Journey Through the Seasons of Personal Blossoming

If there's anything I have missed the most in this conversation space is having guests over and we are having truly soulful conversations over snacks , a cup of coffee , a cup of coffee , a cup of tea , and we're just going at it and sharing and sharing stories that could help you , me and everybody out there .

And oh , I promise you that is coming back very soon and , of course , ola is always in the house to share some thoughts with us , but not today . Today is a solo conversation and this solo conversation is an attempt to invite you to a personal reflection of some sort , with a conversation starter on time .

But before I get into this solo coffee gist yes , I have a cup of coffee in front of me A quick birthday shout out to one of Mindfully , with Tumishe's Day One supporters , mr Kudusi Shola Igbaudu Oduko , and I pray that all that you desire alright will come to pass and this new year will burst new opportunities for you and all the prayers that you set for

yourself yesterday . I say amen to them . Now to the gist of today time . I , uluwatu Mishi , am chronologically challenged . I'm slow to learn , slow to understand , slow to catch up . But the truth is I do not remember if this ever bothered me or bothers me .

I'm your proverbial late bloomer and I have to say that I'm very proud to embrace it with my full chest .

So when something is trending even before the term trend became very ubiquitous and you know everybody now uses them I am totally aloof , almost al , and not because it doesn't interest me , but because , at the back of my mind , the lessons that need to be learned , they are lost in the euphoria of the trending phase .

So I almost always go back to a trend after it has fizzled to understand why . So much so an old friend used to call me internet explorer . I think the reason for this is very clear to me at least . Might not be clear to anyone , but it's clear to me , and it's the question or questions I filter my life by .

Because I say questions , because every season throws up something that makes me want to stop and ask . At the risk of sounding very dismissive , I am not one to take life too seriously . Yet I believe life should be lived seriously and with some fun .

Don't try to make sense of that statement , because sometimes I am still trying to unpack that side of me and I am 45 . Maybe my sense of slowness is my response to all the rushing . They that's my parents tried to rush me and wait .

I am not trying to start a parenting debate because , besides religion and politics , the parenting debate oscillates between being polarized and being divisive . Yet only the child being raised can truly give feedback on how , whatever style of parenting you're using , is serving them or not serving them .

On season 3 , episode 10 , ifeoluwa Yanuura and I tried to explore parenting styles in the episode Fostering Growth and grace in the garden of diverse upbringing , and even that one hour conversation it was just a scratch . Oh , I digress . So back to me . Why do I think I am chronologically challenged and why do I think my parents enabled me ?

Very simple before I was two , I was in kindergarten , what is now called kindergarten my time . Well , it was colloquially called jealousy , me and the other . I had three different birth dates and birth certificates until I , after I graduated from secondary school , I resorted this was a personal decision to my original birth certificate .

Um , my parents must have thought I was a truly smart kid . I know I wasn't , because I didn't just love school and we're just keeping up with or they were just keeping up with the trend of the time . As long as the child could talk and was interactive , that child was supposed to be in school .

Perhaps it was just a way for my parents , especially my mother , to get a breather and have time for herself . Well , I can't truly fault them , because a choice to raise a child is a choice to die to self and not many people grasp that concept . I'll say it again a choice to raise a child is a choice to die to self .

So maybe my response to being rushed all through my pre-tings to late-tings was to not just care . Mind you , not one of my parents or people in authority in my life asked me for once what I wanted to do with my life . So I was just going to school and there was no clear reason I was going to school . Nobody asked me what I wanted to do .

Nobody asked me what was my hobby or my favorite hobby . I was just being pushed to school and that was really done fast . I was being rushed to get through , especially secondary school , fast . My question was what's the rush ?

Looking back now , I now know that the four years after secondary school , before I got admission into the university and me dragging was me trying to slow myself down , or maybe it was just plain rebellion . I had no idea what I wanted to study , and my father wanted me to study law or international relations .

That was not going to happen Not me so I applied yes , I did . I applied to study what he wanted me to study and while waiting , I gained admission to get a diploma . In wait for it , local government studies studies yes , there's a course like that of Bafin Maolo University and it was going to take two years .

But 18 months into local government studies I gained admission to study English language studies . So , of course , I jettisoned the diploma . Yes , I did not finish . Again , my life's question was what's the rush ? I like to say that I love to face life with all the gusto I can master , but never , never before I understand it .

