Man, O man; who art thou?

When you find yourself in good health and with enough money to not only meet your needs but to satisfy your fantasy desires: when you find yourself in a place where you are a self-sufficient lord of your life, when you find yourself at the stage where you resume makes it obligatory for everyone to stand and honour your arrival: there always the temptation to deceive yourself that you are the all in all.

This is why some people look down on their fellow humans and treat them like a piece of trash. This is also the very reason why some people look down on themselves so much so that they bow to their fellow humans as though they hold the keys to their lives.

Money rules our physical world to an extent but when money comes into contact with good health: a perfect feeling is activated and the temptation to be proud is a difficult one to overcome.

Sometimes it takes a funeral, a visit to the hospital or the loss of a loved one to come to the realisation of the nothingness of man in the real sense.
I sprained my shoulder during the week and spent the better part at 37 Military Hospital trying to fix it or at least ease the pain.

Due to their reluctance to accept my NHIS without a referral from a smaller facility, I was forced to declare my situation an emergency because it fitted that category. No one walks around town with a shoulder that look to have dislocated so I guess I didn’t break any rule.

I just didn’t like the idea of being at the emergency ward as if I was torn between life and death. There’s a sense of feeling death is closer than ever when you are at the emergency ward even with a bruised toe and I don’t like that.

If you have ever dislocated your shoulder though, you’d come to terms with the pain I was going through then.
I however realised that I was one of the Healthiest Patients at the Emergency Unit. I stopped feeling sorry for myself when I saw the gravity of the problems that brought other people there..

In pain, there’s always the temptation to feel that no one is suffering like you are. When you go to the Emergency Unit however, you know that some problems require pain easing whereas others require life support.
If you have ever thought yourself as the all in all, I want to tell you: man is nothing.

Man is so fragile that it takes just chocking by a piece of bone to put his life at risk and make him dread the sweet meal he was enjoying just a while past.
I saw one man is such distress. Choked by a bone while eating, I believe he’d have preferred to eat the meal of the man next to him who ate his banku with one small miserable fish. Until he was chocked, he must have felt quite power sitting behind a meal cladded with assorted meat and what have you. It was easy to see by his adornments that he was a wealthy man
He was a patient due to one small bone and needed the help of one tiny nurse to solve his big problem.

A young man was also rushed in there with massive injuries to both less. They had to tear his jeans trousers to be able to deal with the wounds. He wept like a kid, defying his male ego and overlooking all the beautiful nurses he’d have ordinary preferred to catch their eyes with his well-built muscles. He forgot he was a man, he forgot there were people there including beautiful ladies and acknowledged his pain with tears.

There comes a time when the strength is of no use and the strongest has to weep like a baby. Man O man: who art thou?

Some people went in there, never returned. Everything they worked for, they left behind. All I could say was, fair thee well, the brother I never met.
Right on the stretcher, a father was being separated from his family forever because his soul decided to live him and rendered his body useless.
I was directed to the Physiotherapy Department the next day after the X Ray indicated that I hadn’t dislocated my shoulder and that it was just a sprained shoulder though the pain was in no way ‘just’.

At the Physio section, I saw all manner of problems. With over 20 patients at the gym, everyone had their own unique problem but with one objective: to get well.

As I was seeking to raise my right hand with ease, others hoped for a comfortable neck movement. Others wanted to walk again without clutches or wheelchair. In that hall, there were all manner of persons from all walks of lives but one thing was common: both the rich, the not so rich and the poor paid attention and obeyed the instructors because at that material moment, they held the key to our being well. Such is life: one day you give instructions, the very next then you find yourself being instructed. Boss being bossed.

This is why we need to love, respect and cherish one another because there comes a time when all that one is, has and how well he was the day before counts for nothing

There comes a time when one wouldn’t mind parting with the wealth, power, certificates, honours and fame just to enjoy life in good health again.
One day, we will go to the hospital and never return to the things and people that matter to us. Until then, as we go there and return, we must allow the facility to teach us life. We must learn to love one another because we are one and seek for one thing which is to be happy and healthy regardless of what’s in the accounts.

Even though we have little control over many aspects of our health, we can make the people we encounter happy. It sometimes take just a smile to make the distressed happy. It sometimes takes a little encouragement to stop a suicide.

There’s so much we can do to put smiles on the faces of people if we humble ourselves and look at life from the corridors of the Emergency Unit.
We are all the same: nothing.