An angel of God showed me the other day a scene at the climbing wall. A main in his 60s tentatively climbing wall after wall, a young girl of about 11 years old scaling up the wall speedily like a Gecko and a number of bystanders made up of a mixed bag of people observing. The bystanders were debating as to whether the 60 year old should still be climbing or not. I was taken to another scene in the climbing wall arena and I saw a wealthy man strapped up climbing and next to him was a man who looked liked he had had some rough time in life, you could tell from his clothing and the not too subtle whiff coming from him, he was climbing as well. I saw another lady who purely from observation appear to be someone that must have had an above average liking for food. The last person I saw was splitting image of David Beckham, if I was a swearing person, I would swear it was him, but hard to tell, he had his trade mark smile. All of them were climbing away, grabbing at one obstacle after another to get to the top of the wall. Once they get to the top of the wall, they all came down so quickly and started another ardours climb after another. Nobody stayed at the top of a wall for more than a few seconds, it was down again. After all the climbing, they left and went home.
I met a friend the other day, he is extremely accomplished and had head a number of major businesses. Been the MD and CEO of some household name companies. He is so full of wisdom and experience. Anytime we meet up, time spent with him is a treat, I sponge out of him as much as I can in the very brief moment we have together. Today we met up and he apologised that he couldn’t spend a lot of time with me as he had a very important meeting with his mentor. I was slightly taken aback, somehow I had put him on a kind of pedestal as this all-knowing individual. But I caught myself and I regrouped. I had a vision of his mentor, a sage elderly man with white beards, wisdom and experience oozing out of every pores. So causally I asked, even though I felt I already had an idea, ‘and who is your mentor?’. He said ‘this particular mentor, I will be spending a few days with him, he is extremely knowledgeable and proficient in this and that. He does not have an office yet, I will be meeting in his garage and he will take me through stuff’. I got more curious, the description was not tallying with my image. So I asked ‘and who is he? Is it anyone I would know by any chance? He said ‘No’ he is a young man in his late twenties who happens to be very good at what he does.
A friend of mine, told me the other day she has regularly meetings with some young people. So I asked what area was she training or mentoring them on. She told me that ‘No’ she goes to meet up with them to be inspired by their rawness, eagerness, hunger and zest for life. She told me that unless we are learning afresh, being renewed, climbing new walls after new walls, tackling one obstacle after another and bringing ourselves down to start a new climb, we will become stiff and deteriorate. She told me that she meets people who proudly displays their ‘T-shirt telling her all they have done and where they have been and they definitely have the ‘T’ shirt to show for it and there was no doubt they had accomplished a lot, it was written all over the T shirt but the shirt was old and dated. And the question was ‘why don’t you get a new current ‘T’ shirt? And the reply was that ‘there will be nothing written on it!’ of course there will be nothing written on it, that is the issue, but an issue that can easily be resolved, accomplished more, break new grounds, climb new walls, slay new dragons! Then we will have new T shirt with new writings.
No one among us is too big, too old, too wealthy, so accomplished to climb another wall. The moment we decide we are too much for the climbing arena, then it is time to go home. It is not a spectator sport. In the mouth of babes and suckling, he ordained praise. Let’s all emulate the learning and regenerating spirit of youth. We can do this, we’ve got it!
Beautiful Ivory 