ACTUAL TIME vs INJURY TIME

Okpam,

The year is on a fast lane. A new month is already here. Hope you had a grand Worker’s Day holiday or outing and also a good weekend? The holiday was good for me because of the nostalgic memory that it brought; I had sufficient time to listen to music. I greeted you in Idoma language of Benue State, saying “My friend”.

Our tent is pitched with football today; there are different ways of referring to time on the pitch. The actual game would last for 90 minutes while few minutes are added as injury time based on the assessment of the referee of the summed up time when the game paused. However, there might be Extra time during games that a qualifying team needs to emerge. I am discussing this in relation to other areas of our lives hoping that football would teach us something helpful for our daily lives.

Actual time is the 90 minutes in which the squad shows their deft and ability at winning the other team.  Once a team proves her mettle before the end of the game, the game comes to an end while both the winning team and the losing team leave the pitch. It must be noted that winning with a goal is akin to a Yoruba proverb which warns that someone with a single wick must not play by the waters (eniti o ni ogbu’na kan o gbodo sere leti omi). We all have an actual time in life; actual time in office; actual time in virtually all we do. We have the opportunity of striving to make the best impression and achieve optimum result at this period in life.

Injury time is very limited; it might not be up to 5 minutes.  A lot of teams wake up during the injury time trying to score the goals that they have been unable to score ab initio. It is only a few teams that are lucky to score a goal at this point. There are times when a team could be lucky to win at this final moment of a game but it is not usually advisable to wait till this precarious moment.

The drift of today’s gist is for us to wake up in time to attain feats rather than waiting till the final moment seeking for change which might not be accepted by one’s employer, family and in fact appraisal. There are a lot of people who want to make last minutes impression; making reassuring promises at the verge of elections and many more. May is here; kindly optimize the actual time of the year before half time.

We don’t need to waist the bulk of the time while maximizing the limited time to achieve the impossible.

Best wishes this month of May.

Olutayo