Jesse Ojuka

It was a nervous Friday morning that I had been anticipating for weeks. The only job I had applied to and gotten an interview for planned to email me by 1:30 pm on whether I was successful or not. I tried my best to ignore the simmering anxiety, even though I had felt it bubble in my belly for weeks. I picked up my laptop and decided to get some work done in the morning to distract myself.

As I shifted, my laptop scrapped the edge of my table. One long horizontal crack across the screen appeared. I felt numb. A painful smile grew on my face in an attempt to remain stoic.

I do everything on my laptop, I write, I make music, I edit, I learn. Without it, I feel frozen in time.

I quickly called Apple to see how much it would cost to immediately repair. I could hear the pain in the voice on the other side phone as he told me it would cost €710. For a college student and artist trying to live a very cost-efficient life. This was a ruthless punch in the gut. I had no choice. I got on a bus to Dublin to find the nearest shop to get it fixed immediately.

It was 3:30 pm as I sat on the bus. I still hadn’t heard back from the job. Dread started to seep in. I began to feel imminent defeat approaching me. The email landed.

‘We regret to inform you that you have not been shortlisted for round two’

Darkness covered me. The air left my body. My spark quenched like burning logs that had just been extinguished by a bucket of water. This was the win I thought would give me the right to tell all the people that doubted me ‘I told you so’. I had told myself getting the job would stop the interrogations I would get from friends and family when they would ask what my plans are. I was so sure I was going to get it, I didn’t apply anywhere else.

I’m good at taking punches, I bounce back easily. But that Friday knocked me to my knees. I had just forked out a gross part of my savings to fix my laptop and a future I had expected had just been wiped away like a marker on a whiteboard.

This is where things get interesting.

‘Crisis moments lead to existential openings that force us to grapple with the deepest questions about life’ – Andrew Taggart

When that happened, it forced me to pay attention to many things I had been neglecting. Such as the mild anxiety I was ignoring for weeks. Not getting the job made me realise that, although the job was an opportunity, I felt suited me, it was just another time in my life I would be ignoring my intuition. Which I have come to regret each time.

I shifted my perspective like a storm that blows a boat off course to an even greater discovery.

Sometimes in life when we think we may be on the right path, the world might push us over so we look up to see were about to make a wrong turn.

In the following weeks since life kicked me down, I’ve had some of the most profound realisations I have had in my life. I have been washed with calmness. I’ve realised that I don’t want to take the conventional or “default path” as author Paul Millard calls it.

“The longer we spend on a path that isn’t ours, the longer it takes to move toward a path that is”

I can never predict where my life is going to go. No one can. I have completely surrendered myself to that reality. Most people disguise fear and uncertainty with stable jobs they hate and titles they want other people to value. With each day I try to remember that uncertainty will forever be a certainty. Not until we are lost do we begin to find ourselves.

Three weeks after not getting the job, I look back with immense gratitude. If I did, it would have covered my soul from seeing what I need to see, which has helped me feel the freest, the most confident and the most driven I’ve ever felt.