I want to use this opportunity to reflect on and share the most pivotal and formative experiences of the year. I have a small journal where I write at least one thing a day that I learn. I also write daily and reflect monthly on my successes and failures. This allows me to sink my teeth into my year, giving me a clear insight into where I was internally and mentally.
I’m going to share the most important lessons and insights excavated from the year. Most of them were painful. Yet, I know they changed me for the better. I hope you can get something from them too.
- Slow Down/ Balance:
André De Shields says, “Slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be”. We all have our strengths. Mine is the fact I am incredibly energetic, passionate and driven. Which often leads to impatience and mistakes. When I started ‘Nothing To The Grave’, I set such unrealistic expectations for myself. This led to inevitable burnout. Even when it came to my first love, creating music. I was rushing to nowhere. Trying to force progress, instead of slowing down and taking the time to create properly. I met two artists, Jeremy, a filmmaker from New York and Will, a music composer from Sydney. They exuded such patience and care for their work. This encounter, plus the reoccurring burnout and lack of progress, gave me no choice but to absorb and reflect on my approach.
I started to slow down. I began to grapple less with variables outside of my control. I began to focus on the acts that mattered most. Since then, I’ve made more progress in three months than I did in the previous nine.
“Slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be”
- Love Is Worth the Risk:
All my life, I’ve been single. I never desired a relationship. I even looked at them as costly distractions. Due to my separated parents, divorce statistics and no relationship role model to aspire to. I never saw the point. I am also very busy and self-immersed. However, this was the year life took a sledgehammer and flung it into the wall I put up.
I fell in love. Hard and fast. Accidentally. We met at a music concert in Dublin supporting mutual friends. The fact she was soon to be travelling made me put my guard down without the pressure of a future looming in the background of our time. We just enjoyed every second we had together.
It made my world bigger. Suddenly, I could understand a whole new set of people who seemed drunk in love. It made me a more loving and considerate person. Not just romantically, but generally. I became more loving toward family, friends and even strangers.
Having a partner, someone who loves you for you is a different kind of love. When done right both people are vulnerable, honest, understanding and supportive of each other. The world explodes with colour. Flavours become more rich and divine.
From a psychological and personal aspect. I discovered what I need in a relationship. My boundaries. What I can do and what I can’t. What matters in sustainable and fruitful relationships
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it and embrace them.” – Rumi
- Faith
A question I’ve asked myself recently is “What emotion did I make that decision with”.
In other words, what emotion tends to guide my life decisions?
I reluctantly graduated college this year after dropping out three times. I promised myself it would be the last endeavour I embarked on with negative emotions pulling the strings.
Fear.
One of my favourite quotes is “Until you make the unconscious conscious it will dictate your life and you will call it faith”. We are all pulled by invisible forces. It could be fear, shame, pain, vanity or greed. Our job is to shine the torch on ourselves to illuminate what drives us. Before it drives us off a cliff.
Faith is one of my favourite words. It’s what I have chosen as one of the drivers of the decisions I make. The assured expectation of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. Faith is complete trust in something or someone.
This isn’t to say Faith is universal for everyone. Other drivers for me are family, love, creation, inspiration, freedom and authenticity.
Life is full of hard decisions but clarifying my drivers has made those decisions abundantly easier.
- Rejection is protection
My girlfriend broke up with me. It was unexpected. It was agonising. For weeks my days were heavy and colourless. A new sadness wore down me like soaked clothes.
The story deserves a piece of its own so I’ll spare the details and get right to the point.
Often when you get rejected by an opportunity or person you feel a deep pain in your chest. Heartbreak is at the centre of countless tragedies. Romeo and Juliet, Troy, Titanic. Rejection can be a poison that can infiltrate your mind and break you down from within. Attacking your sense of self, your worth, your world.
Yet it is an inescapable part of life.
2023 was a year of rejection for me. The one job I wanted passed me up. My first-ever girlfriend and true love broke up with me. Many of my goals rejected me.
However, that isn’t the full story.
After each rejection, I have come to realise that they were each for the best. I got a new job that was more conducive to my life’s mission. The heartbreak was formative for me and turned me into a man. It made me realise the scope of relationships, how I need to grow and also what I need in a partner.
You need to try your best for the things your heart desires. Fight with all your might. However, if despite your efforts nothing changes. Take it as a sign that things may not be meant for you and take what you can from the journey you made to get to that realisation.
There is something better for you.
When you force… wanting something too much, you create a counter energy at the wrong moment.
- Don’t Sink
This year has been hard to summarise because of the wild variety. I experienced my first funeral, I fell in love for the first time, I graduated college, I almost went broke, and I experienced gut-wrenching heartbreak. It’s been a tornado.
When I was going through my breakup, friends and even strangers were crucial in terms of helping me (don’t go through pain alone). I vividly remember speaking to one of my best friends Liam amid the breakup. I was visibly sad, yet despite that, I looked at him and said “Life is fun”. I think at that moment we both got a beautiful insight into my outlook on life.
No one is exempt from the turbulence and pains of life. That is one of the beauties of this existence. We all feel pain and we all feel joy. This year I had multiple opportunities to sink into the pain, the hurt. I almost got sucked into the vat of despair. It engulfed me to my shoulders, luckily I refused to completely sink.
It is very much an intentional act. I think for many when we hurt, our natural response is to feed the pain. That’s where drugs, sex, alcohol, and social media come in. To temporarily distract ourselves from the pain inevitably leads to more pain.
You have to do the opposite. Starve the pain. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel it. Feel it totally because it will always be there. Find a way to get it out. Talk to a friend, write, scream in a forest, go to the gym. But do not feed the pain. Try your best not to feed the pain.
Just like our favourite games. They may not be easy, they can be frustratingly challenging and at times confusing. Yet, when we get through that really difficult level, we turn to our friends with content and proud smile knowing, it was fun. Life is fun.
Learn to enjoy life and see the obstacles as exactly that. Obstacles and inevitabilities of life.
You’ll live longer, and happier.
Jesse Ojuka 
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