I twist and turn and start at intervals. My sleep is lost between consciousness and unconsciousness and I slip into a constantly cut conversation with this sage. His round face effuses joy; he needs no laughter to display the dimple centered on his chin. On his moderately wide nose sits a thick-lens spectacle and a small size creamy, round cap on his head shows speck of gray hair. It is a dream and then the next moment, I am awake.
“Oh! No, wait. I do know you, sir, or at least I think I do,” these are my words to the patriarch who asks me to do as he does – just smile.
“Smile,” I ask. “Smile for what? I am jobless and it’s over a year. It’s hard.”
“Yes, still smile. You are jobless not lifeless.”
“I am lifeless because I can’t live a good, comfortable life. I merely exist!”
“Mere existence is the sleeping bed of Courage. You lost your job doesn’t make you a loser.”
“What are you — no wait, wait, waiiii…,” the “wait” trails off as I startle back into life again being aroused by the black squirrel cracking a nut at the base of my window.
Sweats cling across my forehead. My heart pounds heavily as if in sack-race. Who is this patriarch, I begin to wonder, invading my sleep with two fingers folded into V-shape – “V” for victory? An Angel, maybe? The weather is cool. Unlike me, trees sleep soundly and peace is still. The softly blowing air turns my calico curtain into butterfly wings and I am slipping off, for the fourth time, into my dream land.
“I have nothing left; I am a loser.”
“You’re still breathing, means you still have something.”
“Ok, so what can a man possibly do with a jobless life, any idea?”
“Use your ingenuity.”
“?”
“It is locked up in you. All you need do is look deeper. I learnt this when I was much younger, probably at your age – twenty-five. Being once poor, I was led to believe life was over. But when I came upon thirty, it was then I realized most of the secrets of life and I formulated my unfaltering principle of life. Here is goes: ‘Behind the terrible mask of misfortune, lies the soothing countenance of prosperity. So, tear the mask!’”
I am embracing this patriarch when he dissipates into mist and returning back into life I found myself cuddling my pillow, my face creasing into a delicate smile. What a great honor. I had been talking with a great philosopher and political thinker of my time- the late Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo, Awo for short. My countenance momentarily lifting, I feel rekindled and hopefully fresh again.
There is every assurance that life isn’t over yet. Just because I lost my job doesn’t mean I am a loser. This unemployed situation will change. I will change it using all the forces of my brain and all the power of my being like the patriarch in my dream.
Here is a requiem for the unemployed like me:
Let the rain of succor wash away our cries
And the unheard moan of our forgotten labor
Raise in us yet a new harbor
We are the unemployed, and we rise.