No one knows tomorrow. Those four words, immortalised in a song once hummed across smoky streets and quiet corners of Nigeria, carry more weight with each passing day.
They are a balm for the uncertain, a reminder to those whose past is a mystery even to themselves. Tonight, a friend sent me a photograph. A simple image, yet so powerful, it momentarily pulled me out of the present and placed me in the soul of a young man I once was.
It was 1987. I was young, slim, hopeful, perhaps even handsome in a way only youth dared to claim. My second camera dangled proudly around my neck, a trusted companion after my early days with a Zenith a Russian made camera.
I carried it everywhere, that instrument of frozen time, unaware that one day it would become a relic of my becoming. Before the Minolta came. Before my beloved Canon EOS 1 in the early ‘90s would redefine how I saw the world and how the world began to see me.
I cannot remember where the photograph was taken or the exact moment I pressed the shutter, but I remember the feeling. Freedom. Hunger. The beauty of not knowing. That version of me walked into the future with no map, no compass, just faith, grit, and the click of a lens. What a time it was to be alive and unaware of destiny’s silent choreography.
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We all change, don’t we? The man in the image would not recognise this one. That is life’s silent magic: to evolve, to grow, to wear the miles of experience across the face and in the bones. We are all just stories in motion, drifting through time zones, guided not by envy or comparison, but by divine appointment. Indeed, the elders were right. Even your own shadow leaves you when darkness falls.
This picture? It isn’t just a memory. It is a monument to becoming. A symbol that the mightiest oceans start with unseen drops. Every mistake, every stumble, every delayed promise sculpted the photographer, the man, the spirit that I am today.
As I approach my 61st year, I do not walk with regret. I walk with praise. Gratitude flows through me, for the I Am that I Am, who knew me before I was formed, who saw this path long before I could walk it. In Yoruba thought, it is said: “Àkúnlẹ̀yà, òhun ni àdáyé wá bá.” We arrive on earth bearing the seal of the destiny we chose in kneeling communion with the divine. “A délé ayé tán, ni ojú wá nkán gbogbo wa.” And once born, our eyes only begin to catch up with that eternal choice.
I still wait, hopefully, humorously, for the day a picture of me wielding my old Zenith or Minolta resurfaces from an old friend’s stash. Perhaps it will never come. But even if it doesn’t, I know those moments existed. They shaped me.
I honour the journey. I honour the mystery. I honour the young man who had no clue how far he would go.
And to the soul that never ages, that quietly watches it all unfold, I say: thank you for staying.
