Michael Okunloro | Elevate Your Style

We fashion enthusiasts believe black suits are for funerals, Who would have imagined I would be wearing one for my daughter’s funeral.

Last Friday I was paying my daughter her last respect, her funeral, was a kind of scene I’d never imagined. I was like damn it. This bitch called life.

One thing fascinating about life is no one has the manual to it. We live it daily. No one is able to tell us what it looks like at the end of the tunnel. At the end of the day we just have to figure it out.

We all pray for increase, plan for growth, go harder on our dreams, look out for our loved ones. But we rarely pause and question, what about the other things this bitch called life has for me?

Pardon my language. I’m not frustrated. And if I am, I am truly allowed to be. It’s part of the emotions the Creator gave us as humans so we can feel the pain of what we grow through. To feel good. Happy. Angry. Frustrated. That capacity is what makes us human.

At 21 I bought a car. Bought a property in Lekki Lagos. It had just been 4 years of me MCing and starting my businesses after I left home at 17. I was going to shed it off like it was nothing, but coming from where I come from it meant everything. So I drove home fast, hung my hand round my mum’s neck and with all boldness told her I should be married and have my kids at 25. I felt invincible. It felt like I was heaven’s favourite in those moments.

Lol. I’m sure this bitch called life laughed hard at me for thinking the journey will always be linear. For not considering the bend and the unthinkable ways it will mess you around. For thinking life is like mathematics, geometry moving from point A to point B.

No one prepared me that years down the line I would call my mum’s line and there will be no one to say hello. No one prepared me that it’s part of life watching your little one fight for her life only for her to be laid down to rest in peace.

Make it make sense that a father ever had to bury his daughter. It was never in the script for me.

Oh my days. This bitch called life pinned me to the wall and shoved down every form of surprise down my throat.

Hold on.

It’s very common for we humans to hold on to the not too pleasant memories. The streets forget too quick. You could be a life saver for a friend but the day you forget to take out the bin, all the good is gone and you become the villain.

Why can’t we just have our way always. Why do I have to suffer. Pain is for others not me. I only add I don’t subtract. I’m heaven’s favourite so all days must go my way.

But we forget the days of surprise.

The day someone offers us a ride.

The warm smile that kept us going.

The stranger who admired how we look.

The boss who believed in us.

The man who introduced us to Christ.

The pain that transformed our lives.

The author that spoke to our lives.

The invisible hand that drew you out of that gathering that would have had you in jail.

I remember the day I walked into a room in Abuja and it felt like walking into the perfect room at the perfect time. The next scene I saw was me standing before the president of my country unveiling a project. Life was my baby on that day. I loved her. It was the kind of surprise life gives that I love.

It is two sides of one coin.

What the Chinese call Yin and Yang.

Light and shadow.

Valley and mountaintop.

One does not exist without the other.

The light defines the shadow.

The valley makes the mountaintop meaningful.

Joy is sweeter because pain once existed.

David — described as a man after God’s heart — wrote in Psalm 23 about walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Yet he ended the same psalm declaring that goodness and mercy would follow him all the days of his life.

The valley and the mercy.

Both.

Not separate seasons.

Not different lives.

The same life.

So here’s my conclusion.Before you say “this bitch called life” next time — pause.

Live it fully.

Be present in it.

Accept both sides of it.

Because life is not against you.

It is for you.  Even when it bends you, breaks you open, rewrites the script you were so sure about.

Learn to live with her, grow through her and love her

This bitch called life.

Drink while you drink.

Cry when you cry.

Do not rush the season.

Do not be emotionally attached to either the good days or the bad.

Both don’t last. Nothing is permanent.

At the end, yourself is the only one you’ve walked through it all with. Take the seat of an observer and observe. Stay present.

Because you don’t know what this bitch called life has ahead.

What if that’s the last time?

If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?