by Gabriel Olatunji

Conquering your world is not an assignment you do at 60 or 70 it is supposed to be the work of your youth.

If you die at 30 would the world know that you came?

Are you ready to die?

I can almost hear you say a big, NO.

No one wants to die at least not until they are over the age of 70; these days even 70-year-olds don’t want to die. Or what would you say to the case of a 75-year old man whose house was on fire, he ran out and forgot to take his grand kid with him? He surely didn’t want to die even though he was close to death.

The best event to attend regularly is a burial – for either the old or the young; you will see people cry and wail, you will hear stories of the person’s life, you will have sympathy for the living, and you will ask yourself salient questions.

How old are you?

Martin Luther King Jr. died at the age of 39 but he left us with the ‘I have a dream’ speech. Bimbo Odukoya died at 45 but relationships have no reason to suffer again. Notorious BIG died at 25 but he taught us what it means to move from grass to grace. Dagrin died at 24 but even in death a movie was made in his honour. Samuel Okparaji died at 25 but he died serving his country, a hero. Princess Diana died at 36 but stories of her philanthropic deeds can still move the soul, and Jesus Christ died at the age of 33 and till tomorrow his legacies live on; as a matter of fact we have a book where we study him.

I have seen men who died at 100 who made no concrete impact on the lives of at least a 100 people and the above profiled people show you men and women who died in their prime whom history will never forget. They came, they saw, and they conquered.

Conquering your world is not an assignment you do at 60 or 70, it is supposed to be the work of your youth.

If you die at 30 would the world know that you came?

If you die at 40 would Nigeria remember you as a hero?

The rate at which we are going in Nigeria we might not all live long enough like we thought but even in my short life I want to be remembered as the guy who entered into politics but wasn’t corrupted; a young man who applied for contract – never gave bribe and exceeded expectation on the job. I want to be remembered as the young man who built world class institutions where students pay next to nothing, I want to be remembered as a nation builder and a personal coach.

Your youth is for work while your old age is for dreams and retirement; don’t procrastinate on the national transformational initiatives on your mind because ‘we’ might not live long enough to see them through.

Go do it NOW!

Part II coming up soon.

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About the author: Gabriel Olatunji is different things to different people. He hopes to know what he is to you someday. Follow @gabrielola1 on twitter (buzz him to follow back).

 

Editor’s note: Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.