The Emptiness of Success

The Day I Graduated Was The Day That I Felt Most Empty In My Life.
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I can never forget October 6, 2012.
It was the day I wrote my last examination in the University of Benin. I wore a complete suit to the exam hall, and I was determined to make the memory special.

The exam went well, just like every other exam I ever took at school, and I left the hall with much optimism.

I vividly remember that rain fell for a while, and I had to hide under a building with my suit, classmates and friends.

‘We are finally graduates now,’ my friends and I congratulated each other for making the journey.

You have to understand that when I was an undergraduate, I was absolutely committed to the life of a student.
Absolutely committed.
I finished every single course material at least twice, generally did past questions up to five years, tried to attend every lecture, made it a habit to never sleep through the night as I was always in night classes reading from the first weeks of resumption to the last.

I mean, I did everything possible to attain the highest possible grades in every one of my courses within those four years I spent in the university.

Maybe that was why I was so surprised; maybe that was why I felt the way I did.

Just as the rain abated, and I walked back to my hostel, I began to ask myself ‘So what now?’
Questions that I had never asked before quietly rose within me as I began to search for some great joy and fulfilment.

But I never felt it.

I had given up everything else to focus on my academics, and now that I had achieved what I wanted, I earnestly grasped around for the joy and satisfaction that I thought would come with it.

After I changed from my suit, I remember that I picked up my phone, walked to a lonely part of my hostel, Hall 4, and I put a worship song on repeat. It was Kabiyesi by Frank Edward.

After spending some time to thank my maker for backing me up to complete my course, I went back to my room.

That was when the emptiness really hit me. I just sat on my small but thick mattress and didn’t know what to do anymore.

My entire life had been about studying books, and now that I had completed my academic, I wondered what to do with my life.

From primary school, the goal had been to finish university.
On the street where I grew up as a kid, I don’t remember anyone being a university graduate.
So, my desire was just to finish university, and through secondary school, my life’s purpose was to complete my formal education without failing in the middle of the journey like so many people I knew back then did.

My life was built around achieving university education, and now that I finally got it, my heart was left without any other desire in life.

As a rule, I never slept in my room on the day before exams. Demola, my classmate and best pal in school, and I always spent the long hours leading up to an exam in Medical Complex LT2 and did final revisions together.

So, after my last ever exam in school, I lay on my bed and slept.
But what I thought would be the most satisfying sleep I had ever taken in my life turned out to be quite brief and irregular.
I woke up after two hours or so. Try as I might, I couldn’t return to sleep.

The time was now about 2pm.

When I didn’t know what to do with myself anymore, I walked aimlessly around the university premises for some time, I explored portions of the university land that I had never reached with the previous four years, I paid a visit to my best friends, and I took the picture attached to this post.

Frank Edward’s Kabiyesi still played through my ear phones through all these.

In the evening of that memorable day, and now, ten years after that great day of emptiness, I finally had time to reflect on the void in my heart, and these are my conculsions:

1. No matter the destination or goal, you must maximize the time spent on the journey.

2. There is no true lasting satisfaction in anything in life. Once an achievement is made, the heart longs for a new pursuit.

3. Because of the nature of man, for you to keep going without ever losing faith, you will need a real purpose in life rather than ambitions.
That is, rather than making your life’s goal something that can be attained in some years, it may be wiser to have a purpose instead, which you will earnestly keep achieving till your last breath. For example, making ten million will one day be fulfilled, but making it your purpose to educate people can never be exhausted. 

4. If you want to be truly happy all through life, you may not want to tie your source of joy to tangible goals and attainments.

5. True subtance of joy is in things done for God and for other humans, not self.
No matter what you achieve for yourself, the feeling of fulfilment will fade quickly. On the other hand, things done for others can give you satisfaction for ages, while achievements recorded in heaven create a lasting joy.
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Let’s keep living!

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