By The Riverside...

So I decided to find a cool spot outside the beautiful Holy Trinity Spa scenery where I could read and reflect on my life. I had found my way to a very quiet location in the vicinity, and was sitting on a chair on a concrete extension into the Volta Lake. My small head was deeply buried in Louis L’Amour’s Last Of The Breed, and was oblivious of the goings on around me. After about 10 minutes of reading and just when I was about flipping a page, I heard what seemed to be laughter not far from where I was. I looked up and saw what I had only been seeing on television screens - 7 boys ranging between the ages of 9 and 12 happily taking a swim in the river full of algae, with some swimming butt-naked.

I immediately took out my phone and began to capture some ‘Kodak moments’. When they realized what I was doing, I thought they were going to run out of the river to avoid being captured. But they decided to give me acrobatic poses in the river. I was laughing the whole time with their beautiful river poses whiles thinking about their folly and lack of knowledge about the dangers of their actions – skin diseases etc…

I put my phone away and got back to my reading session after capturing several images. But I stopped reading after about a minute or so and looked up again. There seemed to be something about them I couldn’t place a finger on when I was taking shots with my phone, but realized when I looked again. It was their joy, their seeming lack of care neither about their naked images being captured on a phone nor about a thing in this world. And I found that very interesting.

As I watched them, I realized how  measured most adults are with their actions or lack of it, paying too much attention to seemingly frivolous things – vanities of this world, the Bible put it. And whiles busily doing that, miss out on a whole lot of fun life provides. We are too busy trying to make more money than our family can spend in a lifetime, without taking some time to explore the fun out there. There are very beautiful and relaxing sceneries all over the country. Take some time off your very busy schedule and explore them with your family or alone, like I did. It does wonders, trust me.  

Then a second thought came rushing to the mind without me fully developing the first, and it was their ability to take risks without even knowing it. Clearly, they were ignorant about the dangers of what they were doing. But does it matter if they knew the danger involved? It was still a risk they would have taken even if they knew, judging from the look on their faces which seemed to say something like “we simply don’t care”! But is it not said that not taking a risk in life is a risk in itself?

How many of us are able to take risks, whilst damning the associated consequences in the process? Usually, don’t most of us freeze in our tracks when we learn of the risks involved in some plan we have decided on implementing? We quickly shelve them for a more opportune time. But truth is, there’s no such time as an opportune one, so you had better carried out that plan already. Go ahead, propose to that sweet lady who makes your heart miss a bit or two, but so scared to lay bare your thoughts to for fear of being answered with a long hiss from equally long pouted lips. Employers, take a gamble on that fresh graduate who has little or no experience under his belt by hiring him. The result might just blow your mind away…or maybe not! But take it anyway. Because life is too short to live with regrets, I have been reliably told.

And just when another thought was about rushing in to replace this, the weather quickly changed to a very cloudy one with that accompanying whistling wind. Then the kids run out of the water, and then lightening struck followed by the roaring thunder. And just as I was about running for cover, I saw a dug-out canoe (not the one captured in the image above) docked nearby which had an inscription which succinctly captured my thoughts for this piece…“Do Something Before You Die!”