I Met a Man Who Gave Up on Life
May I never be known as that girl who had potential. The girl everyone spoke about with a hint of sadness, saying, “She had so much in her, what went wrong?” I’ve met too many people who once had the spark of life in them, people who once dreamed big, but now, they just drift through their days, no longer chasing their dreams, no longer striving for a better tomorrow. They’ve reached a point where they’ve simply stopped trying.
I think about the stages of life and how the dreams we have as children slowly evolve — or sometimes dissolve — as we grow older.
At age 7, it’s all so simple. People ask you what you want to be when you grow up, and you answer with unshakeable confidence: I want to be a millionaire. At that age, you believe in boundless possibilities. The world hasn’t yet introduced you to shege. You don’t understand obstacles; there is nothing like the fear of failure to you. Everything seems possible because you haven’t lived long enough to know otherwise.
At age 20, the dream still feels alive, but now it’s infused with pressure and maybe you are more enlightened. You’ve grown up a bit, and you’ve learned that nothing comes easy, but you still think, I can’t wait to be a millionaire. Your ambitions are louder now. You’re pumped by the idea that the future is yours, that success is right around the corner. You believe, deeply, that you just need a bit more time, a bit more effort, and you’ll get there.
But then life happens. And for some, by the time they’re 50+, the excitement and the hope have faded away. There’s no more talk about dreams or ambitions. Instead, they sigh and say, I am simply... tired. The weight of time, of missed opportunities, of small disappointments, piles up until the only thing left is exhaustion. They’ve given up, not in a dramatic, public way, but in the quiet, subtle way that creeps up on you.
I met a man like this once. He was a bus conductor. His face was worn by years of living, and somehow I could feel the heaviness in his eyes. He wasn’t bitter or angry. He wasn’t even sad. He was just… tired. He told me he was once like me; he shared stories of how he made exploits as a youngie, and when I asked him what happened, he said, “What’s left? I’m just trying to make it through the day.”
It’s really painful to witness someone give up on life like that, especially when you now know they didn’t start out that way. No one begins their journey thinking they’ll end up settling for just getting through the day. But somewhere along the way, the man had stopped believing that his dreams were possible. He had stopped believing in more. And I don't blame him.
I think about him a lot, and about the countless other people who have reached the same point. Maybe they once had big plans for themselves. Maybe they wanted to be millionaires, chartered accountants or world-changers or they wanted to travel around the world or even just lead a simple and comfortable life. But life, with all its unpredictability, wore them down. One small setback after another, one disappointment after another, until they stopped trying altogether. Until they became tired.
The truth is, life doesn’t go as planned. It’s frustrating. It’s filled with pauses, failures, and moments where you doubt yourself. But giving up? That’s not something that happens all at once. It happens slowly, over time, when the dream starts feeling out of reach, when the effort starts feeling pointless. It starts from the mind
But here’s what I’ve learned: Potential means nothing if it’s not nurtured. The people who give up on life are often the same people who once had all the potential in the world. But somewhere along the way, they stopped believing in that potential. They let go of the belief that they could still achieve something more. They settled into a life of simply getting by.
I refuse to be that person. I refuse to let my potential turn into a faded memory of what could have been. I don’t want to be remembered as the girl who could have been something but never followed through. I want to be the person who kept chasing, even when it got hard, even when it felt impossible, even when I felt tired.
At 7, I wanted to be a millionaire. At 20, I still had that same dream, bright and burning inside me. And at 50? I don’t want to look back and see that I’ve given up. I want to look back and see that, even if things didn’t turn out the way I expected, I never stopped believing in more.
The man I met had given up, and that’s his story. But it doesn’t have to be mine. And it doesn’t have to be yours. We all get tired. We all feel like giving up at times. But we have a choice: we can either let that exhaustion define us or we can keep going. Keep dreaming. Keep striving.
Because the moment we stop believing in the future, the moment we stop chasing after something bigger, is the moment we stop truly living.
Lastly, let’s not forget to actually live. I mean, in our bid to change the world, let’s not miss out on the moments when we could have been happy. Even if we don’t change the world in the way we hope, we still choose to live in the simpler moments. Let’s not give up on life, let’s not give up on living fully.
May I never be known as the girl who had potential. May I be known as the woman who, no matter what life threw at her, kept going, kept believing, and never gave up on the dreams that made her come alive.
