On the 1st of January 1964, Dr. Tai Solarin wrote an article to herald the dawn of the then new year (1964) and entitled it as “May Your Road Be Rough”, and he concluded that if the readers of his article think he was cursing them, they should wish him the same.
Dr. Solarin was a social justice crusader, a foremost conductor of the doctrine of egalitarianism, a firebrand and diehard activist; he was an astute educationist whose voice and writing were more potent than all the weapons in the arsenal of various military juntas and civilian administrations that violently and corruptly plundered, oh sorry, ruled Nigeria when he was alive.
Dr. Solarin was a man embodied in a small stature, but he had the heart of a lion, the vision of an eagle, and the courage of a honey badger. Such is the towering quality of the irrepressible Dr. Tai Solarin.
We are all witnesses to this day – the very first day of the year 2024; and, of course, our diary is loaded with wishful gains for this new year.
It has become customary to start the beginning of every year with so many wishes, only a very miniscule of these wishes may be realistically achievable while a greater portion of the rest may be mere fantasies and engagement of our minds in exercises of futility.
Pain, they say, is the architect or the springboard of what our gain depends upon in life.
When a woman delivers a bouncing baby, which elicits a rollercoaster of joy and rapturous happiness among the relatives, friends and well wishers; the new mother has just endured an excruciating pain of labour on an immeasurable scale, in order to deliver the gain, which eventually and definitely outweighs the pain she would have gone through in the process of birthing a bouncing baby.
The pain that a mother goes through during the childbirth did not start when the mother was labouring to deliver her child. Sometimes, the pain starts from the moment the pregnancy is conceived, all through the entire period of the pregnancy.
Some pregnancies are fraught with serious complications and threatened abortions before the due date of delivery. But, as painful as the processes of conception to delivery of a child is, if the mother is still desirous of having more children, which is the case often, she will still go through the similar painful experience over and over again, and her eventual gain from such near-death and pain is the joy of being a mother to many children. Virtually all of us came through this same process of pain into joy.
A farmer must endure the pain of getting his hands bruised, sustain wounds and injuries to other part of his body while working on his farm to grow crops and other farm produces in order to gain the bountiful harvest at the end of the planting season.
The gains of harvest of a farmer, is intrinsically linked to the pain he went through during the planting period.
Haven’t we observed how extremely happy and joyful we are when we stand on podiums to receive awards of academic recognitions?
Oftentimes, the journey to such award days might have started three or four years before and it is a journey that is laid with the pain of many sleepless nights of reading and researching, courseworks and many assessments. Without performing those rigorous and painful rituals, no student stands to be awarded such a laurel, and such gain of great recognition eclipses the pain, even though the pain is the conveyor belt for the immeasurable gain.
We stand from afar and admire the successes of others. In our inner recess, we wish to attain such enviable pedestal, but how often do we envisage the pain and setback such people have experienced in the past for them to achieve such ‘infectious’ success that we so admire and sometimes desire quietly in our minds?
If we are presented with a choice between pain and gain, everyone without exception will choose the latter and reject the former.
However, we must not forget that the pain of today is the gain stored in the future for us. We use our youthful energy to work in anticipation of a life of abundance when we are old. The pensions, savings, and other incomes from investments are direct gains of the past youthful pains we sowed
If we fail to go through the present pain of building a prosperous and secure nation, the gain and security of a nationhood of prosperity and security we earnestly yearn for will remain elusive.
As we are basking in the euphoria of a new year, with good plans, lofty ideas, wishes and plenty of gains in our minds, we must, with a sense of equilibrium, wish ourselves more pains so that our gains will increase exponentially.
In this new year, I wish you more pain so that you can acquire more gain.
If you think it is a curse, please wish me the same.
This piece is written to honour the 60-year anniversary of Dr. Tai Solarin’s controversial article, “May your road be rough.”
