Dates with My Eyes:my book on Amazon

It is popularly held that the eyes is the window to the soul. I read somewhere that one’s commitment to his words were assessed through their eyes, reason for which many politicians cannot do away with their glasses in most Arab countries. There is no denying the fact that the eyes is arguably the most powerful of all the human senses. 

Particularly for men, the eyes is our major measuring instruments for making our impressions or judgment about other creatures or phenomenon. Perhaps, the famous assertion that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, strongly crystalizes how essential this human sense is to men, as they form impression, and make major decisions of their lives at the instance of their eyes.

Indeed, we fall on our eyes in making major decisions, most of which have a protracted implication/effect. The choice of who partners us through the hurly burly of life is largely recommended by our eyes.

As we enjoy the mutable scenes of our lives, our eyes remains a Partner, Coach and Director, many but to mention a few. I dare intimate that in our almost male chauvinist world, most men barely put our other senses to good use relative to the utility value of their eyes.

Critical as it is to us, we are invariably inclined to act instinctively and consciously to prevent it from any threat. We go all out to defy the discomforts it brings us in order that our eyes are protected.

Personally, I have had my own challenges with my eyes. I recall with trepidation and nostalgia an event that saw my eyes announced its importance to me as a young lanky secondary school student of the Abuakwa States College. Maybe, that was to implore me never to take anything for granted. The lessons was well absorbed and I have learnt to be grateful for all that I have been endowed.

I woke up one morning with my eyes closed. I couldn’t open my eyes without having to endure excruciating pain. The fear of permanently losing my sight lingered at the time.

With an apology of a clinic in my school at the time, I knew I couldn’t fall on it. Out of frustration and pain, I decided amidst the risk and danger, to file out of campus for remedy.

I didn’t have a lot of friends back in school. I had only forged some acquaintances with few of my mates. With all the fame that being a school organist and a class representative afforded me, I was still hesitant to break out of my shell and open up to many of my colleagues.

 Consequently, I had to bear my own cross. I didn’t want to land any of my colleagues the discomfort of missing a class on account of my predicament. Indeed, I wanted to hide the developments from my colleagues most of whom, I knew would have ended by exciting sympathy which will not help in any way to remedying the pain that I had been plunged into.

I mustered all the confidence, for once, to move out of the school’s four corners without obtaining an exeat. The Kyebi Government Hospital was only an arm’s length away so it did not take long for me to get there.

Virtually blind without second party assistance, I doubled my pain by accidentally hitting my fore-head against one of the defaced walls of the Kyebi Government Hospital.

As fate will have it, I was promptly attended to after going through the usually bureaucratic formalities. Splashes of Eye drops coupled with sprees of belligerent set of prayer lines from my mother when I called to narrate the ordeal to her, had worked to perfection. Two days later, my eyes were restored to normalcy. 

Since that day, I learnt to not only  be grateful for whatever I have but most importantly, the need to make maximum use of the things I am endowed with have always been a priority to me. I learnt that if life is ephemeral, then one cannot but maximize their full potential if they are to give a good account of what they have been endowed with.

Perhaps, this experiences and its inherent lessons, are what have kept my eyes opened to some nagging and critical issues affecting my personal and the broad national state of affairs.

My awareness of how critical and relevant the human eyes is beyond the functional value of it. In fact, in this context, the eye represent more than a sense of sight organ.

For many of the dates that I have had with my eyes, I have earned the third eye for details. Eyes that do not accept things at face value. Yes, eyes that are willing to question societal ills, leadership gaps and other excesses that are inimical to personal and national development.

 In this piece, I attempt to bring to bear how my dates with my eyes and the experiences I have gleaned thereof, are relevant to the critical issues that affect the nation at large. My intention is to help disabuse the minds of people about the chasm that they usually place between their personal life and public occurrences. In my estimation one’s personal life is intrinsically linked with or affected by the occurrences in the public space. The two are, indeed, not mutually exclusive.

It is in this vein that I attempt in this book to relate how my personal experiences and observations exposes critical social realities that nags for answers and solutions.

This book will take a reader through critical issues bordering on National Development, Politics, Media practice, Culture, the attitude of Ghanaian youth, among a host of other deduction critical minds can make out of it.

Recommendations, Assumptions and Conclusions in this book are not sacrosanct. They are open to questioning, additions, subtractions and interrogation. Indeed, my intention is not to solve the pressing national problems I have chronicled in this book. My purpose is to stimulate conversation that can generate ideas that are viable enough to solve the challenges we continue to face as a country. This is not an end in itself but a means to the end of the equitable society we all envisage. 

Disclaimer

As a body corporate, the eye is endowed with all the rights and responsibility of natural physical person. To this extent, all liabilities and frailties in this book must be bore by my eyes. Blame them, if they have been biased. Criticize them if they have been narrow and overtly sentimental.

May be, the extent of liability is such enormous that it is impossible to discount eye defect. In this instance, it is my plea that you help remedy their disability.