I still remember my Principal’s words back in secondary school.
“You have to die.”
My colleagues and I all took that statement literally. Why would he have to say such words? That was a rather harsh thing to say. He often uses that phrase when he is complaining about our inability to study effectively. He says we don’t read enough. He also generalizes it to life in general, saying we are too relaxed and that is why we are going to keep on getting mediocre results.
“Look here, you have to die o!”
I heard these words from his mouth at least a dozen times before I made it out of college.
After passing through a couple of years, I now see what he really meant by the need to “die.” He didn’t mean it literally. I also remember him telling us the germination process of a seed. It was through him I knew that a seed has to die after buried with death before it can produce a plant.
I now understand the “death” he meant all that time. It’s more of things about you and your desires that have to die. Laying off certain habits and desires can feel like dying sometimes, especially when you have been used to them for a very long time. Deprivation of fleshy gratification can really feel like death. You can be the type who does things in a certain way but in order to achieve success you may have to lay off that personality because it won’t help you to get to that point you desire. All these is never pleasing initially.
I’ve heard of many great people that we celebrate today and how they met near death situations, literally, so as to achieve the success they have today. It’s like a rebirth that they have to go through, if not, things would just stay the way they are.
After so many years, I see the relevance of those words that came out of the mouth of my principal and I’m super grateful to him for saying them. I carry them along with me almost every day of my life. It is a reminder that life is full of sacrifices if you really want to achieve anything meaningful.