I am at a stage where some of my earlier actions are now catching up with me, both good and bad. We all know the saying of “you reap what you sow”, and as we get older, we slowly but continuously start to reap what we sowed years before.

We find it easier to always shift the blame onto someone when something goes wrong in our lives. It’s never easy or comfortable to take responsibility for failures or mistakes. More often than not, as I have realised, most of the mistakes or challenges we face today did not come out of anywhere or immediately, but rather have been built up over a period of time before they needed to be addressed.

My godfather always told me that one can never outrun and outlast their actions. You can avoid them, but never outrun them; they will always catch up with you. No matter how much you try to avoid them, or as many like to do – pretend they don’t affect them, you will eventually have to deal with them.

Like all things in life, there is a positive aspect to it too. What some people perceive as luck are just the fruits of their labour finally coming to fruition. For most of the youth who have been job hunting, they always seem to be surprised when after months of endless unsuccessful applications, they finally get a job offer they didn’t expect. It is simply their actions finally catching up to them, but in a good way this time.

So, even if you find yourself in an unfavourable situation and can’t seem to figure a way out, one sure way to make sure it will eventually pass is to make different choices to those that got you there, and something your future you will be proud of. Your actions today matter, for they will catch up with you tomorrow.

It will serve us wise to always remember that even the principles we were raised with don’t just disappear overnight. It’s a slow and often timely process, where they are chipped off slowly, and before we know it, you are a changed person. Those little actions and decisions we take today might not do anything immediately, but rest assured that eventually they will catch up and bite you. Whether that’s good or not, it depends on those actions and decisions taken a while ago.

- Olavi Popyeinawa

Twitter: @olavipopyeinawa

Email: olavipopyeinawa@gmail.com