Every Youth

By Nnamdi Ozioko

Are you:

• tired of leading a mediocre life?
• ready to come out of the deadly claws of ignorance?
• ready for a dynamic mental shit?
• eager to install the right apps in the PC of your life?

Open Every Youth!

This book, Every Youth, will whet your appetite for reading; drive you into hunger for knowledge; make you understand time and its value and focus you on your destiny to impact your generation.

It is a meal ticket for a purposeful living and a friend to help you subdue any fears. It provides a guide to discovering your own youthfulness irrespective of your age.

• Language: English
• Publisher: COMMUNE WRITERS INT'L
• Release date: Mar 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9791222077055

Book preview

EVERY YOUTH

FINDING THE FIRST STEPS TO A FULFILLED LIVING

Nnamdi Ozioko

EVERY YOUTH

WRITTEN BY

NNAMDI OZIOKO

COPYRIGHT (C) 2023

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author or publisher.

Published by:

COMMUNE WRITERS INT’L

www.communewriters.com

[phone]

6 Amusa Street, Agodo-Egbe, Lagos

Published in the Federal Republic of Nigeria

CONTENTS

Dedication

Introduction

Part One

Life Ticks

Time to Discover the Why

The Burning Heart

The Burning Hands

The Burning House

The Burning Bush

Part Two

Learning to Learn

The Reader’s Room

An Example of the Jews

The Poverty of Africa

Made in Africa

Reading and the Young

Part Three

Modern Praying Mantis

Final Words: What’s Next

Notes

About the Author

DEDICATION

To

The trinity of my exceptional fathers:

Christopher Ozioko, for the biological birthing;

Late Revd. Prof. N. N. Osadebe, for the mental weaning;

Revd. S. U. Ozioko, for the spiritual bearing.

INTRODUCTION

It takes a decision to open a book…and discipline to read it to the end. Welcome to the world of Every Youth. This book understands that youths are people in process, and then offers to reveal the paths to their destination. The things you are about to see in the pages that follow are common to every youth, whether twenty or eighty.

It shows the road whose beginning is a proper perspective of time—the very substance of life. In that section, the disease that emanates from unbefitting handling of youthfulness is routed from its root. Further, there is also the clarification of the question of purpose. Finally, we are not on earth to live and die! A reason precedes our coming. Many youths are also very confused about their purpose and the disciplines they should pursue. To such people, Every Youth offers some help.

Running to those who put out the daily fires that raged around them, we are shown how to extinguish the ones around us. You’ll meet in this book what to do with the fire within and around you. The book gives you some proper lenses, or rather removes the improper, with which to see ‘problems’. There you will discover why some people celebrate what you call problems.

The other part addresses the guy—ignorance. Taking modeling as a sure path to escaping shabby living, Every Youth studies reading and readers in history. Readers are still scarce, you must note. Many graduates also graduated from reading. Every Youth frowns at that. Life is then merged with learning: so that without a continuous learning, there can be no continuous living.

In the ever-nagging online environment, there is still a cry to save reading. The cry of the second part is, ‘Don’t let reading die!’ Amidst the unending punching and clicking, let’s re-try flipping through material, soft or hard. This insists that every youth needs, in addition to the instant noodles of info, the marrow of wisdom enshrined in the breast milk that flows from books.

You’ll later meet Wigo in ‘Modern Praying Mantis’ who learns all except the most vital, and gets destroyed in his learning. His life preaches a balance.

Don’t be deceived: youth is not a question of age. And stop crying that you’ve been excluded. No, if there is still a little strength left to you, you belong to the group being addressed in Every Youth. In fact, the book is more especially for you.

Befriend this book - read it! See you at the end.

Nnamdi Ozioko

2017

Oh, book of my dreams,

Just like streams

Go and wake

The youths of my day

And those that will come after!

Kindle a wild fire in them after

The truth and their purpose.

Part 1

EMERGING FROM THE DUST

Irrespective of what you confess, I know what you want to be by what you consistently spend your time on.

Chapter One

LIFE TICKS

It is, of course, only natural for people to take time for granted. Humans, like fish in water, are buried completely in time—if they must belong in the family of the living, there is no going out of it. A fish may not ‘notice’ water as a human being does when s/he jumps into a pool. This suggests why people don’t bring out time to think about time.

Further still, familiarity smothers curiosity: what you are familiar with, you aren’t always curious about. But, I daresay, most of the too-familiar-to-be-thought-about things around us are actually the very things we ought to pause and ponder from time to time.

Nearness also works on us likewise. When a thing is very close to you, you often don’t usually discover it. Don’t folks surprise you with the discoveries they make out of the things very near you? One night when I was up in my uncle’s house writing, I scattered his library. I was looking for a particular translation of the holy Book. It took me through the entire library. Old titles and new ones were caressing my book-fond eyes. There was that old book staring at me—with the eagle on it trying to escape into me. ‘It’s been long,’ I greeted the old fellow. It’s Bill Newman’s Soaring with the Eagles.1 The thing is, after the night, I shelved all the books except my old friend—we met in secondary school, and have been pals ever since. My uncle’s wife saw the book with me in the morning and pleaded, ‘Please give me that book to read.’ I was interested in the business: ‘How much will you offer me?’ I enquired. As she pleaded further, I handed