don't die curious...
another reintroduction + musing
Because what a waste it'd be to die curious about who you could've been.
Hi there. It's Chidinma.
Science and people say there's a brief interlude between life and death where our brains run a quick rewind of our life, right before we transit into the afterlife. This moment is termed "life review." Quite literally, your entire life flashes before your eyes before you finally breathe your last.
And the thought that always comes to mind is if I'd die curious, wanting, hoping, but never becoming the person I desire to become.
It's the thought that haunts me whenever I think about what a terrible writer I am at the moment. Terrible in the sense that I struggle to sit down and submit myself to the craft I am most passionate about. That now, I love writing and hate it, sometimes.
But I want badly to be exceptionally great at writing. The kind of writer I desire to become is bold. She shamelessly strips herself in her art and has the audacity to believe that her inner worlds are worth transmitting. Worth anything entirely.
However, to be that writer, I must meet myself always, and this is what I avoid the most.
The times I've met myself, I’ve noticed a constant in the life I've lived in the last 22 years: dreams, curiosity, and passion. This blend makes it impossibly hard — and inevitable — to not be an artist of any sort. So it's no surprise I picked up writing at 8. That at 10, I developed an intense desire to write to express myself, explore my being, and make meaning of my life and the world around me.
The thing about being a curious, passionate dreamer who writes is you're always trapped in the very worlds you invent. You get absorbed, lost in them, and forget that your life — the one outside your head — is so real. Going from dreaming and inventing worlds to pulling them into reality requires doing shit. Sitting down to write, or build the life you desire. And when I need reminders of all of this, I look to the writers who show me what's possible: Eloghosa Osunde reminds of the seriousness of the craft, Chimamanda for limitless potential, and Ocean Vuong and Chimeka Garricks show me the power of stories that explore the richness and depths of human experience. These are the kind writing and stories I want to leave behind.
At the end of my life, I don't want to fear dying in itself. I want the satisfaction that I happened to life in many ways. That pieces of myself still remain and speak life into others.