From April fool to April full

 BY SAMUEL UFOT EKEKERE

I recall those little years when April  fool really mattered. I and my friends  would prepare our list of scenes that we were going to play out on unsuspecting colleagues and pray our colleagues got caught in our web. If they fell through, we’d yell “April fool”, but if not, we’d walk away disappointed and try again. 

It’s April already, and foolhardiness rents the air. Someone around the corner is about to play you an “April fool.” Perhaps you have being treated to one of those hilarious gigs already. If you have fallen for one, don’t feel bad.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when there is high chance you may fall prey of unsuspecting circumstances like the “April fool in April”. Seasons come, seasons go and foolhardy April soon will be gone with all its memories. What matters during periods of unsuspecting circumstance isn’t the negatives that often play out itself, but the positives that also arrive cloaked in the negatives. The man who has being April fooled may soon discover that he has just being made April full.

There is always a hidden benefit behind any bad situation. We often think that bad situations that arrive around us are all bad and meant to hurt us. We quake and curse at the man or woman who has caused us the bad situation and hope the situation gets away fast. A lady may say “oh, he fooled me” to her cheating fiancé and rain curses on him. The fiancé might have fooled her but she would fail to realize that there is some benefit in her discovery that she had being cheated if she continually looks at the negative side of his cheating. She might have assumed he was the right choice until her discovery. That discovery could change her game and maybe help her redirect her search towards some other serious man.

Negative moments are game changing moments. There is always a lesson in every situation that fails to walk out as planned. Maybe you have decided to step into a business and you got duped before the business got started and. It’s never easy going through the harrowing experience of losing money that would have being useful for your venture. Look again, you’ve leant something new and perhaps you’ve become more experienced than you were before you started off. You will jump into the business next time with a bit more caution required of the business than you had shown.

Being fooled could be hilarious to the person who is doing the fooling but to the fooled, it isn’t always funny. Sometimes though, it could be funny to both sides. That is when the fooled accepts that he has being fooled and considers the situation as a prank he has fallen in to. Its often a lightening atmosphere when one accepts that he has being fooled, accepts the defeat and goes on with life with the lesson leant. 

If you’ve gone through any bad experience, it pays to accept the experience as part of life, learn from the experience. Whatever happens to us is meant to build us into better life agents. You may be in a position someday to give a word or two to people who are about to make decisions that you had made and failed. Your words will come in as salt to steer their minds.

Every circumstance in life that we experience makes us one-more knowledge full. It makes us able teachers packed with resources that some other person might not have had. Negative experiences build us up with the necessary courage to face life and to help people challenge life too.  If you’ve not experienced it, you’ve not learnt it

No positive circumstance is all good. If you continue to win every day, when losing comes, you may not be able to contend with it. that’s why those who fall from grace and wealth often choose to commit suicide than face the challenge of leaving a lower life than they had being used to.

Develop a brave attitude to challenge life whatever arrives through the process. Stand and fight, accept the loss if it happens, learn the lessons for the loss and get ahead with life. No person ever becomes full if he hasn’t had a reason to be fooled.


Samuel Ufot Ekekere writes from Uyo, Nigeria