Last weekend was a great time for me. Well because it was my birthday but somehow I forgot about  it except for the calls and text messages that kept coming in from within Nigeria and abroad, from the United Kingdom to The USA, from midnight till morning, then through out the day till nighttime and even on to the next day.

It was actually going to be a hectic day for me as I had a list of places I had to be plus I had to be at work too and so naturally I just forgot that it was my birthday and when it dawned on me, these are some of the thoughts that occupied my mind.

Gone are the days when birthdays were just times of licking ice cream , eating rice, singing happily to school in your frock, when parents organized a birthday bash and you were the centre of attraction. Childish fantasies you may say, but I guess they were necessary at those times. Then as the times and seasons changed, as we grew older it slowly dawned on us that every sunrise gives us one day more to live and every sunset gives us one day less to live. The important thing then is, what you do between those sunrises and sunsets that have been giving to you . Even while you are dusting the corners your mind to start to think about it, you realise that you are still very much in the loop  and the centre of attraction in the sense of what things have your life have been attracting and how attractive has your life been to those around you.

Birthdays afford us such times of reflections about your life, where you are and where you heading and what you are doing to make it more than just a mere existence for we are not just some forgotten beings happening aloof in the corner of the universe but people who have got a purpose to fulfill and reason for living. And well until you know the true purpose and reason for your life then you may well just be….existing.

Really birthdays are serious business. I remember during my undergraduate days, there was a popular scripture that became the anthem for most if not all birthday celebrations, I’m sure you know it, it goes thus, “Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom”. And when the student preacher or whoever it was that would exhort us would quote that scripture and expound on it, you realize how very little time you have and so much that you still have to do/achieve that is if you have begun at all.

Such times in our lives also afford us the opportunity for introspection and truly ask ourselves, If there be any value we are adding to this world by our existence, How many lives we be changing if any at all? What impact do we have on the people around us? What values do we stand for? What is it that will be said of me when I am gone? And so many more soul searching questions.

For me, I realized that in my own little way, I guessed I had affected some lives in my own little way and even though I had forgotten about my birthday, the people whose lives you have affected may very well never forget. But I am not resting on my oars!

The moral of the story? How much of life are you truly living and what are you doing to make it more meaningful and attractive  for yourself and for others.

Ordinary men count each day, but Great men make each day count!