Random Contemplations In October
Come Up Higher
Ambition requires a higher version of you. It needs you to come up higher. Come up higher to a place where you’re equipped for this current season of growth. Present day you can’t handle what’s in store but the version of you waiting to become, she was born for this.
Ambition requires hardwork. It requires you to step out of your comfort zone and truly lock in. It will be uncomfortable but if the results you’re seeking were easily achieved then everyone else would have fruits too. A lot of people dream. You could have a conversation with 5 people and they have big goals and aspirations. They want to excel at what they do. But not everyone can persevere through the discomfort. It’s almost as though you’ll pass through a fire that will threaten, but not burn you. It’s the straight and narrow path. Everyone wants big things but not everyone can achieve it. Because it requires work. It requires you to go through the process. It requires incredible mental strength and clarity.
Ambition has been teaching me that she’s that premium babe that’s hard to get. She’s pretty and everyone who sees her wants her. Unlike me, she’s patient- she’ll wait for you to get to her level before she agrees to be one with you. Once you set your eyes on her you wonder why no one has snatched her up yet; she looks comely and easy to snatch up. Until you make eye contact and you see how much work you need to put your back into to sit at her table. She’s laidback and she’s looking at you curiously whether you’ll make it on this journey to her. Because you see, many have tried and most have fallen off or turned back. Only few get to be her beau. Will you do the work that’s required to attaint the life that you desire? That’s the real question she personifies.
How do answered prayers manifest?
I spend a lot of time contemplating answered prayers for 2 reasons- 1)I’m religious- Christian; 2) My name translates to mean ‘’God answers prayers’ in English. For irreligious folks, I guess answered prayers might mean manifesting something you’ve desired or the universe bringing to fruition your heart desires. I believe that there is an omnipotent force at work (God) in our reality that essentially ensures that the (good) things we yearn for are granted onto us. But how does this happen? It’s difficult to explain the divine but I saw a clip from the movie Evan Almighty that drew me in.
In that clip, Morgan Freeman, who plays God, is speaking to the protagonist’s wife at a restaurant after she left her husband (he was acting crazy — long story). For context, she had initially prayed for her family to grow closer, so when ‘God’ asked her the final question, she looked intrigued:
If someone prays for patience, do you think God gives them patience?
Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient?
If they prayed for courage does God give them courage or does he give them opportunities to be courageous?
If someone prays for their family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings or does he give them opportunities to love each other?
Reflecting on my life’s experiences, I’m inclined to agree with Morgan Freeman that God does create the opportunity for the things we’ve prayed for to take form. This is why I deeply believe in discernment and preparation while waiting for something to materialize. Let’s say you are praying for healthy love, if you haven’t spent time learning about what love that’s healthy should look like and how a decent gentleman should court a woman, you might either not recognize one when you encounter him or you’ll jump at the next man that pays you mind (even if he’s nothing like what you prayed for). Or you are praying for a good job, without time spent preparing for that job, when the opportunity comes, you’ll miss out on it because you weren’t ready. I could continue to connect this to almost everything we desire and how answered prayers oftentimes comes in the form of opportunities. God isn’t going to magically put money in your hand, he’ll give you the opportunities to make money.
With this in mind, I’ve begun to really pay attention to the things around me. If I am waiting for something to happen, I evaluate every opportunity that comes my way whether it is in alignment with what I am waiting for or not. I prepare too. Because preparation has to meet opportunity for everything to become all you are yearning for.
Your Are Your Own Story
What I love about books is how the plot reveals that your days are really long and anything can happen in 24 hours. How you can see an author is able to build up this fictitious world in just 72 hours that’s spread across 200 pages. Yet somehow, you forget that it’s been mere 3 days of the characters living their very eventful lives.
When you really think about it, you realize how this isn’t too far from our own reality. You’ll realize how we live eventful lives that we sometimes overlook because it’s recurring. It becomes mundane; boring.
We fail to realize that if an author penned down one week out of a month of our lives, we too would have 200+ pages of solid book material.
What’s my point?
Revel in your life. That’s what I am calling you to do. It’s what I am calling self to do.
Savor your life’s experiences.
Be present. Fight for your joy even when life’s down moments seek to snatch it away from your hands. Hold on tightly to it.
Even when your life is boring, enjoy the mundane.
Swim languidly in the sea of monotony on those days. Smile at the monologue randomly happening in your head.
Allow yourself to dance free and wild to that song you love deeply in the privacy of your bedroom. Sing out loud in the shower.
See yourself when you look at the mirror. Memorize the dips, curves and valleys of your beautifully flawed body.
Why?
Because it will change. We change as people, that’s a given. Our bodies morph and become softer, loose as we age. You will never have this exact body again the older you become, the more of life that your body experiences.
And not even just our bodies- our interests and hobbies, our ambitions and desires, our morals and principles, our taste in men and friendships; all of it evolves over time.
And so if you are not paying attention, you will miss pivotal moments. You’ll miss the crescendos of the plot that is your life. You will wake up one day and when you look around, will not recognize the body that houses your soul being this plumb and full in a way that does not feel familiar to you.
You would have missed the moment when your best friend stopped trusting you and started to retreat, and all the other actions of distrust after that.
Neither will you have noticed your ambition stop growing because you stopped nurturing it.
All of these days are the pages of your life.
You are the book, the plot. You are your own story
And like a diligent writer, I urge you to pay attention to this life that you live.
Write the pages of your life (with God) intentionally.
