ADULTHOOD

ARE YOU PREPARED FOR IT?

EDOKA PETER-PAUL

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ife does not ask if you want to grow up or not. Growing up is not even a choice that you can make, it is an unavoidable progress that you must do all you can to flow with. It is either you are prepared for it or you will prepare in it-this however is more costly; because it is going to be about ‘falling’ and ‘raising’, but much of the ‘fallings’ can be avoided when you are prepared.

When you were born, your parents and the community made decisions for you in helping you to grow to what they felt was good for you. Bu at a point in time, when you have grown into an ADULT you will need to make every single decision concerning your life and what you feel is good for you-either you choose to be a ‘Good-Adult’ or a ‘Bad-Adult’, that decision lies heavily on whether or not you are prepared for the ADULTHOOD.

As an ADULT you should be concern about your life in general – family, health, finance, retirement and ultimately, eternity. Unless you deliberately put all these into consideration and work at them with total concentration, you will experience ‘SAD-ADULTHOOD’. Your ADULTHOOD would be in a state where you will reflect on your earlier days as a youth and regret most of the decisions you made that led you to where you are today.

Now that you are an ADULT, what is the state of your family life? Can you be sincere with yourself in saying your family is exactly what you wanted it to be when you were much younger? What about your health, can you say you are having a healthy body and living a healthy life?  Look at the financial state of your adult life, are you satisfy with the state of your finance, your investment, the future-financial security? Either you are working for someone or you are running your own company, one day soon, you will ‘retire’. What are you doing in preparation for that day when it comes – the day when you will not be able to do ‘anything’ for yourself? And ultimately, how prepared are you to meet your Maker, before whom you will have to give account of all your activities here on earth?

ADULTHOOD is the time for redirection and amendment-for those who are lucky to reach it. At this stage you are expected to redirect your ways and path and purposes in life, put your family in one piece and bring the members together in unity. I you have not made concrete plans for your retirement-day, and now you are retired and filling like you have lost it all; you should still hold on and make plans - that you are alive, means you still have a chance to make it right. It not too late for those who are still alive, it is too late and never possible for those who have given up hope of making things better for themselves and their generation.

You can cope with ADULTHOOD if you make the decision today to make things right in every aspect of your life. That you will retire soon is not a dead sentence; it is not the end of life to leave one state of life to assume another, infect, it is growth, its development and achievement. You are the only one who should decide how it will be for you – the end or another beginning. Make concrete plans towards your retirement by buying into the numerous retirement plans benefits we have in the country; talk to your financial adviser about your decision. Your health is as important as your wealth; infect the traditional saying has it that health is wealth. So, if you are conscious of the fact that you need good health to be alive and active, you will make positive effort to watch what you eat, drink and how you spend your time every day.