I am sure this frustrated my mother before I understand it . I am sure this frustrated my mother make that my parents and I am sure some of my friends do . If I do not understand the why , I probably will be very reticent . The other day , my husband said to me that he had learned not to tell me to do what he knows I want to do or I need to do so .

I turned to him and asked why . He said because if I even did , I wouldn't do it . I had come to understand . He said , and I quote , he had come to understand that my timing and his urgency were on two different planets . As funny as that sounds , it got me thinking .

Because it is true , your urgency and my timing is not going to change anything , apart from work-related stuff , because I like to be efficient . When I was employed , if it had to do with something that related to me that I had to do , I would drag . I'll do it , of course , but at my own pace , after I understand the why .

So don't come at me with how much is going to benefit me or what is going to happen or how this . Yeah , no , don't do that , I will literally shut down . Of course , there's a reason for this .

I did not grow up , as I have alluded earlier , with so much of positive reinforcement , so if anyone gave me any sort of nudging , my first response is why do you care ? And that's in my head , though I do not act it out . Oh well , maybe that's not true . Maybe the right phrase to capture my response is silent defiance .

And that says do you think I don't know . When people talk about trauma response , I wonder if we truly understand the depth , the width , the length of it . Sometimes something as mundane as an aroma could make you respond in ways that will shock even your evolved mind . So to me , time is just that . Or , as my son would say , time never stops .

It's we human that made a 24 hour , 12 hour clock to regulate ourselves , to meet up with time . He was 12 when he said this , but I think I'm tempted to agree with him . See , I was thrown into the circle of life and leaving too early , so I take to heart the adage that says do not ruin your life with another's time . So what exactly is the right time ?

Big question which clock are we truly running life by ? I wish I could tell you . I have an answer for that , but I'll tell you how I do it . What I know for sure is that I run a sort of concurrent kind of clock , the one that social conditioning makes us use .

That is the obvious one , you know and maybe it's not everybody that uses that , but you know what I'm trying to say and the second is my inner clock that is fed by my convictions and personal stories . Sometimes the results are spot on and at other times I surely miss the mark . But you know what ?

I'm almost always very okay with the results and sometimes consequences . I was watching the video of my book launch , living Mindfully the journey to being , the other day and one of my friends from way back in an interview said that she was not shocked . I was writing about living mindfully , she said , and I quote , though to me she would not agree to this .

I knew her to live in the present and to take on the moment . We met around 1990 , 2000 . So that should tell you how I define and relate with time . Now , due to my numerous stories of origin that span almost all spectrum of humanity , I taught myself early that the only thing that mattered were the things that I could see and relate with .

Now I learned that to worry or to be agitated about certain things was simply a waste of living time . This is not even connected with my faith . I just knew . I knew that , aside from my relationship with God , the Supreme being , the next most important relationship was and is with myself . Next most important relationship was and is with myself .

Now , the relationship with myself or yourself , if I'm inviting you into this conversation is twofold , is constantly evolving , with different phases that will come . Life is lived in the transitions .

Yeah , it is in the understanding of that relationship with yourself that you will be able to know , or should I say discern , those that you want as traveling mates on your journey through life .

So , as a journey through life that has become even more urgent in our present time , I want to invite you to ask yourself with which clock are you ruining your existence ? Is it a concurrent one , like mine , or you have never even thought about the amount of clocks that exist for us to navigate life through ? Let me give you some examples .

We have the parent clock , we have the peer clock , we have the religious clock , we have the status clock and the greatest of all and this one is used to knock us in the head almost all the time women we have the biological clock . So I invite you to explore your options . See to it yourself , run a kind of self-audit .

I will give a personal conversation starter , though , like I said earlier , what question do you use to filter life ? I had shared mine . What's the rush you use to filter life ? I had shared mine was the rush , remember ?

Mental health is a state of mental well-being that enables you to cope with the stresses of life , realize your abilities , learn well , work well and contribute to your community . That's basically what it means to have , or you know , a healthy mental state . Most importantly , though , love yourself , love your neighbor , love your country .

Above all of this love of your being , I am Uluwatu Mishi Oladakbukuku . Stay curious until next time , and do not forget to send a text link in the description . If you're inclined to . You can share your questions with me too , by sending a text , or , again , click the link in the show description . Thank you for listening . Until next time , stay curious .