BY MASTERPIECE DAVID OLAWADE
I left secondary school at Senior Secondary School Class 2 (S.S. 2) as my last day in secondary school was filled with excitement that didn't last after I received the usual award again as the overall best student during the Speech and Valedictory Ceremony.
I was celebrated that day with quite a number of awards but I had thoughts to ponder on. I held the plaques in my hands but depression filled my heart as I had to quit school because of issues ranging from financial constraints and other circumstances that were beyond me as a teenager.
I started out then, fending for myself and making ends meet as I tried different jobs both legit and those that were not. I wrote the necessary exams as it took me two years to secure an undergraduate admission I wasn't prepared and ready for. I had secured a job somewhere that I thought was the best compensation for all my struggles.
When I experienced the demands of being in a public university, ranging from scotting in an accommodation of about four people in a small room, over a thousand students in a small lecture theater where only about 20 people sitting in the first two rolls can listen to the lecturers, demands of personal upkeep with little or no sponsor and so on, I felt discouraged and depressed because I never envisaged what I experienced.
I saw going to the university as a milestone and a dream come true but in just one week, it appeared to me like a stumbling block and a nightmare contrary to my initial motivations. I then gave in to "Temporary Negative Syndrome (T.N.S) as I started blaming myself for deciding to go to the university at the expense of staying back in Lagos hustling.
I forgot how happy I was when the admission came and the anticipated joy when I graduate as I had believed I will progress through the hurdles. In that process of Temporary Negative Syndrome, I met a brother who was then my academic mentor on campus and told him everything as his encouragement changed the tides for me. I then moved from the state of "Temporary Negative Syndrome (T.N.S)" to "Permanent Hope Remedy (P.H.R)".
LESSONS
1. The progress you haven't built capacity and prepared for can come with depression and discouragements when you start positioning yourself for the headway.
"Then they said to Moses, “Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you so dealt with us, to bring us up out of Egypt?
Is this not the word that we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness.”- Exodus 14:11-12
After the children of Israel got their freedom from the taskmasters, they got to a point where they gave in to T.N.S as they started wishing they remained oppressed by their then taskmasters rather than engage the demands that comes with their freedom in the wilderness before the promised land.
2. Scripture is filled with account of men and a people that gave in to T.N.S, not everyone survived it to the point of changing their status to P.H.S. In the same vein, as everyone of us progress in life or make decisions, we would experience T.N.S. but our responses and disposition to it would make the difference.
For example, a man can long prayed and wished he has a dream job but when he finally gets it, he can see the demands of meeting up with the work conditions too demanding as T.N.S overwhelms him. That same man that has said earlier that he was tired of being jobless can start saying he preferred how he had been earlier without a job.
A single fellow can be engaged in a relationship or an engaged fellow can be married and in a twinkle of an eye, he can begin to feel the demands of a relationship and marriage is too demanding as he feels, he had been better with his previous status not knowing he was only infected with T.N.S.
3. T.N.S is often false when you truly give it a second thought. When you weigh your previous condition or lifestyle as the case may be, you had discovered that your new or present decision that brought about the T.N.S is what your life demands for that moment. All your need is to stay put and change to P.H.R (Permanent Hope Remedy) as you stay on your convictions and your peace in His will.
4. When you are overwhelmed with T.N.S, take a moment to open up to God in prayers and have faith in His words concerning that matter. Also, you could seek counsel from folks who could rightly prescribe P.H.R for you.
Listen to me folks, I know you have made resolutions and you will make new decisions this year, I can assure you that at some point as you progress, you will be infected with T.N.S but you have an anchor for your progress which is you engaging P.H.R against all odds. Below is one of the medications for P.H.R;
Romans 8:18- "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."
May God give us understanding, let us pray.
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