ON A number of occasions, a friend in the USA has cautioned me not to be too harsh on myself.
His observations were based on the self-deprecation that accompanied my status postings on Facebook.
I would not deny it. But in my younger days, I thought about myself as having a super intellect, if you would allow me that aggrandizement.
It was after college, long after the grind of work started to demand more from me that I realized how I wasted my college days, by taking things and my classes lightly.
I think it was about three decades ago when even the act of waking up in the morning was too hard to do. In those days I was slapped with a number of graft and corruption cases – purely harassment acts – when I returned to the habit of smoking along with the sipping of several cups of sweetened coffee during the day – a lethal combination.
I quit smoking again, some three years ago, when breathing became difficult in the morning from “smoker’s cough.”
But it was too late. A month or two later, I had a mild stroke and the drinking of super-sweet coffee became a form of addiction for me until today.
I return to the recent past of this life, not for any other reason, but to draw out a lesson or two from serving in government.
I am inspired to do this, noting that a friend who recently died in the line of duty may have unknowingly aggravated his kidney condition with alcohol consumption at a time when he was under pressure by his superiors.
During the time when I was also under pressure, I sought comfort and escape from time and the work by consuming coffee and smoking 1-2 Marlboro sticks in a row.
It was not as if I consume more than two packs of Marlboro in a day already when I resumed smoking.
In time, you think that smoking can relieve you of stress and pressure. Every time you encounter stress, you start feeling the need to smoke and drink coffee, until it becomes a favored habit.
Soon you will be champing at the bit for the comfort and relaxation that the practice of smoking and drinking sweet coffee generates, out of work, or before and after any activity. With nail-biting anticipation, you even interrupt any on-going meeting or activity just to smoke and sip your beverage.
You know that smoking is bad, but you smoke anyway. The habit has one thing in common with other addictive pursuits that prey upon the human tendency to move away from pain towards comfort. The paradox, after reading a number of addiction cases, is that so much comfort brings men and women to so much pain, if not their deaths.
In my experience, it is like brewed coffee being boiled in a kettle, it heats up and simmers slowly and steadily, and then the water spouts up like geyser to the top, spilling water and coffee into the fire.
Poison works like that. It primes and predigests you until your defenses and immune systems yield to the predator that soon eats you nice and easy - death comes without resistance from without or within.
What pleasures lure you into a comfort camp, and escaping from the trials of life? Be careful that they would not make you an accomplice in your internment and captivity of an easy, entertaining and comfortable path to early death.
I should say therefore that there are no quick fixes in life.
Any meaningful accomplishment, success, and fulfillment in life go into a grinding process.
I did not see it coming, but that is how it was with me. Looking back, coping with the difficulties I went through, by smoking and drinking coffee, sauntering during weekends, being President of the agency’s employees association, pursuing mercy projects and related undertakings, and journaling and reading books helped me survived, except smoking.
Smoking and consuming too much sweetened coffee aggravated my diabetic condition that may have led to my stroke.
Reading books improved my writing (and I am amazed how I won a number of national journalism awards in my most difficult times), sauntering made me observant of my environment, and helping the needy helped me understand the human condition, a simple path to get a whole lot better – a process too to become a good friend to myself. That should be a priority, a first, over anything if you must live a meaningful existence.