no hospital, just her roommates and the hostel warders, holding and assisting her.
My sister said she was strong and I couldn’t help but agree, bringing life into this world is no small thing but doing it without family, in a student hostel, surrounded by peers, takes a kind of courage some can’t even comprehend. She gave life to a child.
But then few hours later, life should it other face.
In the afternoon, videos started circulating online. The bridge not too far from where I work had become the site of a gruesome accident. A heavy-duty truck carrying large iron rods had broken down on the bridge and a mechanic was under the truck fixing it. Another Julius Berger truck, moving at full speed was coming up the bridge, completely unaware that a broken-down truck was ahead. It rammed into the parked truck.
The mechanic who had just gone under the truck moments earlier was crushed, just like that. The truck’s tire rolled over his stomach killing him instantly, but that wasn’t even the end, the impact caused the large rods on the truck to fall off. They came down crashing several tricycles and innocent people around. People died. I just sat there, staring at the video, wondering all it all meant.
That man, the mechanic, maybe he just left home that morning to hustle, maybe he told his wife he’d be back in the evening, maybe he had children waiting for him at home, expecting bread or rice for dinner, maybe he just wanted to fix that truck, collect his pay and go back home to his family. But now, he never will. People brought life into the world that morning and people lost their lives that day also, just like that, no warning, no fairness. How is that one day can hold so much life and so much death?
This week’s prompt, the essence of life, is something I think about often, because I still haven’t found answers for it. Every day we wake up, we enter a world that seems to spin without logic. People are born, people die, some live purpose, others don’t, some give their all, only to be insulted by bosses who don’t know the weight of just showing up, others hustle from morning till night only to remain in one spot, and yet we wake up and still do it. Why? Why do we chase purpose if the end is always death? Why do we hustle if it barely pays off? Why do we try when failure appears to be more common than success? Why do we let ourselves dream, only to sometimes wake up to disappointment? And yet….. we keep going.
It could be that it’s because of the fear of what would happen if we don’t at least try, it could also be the tiny thread of hope that the next attempt would be a success or that tiny voice that says “There has to be more than this”. We often say “the hustle is real” but what about how exhausting it is, how mentally draining it is to work hard and gain nothing, or how scary it is to admit you don’t have a purpose but the hustle continues. For many of us, it has to, for survival and for the people believing in us, siblings looking up to us.
Honestly, some days I don’t even feel motivated at all. I just show up because not showing up is worse. But other days, I think of my family, my mom, my siblings, I think of how I want to be able to say “I made it”. I don’t really know what the essence of life is but I think it’s somewhere in the moments where we don’t give up, in the days we cry but still show up.
So yes, the hustle continues, regardless of the pain, regardless of the confusion and regardless of whether or not anyone claps, we keep going, we hustle and we grow
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