Destiny & Our Higher Purpose of Life

We all have a certain vision or plan of how our lives might unfold. Even the people who do not set daily goals have some sort of image of how they want their lives to run. These are mostly based on our life experiences, values; those of our parents, the people around us and the society we live in.

What we come to learn is: “Very often not getting our dream gives us our destiny.” Not having our lives run the path we envisage can give us a higher purpose. Often we don’t always realize the goals we set. This can make us frustrated, disappointed, and sometimes resentful.

It helps to look for an empowering meaning whenever something happens that is not necessarily according to our vision, to ask ourselves - how can I use this to serve higher purpose, to make me a better person?

I for one, never ever expected to be divorced, ever. My community still looks upon divorce with a little stigma, which I now proudly wear! It went against my community values, my Christian values and what have you. But divorced I am actually praying that I will soon be! In fact, my biggest frustration recently has been how long trying to get my divorce has been. What an irony that I cannot wait to be divorced.

Very often in life when we really look back on our lives, the worst adversarial situations have been our best learning points, if we only we are willing to trust that it happened for a reason. This reminds me of a poignant piece I found extremely comforting in 2005 the late Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford University. He said– “you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life”.

Steve Jobs at the very least knew what he was talking about.

Some experiences are too painful that we probably never want it to happen again but we must be willing to trust that these experiences serve us. Once we are willing to trust and have faith, to look for answers and actively pursue them, we will come to realize that every human experience supports us, even the painful ones. Yes, even the painful ones!

Instead of living in fear of pain we can choose to live with certainty that - No matter happens we will benefit from every experience and situation. When we adopt this approach in life, we will look for benefits and therefore we will find them.

Back in 1997, I went through a most painful experience. Following an affair my ex had, I faced a lot of rejection and abandonment from my ex. I wasn’t strong then to walk away. Life was still shaping me up and pruning me. The worst of that rejection was being told without mincing words that I was a ‘liability’, that I was dragging him back, that I didn’t earn enough money to enable him live the life he wanted! Phew.

Fancy being reduced to M.O.N.E.Y! My only excuse is at the time I was a new mother for goodness sake. A new mother who had fallen pregnant in my final year of an advanced diploma I was pursuing after my first degree. This meant that I couldn’t start any serious job hunting with a nice pot-belly. I mean, who was going to employ this new graduate about to drop. So I made do with my sales job that I had had during college. I’d also had complications in this pregnancy at eighteen weeks when I went into early labour due to degeneration of uterine fibroids. So with all these complications and a commission-based sales job, is it any wonder that my income dropped significantly? Suffice to say, I continued to work as soon as I was discharged from hospital.

So, to be rejected at this time when a woman’s hormones are all over the place, and reduced to being likened to M.O.N.E.Y was the pits and I felt like cringing into a corner, which I did! It took years to get my confidence back and crawl away from that corner. Years of pain during which I had to question my worth and value! If your own husband of only 3 years rejects you, not just in favour of another woman, but relegates your worth in favour of M.O.N.E.Y, is it any wonder that somewhere along the years, when I finally got my self-worth back intact, I determined that, “Never again! Never again will I be valued alongside M.O.N.E.Y. Heavens, I am a trillion-fold far more priceless and beyond compare!”

I decided to study M.O.N.E.Y to understand how it could have that power to be used against me! To acquire enough M.O.N.E.Y such that no man will ever have that power over me, ever!

Don’t get me wrong, M.O.N.E.Y was not everything. In fact, there are far more valuable things in my life now apart from M.O.N.E.Y, such as my children, my life, my family, my health, my intelligence, my courage, and a lot more. But M.O.N.E.Y does sure buy a few handbags.

Fast forward a few years on, I realized that my life path changed that day he told me he wanted a separation not only to continue his affair with another woman, but also because I didn’t earn enough money. Mind you, that was the only time he wanted to leave me!

At the time, I begged him to stay, I begged him that we could work this through. Of course, I knew that he wasn’t thinking straight, that he was delusional. I mean, which man in his right mind would want to leave me? And he never ever did again. He never wanted to leave me again, even when I begged him to years later.

For you know what, I finally became the woman he always wanted to be with for life. I am proud of that. But he had lost that chance. Looking back he lost that chance that day in July 1997. The ensuing years were just a bonus to give him a chance to redeem himself, but unfortunately he was never man-enough to do so. I often said to him, “Ye ma wo hene, na wo andi a, kyeame bo wo”. Meaning: ‘Given the opportunity to be a king, if you do not live up to it, you will not get the chance to even be the king’s spokesperson or linguist.’

At the time, the vision of my life did not include being left after only three years of marriage, and I found it hard to handle. But that experience proceeded to change the course of my life. Gradually, I came to realize and accept that in fact being left, or divorced is no big deal. That I could grow from that experience to become more.

Don't you think that finally becoming a major investor, with an enviable portfolio of properties and other investments IS more than the cringing girl who feared being abandoned. Ironically I was the one to finally leave him, and for two years he continued to beg me to have him back. The interesting thing is at the same time he was trying to convince me to have him back he was fighting a losing legal battle for half of my investment empire. Some stupid solicitor must’ve advised him that he could do so in English Law.

Ha! For what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Sadly, he didn’t only lose me, he lost his own children and does not even realized how dispossessed he is. How sad!

On the other hand, through these painful experiences I have been empowered to find meaning in my life, to seek and find my higher purpose, and to not rest until I have found it. I used to think that my property portfolio was the legacy I was building up to leave for my beautiful children. I now realise that it is my entire life that would serve them as a better legacy. How wonderful, how wonderful!

 

Comments

[Braidandstitch]

Hi Margaret,
This is a very moving story and a great one, I am one of your biggest fans, even though I don't get to comment that often on your blog, but believe me I apply a lot of what you teach here in my daily life and it has a phenomenal effect. Thank you, and keep the great work coming!
Wendy.

[MargaretN]

Thank you, Wendy. Truly, I am glad to hear that my somewhat-random musings might make a little difference in another person's life.

Sometimes, I re-read what I have written to deepen my own learning, or even re-learn life's tough lessons. Slowly, but surely, we are getting there.

Thanks for joining me on this journey. Margaret