PREFACE
This world is hectic.
Derrick was born about 40 years ago to, as he himself avers, ‘a very wealthy family’. He had a good start in life. His parents could provide almost everything and anything he ever needed. To top it off he had uncommonly good brains. He was a brilliant student in school. He was privileged indeed from all sides and ostensibly nothing could prevent him from reaching the acme of success in life. He had the oomph. He had a well-heeled family behind him. So he was destined for great things.
He graduated from high school and went on to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He even did a Master’s in the same area of study. And he started degusting the pleasure his work had reaped. He says: ‘I had money, friends and a good job.” But little did he know tragedy was brewing. He didn’t know an unfortunate incident wcould suddenly come and change his life forever. Sadly, he was involved in a deadly car crash that got him paralyzed. He sustained third degree burns on something about 80% of his body. He was bed-ridden for one and a half years and would live on a wheel chair the rest of his life. Now he can’t do his contractor’s work anymore. He’s disfigured, lonely and miserable. He smokes two packs of cigarette a day and he just wants to die... from lung cancer.
Or get the story of Allan Edgar Poe who had odds heavily stacked against him the whole of his life. This is a review of his biography: “Tragedy visited him early and often, [and] did nothing to thicken an already abnormally thin skin.” He loved and lost an endless string of women, beginning with his mother, who died when he was 2. The love of his adolescent life — an older woman, the mother of a schoolmate — “died insane” when he was 15.........An unsurprisingly macabre teen, Poe spent much of his time at her grave." -TIME magazine, a 1934 issue. When Poe finally decided to get married his fiancée got engaged to someone else while he went to school at the University of Virginia. He eventually got married at age 27 to a thirteen year oldthirteen-year-old cousin who unfortunately suffered from tuberculosis and breathed her last.
Ouch!!
Plainly, he (Poe) was a troubled man who lived a cheerless, stinging life. He suffered egregiously. But he earned himself a glamorous title as a giant fiction writer, something we remember him for.
Here above are life stories that describe in a nutshell the maelstrom some people are going through and just how life can hurt so badly sometimes. They insinuate the 'thrills and chills’, the pain and bliss, the up-and-down moments of life. They are tales of woe, tales of bad circumstance each one of us can relate to or have even found ourselves in.
Looking at my own life at 19, I have fought stern battles. I have been hounded and wounded a little. I have asked pointed questions about life. Sometimes, the thought of the future frightens me. There’s angst, there is fear, there is anxiety. There are moments when I feel empty and discouraged weighed down by worry and defeat. I have hinted this in the book.
I know you share somewhat a similar experience with me because after all we live the same life. And like me you could be feeling life is such a rollercoaster and a real bummer. Yea, it can be. But we can always make it an enthralling and worthy experience.
Life’s full of annoying inconveniences, bristling threats, heartbreaking losses and disgusting occurrences, even people. But there is little, if any, we can do to change the nature of this bitter-sweet, unsparing experience called life. It has always been that way and will always be that way. Even so we are not completely powerless. We can gradually turn life’s obstacles around, achieve greatness, stay upbeat in our down times and show up for our stricken brothers and sisters and lend our ears to these dispirited souls hitting a rough patch because we will need someone by our side during our cloudy days, too.
It is for this reason I got myself scrawling down drafts on paper to encourage people-and even myself- to outgrow bad circumstance. This quote here goaded me in the entire process of writing this little, lilting muse which I believe will give hope and cheer to souls that become occasionally disheartened and who want to get something out of life.
"What men need most in this world's struggle and strife is not usually direct help, but cheer. . . .. . .. Many men have fainted and succumbed in the great struggles whom one word of cheer would have made strong to overcome. We should never, then, lose an opportunity to say an inspiring word. We know not how much it is needed, or how great and far-reaching its consequences may be."- "Week-Day Religion," by J. R. Miller, page 170.
So the rationale of having written this book is to 'say an inspiring word' to a lot of people who are hurting, crying and sounding defeatist, an inspiring word to millions of people who are living in pain and indigence. I wrote it for a young chap who hopes there is no life after death so that he can finally rest, for a dejected ailing woman who thinks God enjoys torturing her and for some hopeless lad who threatens his friends he'd shoot himself. I wrote it for them and for myself.
I can’t finish without saying- life is bleaker than ever. Here is why? "The rate of serious clinical depression has more than tripled over the last two generations, and increased by perhaps a factor of ten from 1900 to 2000." We have to accept we are more vulnerable today than our sturdy primitive progenitors were. Although life is easier now, it is replete with temptations, dangers, certain cravings and whatnot our forbearers didn’t have to face and that are very likely to induce stress and possibly depression by extension. We have to get proper mental ammunition as we trudge through life. That ammunition is this book. It’s a constant reminder of how truly amazing life is and a source of cheer at those times you're feeling down for some reason.
This book may not take away the sting in your particular circumstance but from it you will certainly get a good vibe: little, lilting words of cheer and that's what really matters when you are hitting a rough patch.
Welcome, read and get inspired.
The author.
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