17

In the last 2 years, no thanks to my small body frame, I have often been asked what my age is. My answer has always been a wholesome "17 years". Most of the times, this would spark laughter and disbelief on the face of my enquirer. This has become a cliché of mine, injecting mirth to frank conversations, my receding hairline and sometimes the length of my undergraduate training doing me no favours at the end.


For those who stretch the questioning far enough as well as for those who I feel obliged to tell more about myself and my ways I go on shed more light on my professed age:

Much of the life I live now was either dreamt of or the foundation of the dreams I now have was laid when I was 17. It was the age at which I really concretized my thoughts into building the adult life that nature and nurture had moulded me into; much without pre-mediation. I also determined at that age that my next major outlook at the course of my life would be at age 35. And as that next milestone approaches, I dare say that I have reached most of the fundamental desires I hoped to reach by that age. Quite frankly, not all my desired goals have been realized, I am still on the path to some while I have had near misses with others. Yet, there are some desires that I have had to either modify or erase completely.

Life is dynamic and I learnt early that if one takes too many things as matters of life and death, one would die many times. In other words, I have tried to avoid the extreme in some issues of life so as to gain happiness. My attitude has grown to be that of positivity and I feel a churn in my guts every time I am able to sense resourcefulness out there. It's been a progressive path and my faith in God has been pivotal to all of it.

So if I am living the life anchored from when I was 17 why should I not answer to being 17 years? I have often wished I could live that year of my life again, although figuratively, it remains my age until I am 35.