YOUNG WRITER: “…Chapter 18…”

06 Sep, 2015 - 00:09 0 Views
YOUNG WRITER: “…Chapter 18…”

The Sunday Mail

Phoebe Nyashanu

YOU don’t open the book and neither do you close, because you don’t create your own life, neither do you take it. But with you very first breath, that moment that you read the first few lines, the pace has been set, the stage arranged and the curtains drawn for all to see. One thing leads to another and before you know it, you’re in it for life, because it really IS my life.

Chapter one begins and what you don’t see, hear or feel, you really don’t know. You’re given as a gift to the world, in one state or the other. In so many different shapes, sizes and forms. Uniquely beautiful, intricately mysterious. No one knows how you’ll end up, after all, you’re just a baby. Even though everything is in place, nothing has really been fully utilised. They all say it’s delicate and fragile, so like a rare flower that has just been discovered, you are taken care of with the greatest caution. You know not what lies around you because the scale of your worries is still just above the big zero. What you want, you may not be able to say, but really all you want is all you get, nothing more, nothing less. In this chapter excitement still rings loud and clear, you are the fascination of your parents, the joy of your family and the silent but dominant character of your book. One you have not begun to write yourself, but one where your presence is greatly felt.

As the pages silently add more to the past and still leave more to the imagination of the future, so your life progresses. You are taught how to read and write, so you may be able to read the works of the greatest legends and be able to write and create one story of your own that is all the more captivating, exciting and most definitely successful. As much as it may be too early for that, slowly but surely, you learn to create and control your own events, to decide what and what not to do as you have been taught to do by the more established creators of destinies. The status quo remains and so the established order remains unchanged, everything is as it should be, in perfect harmony.

However, the age of perfectionism begins to fade as your teenage years arise with the dawn of your bright sun. You begin to learn to create your own ideas and with your pen, mightier than a sword, you can actually start to write them down creating a script of your own. Controlled by you and you alone, just the way you want it. Your lust for independence begins to conflict with the rules of society, the norms you have been taught to see and appreciate are the very ones you decide to abandon for a mind of your own and rules and laws of your liking. The last thing you want is another generational wave of stereotypes and commoners in the life that you’re making to influence you to be the same as they are. You want to be your own person, but blank pages are left out only to be filled when dreams created there are spurned to reality, and so we move on.

Chapter 14 emerges and fades, slowly giving way to chapter 15, and like that it goes. The best years of your life are recorded and become what will be the best chapters of the book. The peak of the experience, climax of the story and epitome of ultimate enjoyment. Every new day presents a new opportunity to flip the page and make it all the more enticing. Unfortunately, mistakes made cannot be erased, only forgotten, the beginning cannot be changed but the ending can still be recreated to make it of ultimate perfection. As it dawns on you just how many memories you have made, friends that have featured in previous chapters only never to reappear, promises made so long ago only to remain unfulfilled and thus broken, you think you’ve come long way, but you also realise how much still lies ahead.

As you open chapter 18 of the story of your life, your eyes are opened. You realise that individuality makes people blind to the truth, your words as an unknown are words guided by the truth of the world.

Your world is brought to life but so are the responsibilities that await the next cumbersome chapters that require your every bit of energy.

The mountains you will need to climb are the pages you will have to fill as you attempt time and time again to complete your success story.

Shortcuts will be so tempting, but you may or may not realise that they are just a short route to destruction. Hard work will print and stamp your pages with the results so duly deserved. Your book has not been completed, in fact it has not even begun. After all, life begins at 40, right?

As much as we may want the prefect book of life with the overemphasised happy ending, we need to realise that the moment we hold the power to create our own events, nothing can stop us from writing down the events and dictating what we want our lives to be recorded as.

Do you want to be the only author of a book about you? Or do you want to be the one person who everyone wishes to write about in their own lifetimes?

Students, YOU CAN SEND YOUR ARTICLES THROUGH E-MAIL, FACEBOOK, WHATSAPP or TEXT Just app Charles Mushinga on 0772936678 or send your articles, pictures, poetry, art . . . to Charles Mushinga at [email protected] or [email protected] or follow Charles Mushinga on Facebook or @charlesmushinga on Twitter. You can also post articles to The Sunday Mail Bridge, PO Box 396, Harare or call 0772936678.

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