People, Pain And Purpose! 

-Ocholi Okutepa, Esq. 

In this imperfect world, you will see things. Even things you didn’t see coming will come at you.

Some of us were born into conditions that didn’t enable success. Some of us trusted people flatly until some people showed us that the heart of man is indeed desperately and deceitfully wicked and should be cautiously trusted.

Some of us are still recovering from being duped. Others have given up, throwing in the towel.

Some of us haven’t been able to go past the fact that it is family who dealt us the greatest blows we have suffered in life. We struggle to imagine how they managed to be family and even more harmful than strangers.

Some of us are dealing with the conflict of loving those we had to walk away from, forgiving those who are not sorry for all the harm they did which they still don’t acknowledge and creating a life in spite of setbacks.

This picture is not just a pose. That was new year, January 2019. The year before had been my toughest ever. As I asked the photographer to take this particular shot, my pose became a re-enactment of my reality. As I gazed, thoughts flooded my mind.

What then do we do with tough times and betrayal?
How do we navigate these things since they are common?

Well, we need to learn. Some of them didn’t happen to us without our involvement. Our poor choices very often created disastrous results. We must learn to consciously review tough times that were created by our own making and make sure we don’t travel the path again.

Some have nothing to do with our choosing. For instance, you showed up in your family and boom, you inherited good, bad and ugly relationships. Your responsibility is to over time choose who is who and distinguish who should be trusted and who shouldn’t. This is not hating on anyone but categorising people by their fruits.

If you keep getting hurt by the same pattern or by the same person or people in the same way, you are an enabler of your own pain. There is always something we can do to what is doing us.

So sit back and ask yourself:
Is your loyalty to people, systems and patterns disloyal to your purpose and destiny?

Reflections!