CHAPTER 73
THE ROUTE TO BEING FOREVER YOUNG
I listened to a young lady sing“ Forever young, I wanna live forever young, do you wanna live forever, forever young” lyrics of popular pop star JayZ and Enrique’s “forever young” music collaboration. She was carried away in the rhythms that she could hardly hear what I was saying. I was touched as well that I felt maybe I could sing along.
It seems a big dream and every person’s best dream to be able to live forever. We wish we can take a step into forever land and still exist on this earth however we feell handicapped by the fact that this can only happen in dreamland.
Like JayZ, we find ourselves in that natural quest to remain young. As kids, we desired to grow very fast and become adults. At adulthood we desire to slow down and return to our youthful days. We tend to act in a manner as to make us return to how we used to be many years before now. A plethora of beauty products and scientific concoctions have being developed to help propel this dream. Surgeries are now possible to make one look younger but not necessarily younger. It seems a modern trend today for one to go under the knife in some hospital because he or she desires a younger look.
In spite of advances in technology, man has failed to add years to his days on earth. We’ve not had anyone living beyond one hundred and fifty years as yet as a result of these advances. We seem running in a round route returning to where we had begun. A new genre of diseases is hitting this generation. Cancer and other skin related disease are now the order increasingly shortening human lifespan.
But isn’t it possible for one to live forever young? There sure is a way. It’s an unpopular but sure way though. The reason is because it will require quite a lot of hard work and the ability for you to give up some of the things you consider too prescious.
We can live forever and young, only by the things we have done, our actions and how much lives we have being able to influence. It is certain everyone will die but not every one dies. Some die and never exist again, others will die and continue to live, not just in people remembering them but their effect and impact will still be felt many years after.
I picked my church hymnary to sing like I always do every Sunday in church and it dawned on me that writers of every song in the book, persons like Fanny Crosby, Mary Slessor, John Graham, etc, were all dead yet I and millions in my church who use the same hymnary were in some way reliving the lives of those persons. The same joy they felt when they sang their hymns was the same joy transferred to us as we sang. And their names often were written at a corner of the page even after over two hundred years of their death. I decided too that some day, I should be in the hands of the world long after I’m dead and gone and still be useful to generations unborn.
Steve Jobs the late founder of Apple Computers had this to say “the true test of a great man is in his death, how many more lives he will be able to touch long after he is gone.” Myles Munroe said before his death, “The worst tragedy isn’t death but living a life without purpose. I will try as much to give up all that I have so that I will live the world empty.” Sadly tragedy struck these two men but they remain a great inspiration to many today and will many years to come.
Abraham Lincoln is long gone but when you think determination and perseverance, you would easily find him there at your gate. This is because he has remained forever ageless by his giant strides achieved by his stern determination to achieve, a footprint that has being left in time’s concretes.
What are you waiting for? Living forever young may be impossible but there is some possibility and a whole lot of it. What will we remember about you after now when you live where you are currently? Just in case you close your eyes and never open it to this side, what do you want to be remembered about? Start doing it now and live forever.