Counting My Life on beads

Like dew on a leaf, life is tremulous. Very uncertain, very unstable, very unfulfilling, very absurd. These are bitter truths I’ve learned the hard way. Every other day, I saw the beads around Tinati’s waist and thought to myself “what an awkward way our African mother’s ensured we African girls had clear waistlines when we got older” I never thought that one day, my life would look like those beads on Tinati’s waist. Like those beads, our lives seem to be wound around something. For some it’s love, for others family, work, climate change, women empowerment, anything, name it. My point is, our beads/life is wound around something like Tinati’s waist. And that waist becomes our priorities in life, our goals, and we are always focusing on those waists being satisfactorily beautiful. Just as Tinati never chooses the color of beads her mother puts around her waist, we never chose our skin color, our DNA, hair colour, or to leave in these pandemic times. We simply play along to the music that has been handed down to us. But then again, those beads are our chances, many chances for trial and error, and that’s how we live life, chanting our chances on beads. Until the cycle is complete, we return to the first bead, like Catholics do a rosary. Until we have had our fill in life… The waist shall at one time become too big for the beads and behold, the string shall break, the beads scatter to nothingness. There shall nolonger be any chances. The mother collects those beads just as the creator does… Where is your waist? How are you chanting your beads around that waist?