The Deferred Life

The art of living later, but never.

Ironic, but consistency can be the very ingredient stalling your success.

— Abiola Okun

I have been thinking a lot about why seemingly hardworking people often fail to succeed, especially in our part of the world. People toil day and night, working tirelessly, waiting and hoping that someday, the light will shine on them, but sadly, it never does. And recently, I have been asking myself, why? Why? Why?

It would be very deceitful to hang everyone’s failure on their inability to work hard, or even work smart. There are more people who have succeeded without ever having to toil as hard as a lot of people who have remained in the proverbial captivity of the stagnant life. A life where the more you earn, the more you need to spend. A life where the higher you earn, the more broke you actually are, the less happy you really are, and the less healthy you get because the system, the economy, has been designed to keep you that way; ever wanting, ever pursuing, never seeming to get ahead of the curve, stuck in the rat race. I ask myself, why? It’s not for lack of hard work. It’s not even for lack of smart work. It’s the waiting. That’s the real issue.

I come from a place where everyone is waiting around to ‘blow’, hoping that some day, their work will speak for them, praying that perhaps, someone somewhere is watching the work they do and will reach out. That maybe if they put out the same work every single day, one day, they will ‘break out’. Well, I hate to break it to you, many, too many people have done this and never broken out. Maybe only a very few of them do, maybe only 1%. And even that 1% didn’t just sit around to break out. It’s the sitting around. That’s the real issue.

The real issue is the waiting, hoping, and sitting around for our fortunes to change. Maybe it will. But most likely, it won’t.

Many of us are waiting, hoping, for life to happen to us. For our fortunes to change. We hope that this year, things will turn around for the better, and the work we do will eventually speak for us. Maybe. But most likely not.

You have been consistent, I get it. Consistency is one thing. It’s just one part of the formula. Heck, it’s only one part of a nonexistent formula. Nonexistent because, just when you think you have hacked the success formula, you find that there’s one extra ingredient. Consistency is just one of the numerous ones.

Please, remain consistent, but this is more than just consistency. In fact, as ironic as it sounds, dear reader, consistency can be the very ingredient stalling your success. Someone once said that it is the very definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. Leaving your becoming to hopes, to chance, that one day, if you are consistent enough, the tide will turn for you. Maybe it won’t.

The issue is the waiting around, the doing the same thing, the trying not to offend, the hoping upon hopes, the longing for life to touch you, the praying that someone else sees the value that you bring, the leaving life to chance, and waiting for it to happen you. It is living life on deferral.

Yesterday, I heard someone call it living ‘the deferred life’. And it all made complete sense. Many of us are living on deferral. Most of us.

It is why you never turn things around and live the same life year in, year out. In safety rather than fulfilment. In certainty, rather than taking big risks. Many of us are living the deferred life, doing things we don’t want to do, just to retain the comfort that we are so used to, and then hoping that, by doing things we don’t want to do, things we know for a fact we aren’t meant to do, we will ‘blow’. Or even in cases when we know that it is what we were meant to do, the ‘how’ is stuck in time, because of comfort, because of all kinds of fear. We relegate ourselves to a terrible, terrible place. A wormhole where nothing ever comes out of. A life waiting for things to happen, pushing things we are meant to do, further and further down the line, until we are 75 and realize we never lived. Or rather, what we have done is live life on deferral.

To understand what this means, we need to understand the word ‘defer’. It means to ‘put off an action or an event to a later time’. It is a fancy word for ‘postpone’. Now you might consider it an insult. I dare suggest you have been postponing your life? Yes! Yes!! That’s why you aren’t living the life you want! You are postponing the life you want to live down the line, after everything else has been put in place.

You have been saying, ‘I need to get a job,’ ‘I need to leave the country,’ ‘I need to get my masters,’ ‘I need to get married,’ ‘I need to hit this number of views,’ ‘I need to have this amount of money in my bank account,’ then I will begin my life! Ironic, your life has started! You cannot keep treating the time you have as a means to an end, living toothlessly for a life that is up ahead, while kicking the same life down the road, so you can ‘set up.’

Wake up from your pretense! You are already living a part of that life, doing things you don’t want to do or consistently doing the same thing, hoping that the life you want will eventually come, and you will eventually blow. Hehe. You are living the deferred life, and you don’t even know it!

Sartre Jean-Paul put it perfectly when he said in his book, The Age of Reason, that;

I’ve lived the life of a man without teeth, he thought about it. A life of a man without teeth. I’ve never bitten, I’ve been waiting, keeping myself for later - and now I’ve just ascertained that I don’t have teeth anymore. — Sartre Jean-Paul

It hurts at this realization, but this is the life many of us are living. Toothless lives, conforming to the system that was built to keep men small, and hope that we will be the next person to come out of that system by playing the same game; deferring life. Living down the line, living in our thoughts and hopes, but never truly living.

Look at everyone who’s in fact, successful today, and by success, I am not talking about people who try hard to convince people they are successful — somehow, I believe we all know the difference, we only often choose to pretend that we don’t. I am talking about people who are, in fact, successful. You’d see the one common theme in their lives. And it’s the fact that they never waited to be discovered. They never waited to be found out. They never sucked it up and hoped for a better life to find them. They went in search. They dared. They didn’t care about taking care of what society told them to take care of now, so they can live later. Image? What image? They decided to live life right now.

More often, this has paid off. Even in times — depending on the life they care about — when it doesn’t pay off in material wealth and increase, it pays off in the richness and fulfilment of their lives. And when you are drawing your last breath, what will matter more than fulfilment?

Happy New Year.

I deeply hope that this year, you don’t live life down the line. You live. Truly, daringly, boldly.

To your growth

Your Coach,

Abiola Okunsanya,

Handzinspired.

PS. I am learning to go back to being comfortable with em dashes. I hope you do too.