The Weight Of The Past

On turning forty-something, the ones that got away, what we expect from men, and learning to move forward with faith.

Nobody really warns you about your forties.

In your twenties, time feels cheap. You can chase the wrong things, love the wrong people, start a business that goes nowhere, and tell yourself it’s fine. There’s always next year. Another chance to get it right.

Then one morning, almost without notice, you’re forty-something.

You look around and some of the people you started out with have gone far. Very far. Some have built proper businesses. Some have climbed the corporate ladder all the way to the top floor. Some are on their second or third property. And you? You’re still here. Still trying. Still figuring it out.

Let me be clear, it isn’t envy. You can be genuinely happy for people and still wonder why your own road had so many bends in it.

And it’s not like life has been bad. Far from it. There have been good years, good people, wins worth celebrating and plenty to thank God for. Things are okay. Could be better. Could be a lot worse.

Maybe that’s the strange thing about middle age. You can love the life you have and still quietly wonder about the one you might have had.

The voices we brought from childhood

We carry a lot more of our childhood than we like to admit.

A careless comment from a parent. A teacher who decided early what you were and weren’t good at. An uncle at a family gathering asking, “Why can’t you be like your mate?” The people who said those things have probably forgotten. Remind them today and they won’t even remember the conversation.

But you remember.

You remember being compared. Being made to feel small. Being told, in words or in looks, that you weren’t particularly bright and probably wouldn’t amount to much.

Years later, with the degrees, the experience and the achievements that should have settled the matter, that small voice still pipes up: Are you sure you’re good enough?

It makes you hesitate when you should move. It tells you an opportunity is too big for someone like you. And most times, you don’t notice how much it has steered you until years later.

Getting older doesn’t automatically mean outgrowing those things. Some things have to be deliberately unlearned. I’ll start with this one: the people who shaped how you first saw yourself were never qualified to decide your potential.

The ones that got away

There’s a special kind of pain that comes from watching someone succeed with an idea you once had.

Not a vague shower thought. A real idea. You saw the problem. You could picture the solution. You may even have scribbled a plan somewhere.

But you didn’t move.

Sometimes there was no money. Sometimes the timing was off. And sometimes you were just afraid. Afraid of failing, of losing the little you had, of finding out the idea wasn’t as brilliant as you thought.

If we’re being honest, sometimes you were simply distracted. Your twenties are a dangerous mix of energy, ambition, poor judgement and the belief that time will wait for you. It won’t. You chase things that don’t matter as much as you think. You lose focus, find it, lose it again. Then you look up and years have passed.

One day you’re scrolling and there it is. A company doing almost exactly what you imagined. Investors. Customers. Interviews. And something in you says quietly, I thought about this years ago.

To be fair, an idea is not a business. Execution takes discipline, money, timing, and a thousand decisions nobody ever sees. The people who built it did the work, and they deserve every bit of their success.

Still, it’s sobering. You can’t help wondering what might have happened if you’d been braver or more focused. Those are questions without answers.

Maybe the lesson isn’t that every missed idea would have made it. It’s that fear, distraction and indecision are expensive habits. And the worst thing you can do now is spend the next ten years regretting the last twenty.

Love, rejection and the jerry can

Then there’s love. Or rather, the complicated business of trying to find it.

There were people you cared about who simply didn’t feel the same way. People you admired from a distance because you couldn’t gather the courage to say anything. And when you finally did, someone else had already arrived. The moment had passed.

Rejection does funny things to your confidence, especially when it confirms doubts that were already sitting there. You start questioning your looks, your personality, your bank account, whatever you imagine made the difference.

So sometimes you overcompensate. You try too hard. You do things that, looking back now, are almost comical.

Picture this. Lagos. Fuel scarcity. Not the small one, the proper one. Someone you care about needs petrol, so off you go with a jerry can.

If you’ve lived through a real Lagos fuel scarcity, you already know this is not an errand. It is a mission. The queues that don’t move. The arguments. The filling stations that are “not selling” for reasons nobody will explain. The roadside seller whose petrol you’re not entirely sure is petrol. Somewhere along the line, you start to feel like you’re on a humanitarian assignment.

But you find it. Mission accomplished.

And the thank-you you were expecting… never quite comes.

It was never really about the petrol. It was the feeling that your time, your effort and your stress were invisible.

Age brings perspective, though. People show appreciation differently. Some don’t show it at all. And sometimes, and this is the hard part to admit, we make sacrifices nobody asked us to make, then feel hurt when the response doesn’t match expectations we created ourselves.

Keep the good heart. Just give it some wisdom for company.

The weight of being a man

There’s something I don’t think men talk about honestly enough. The pressure to be successful.

Not just to chase success, but to look successful. To have the money, the connections, the confidence, the answers, and the ability to fix any problem at a moment’s notice.

As a man, it can feel like your value is tied to what you can provide. What can you do for me? What can you afford? What can you fix?

And yesterday’s sacrifices have a very short shelf life. You may have carried someone through a tough season. You may have shown up when it really mattered. But the day another need comes and you can’t meet it, everything before can suddenly count for nothing.

This isn’t a swipe at women, and it isn’t only about romance. These expectations come from family, friends, colleagues and society as a whole. But feeling valued more for your usefulness than for your humanity is a heavy thing to carry around.

You’re also expected to absorb disappointment quietly. Be strong. Be resourceful. Be stable. You can be worried, but not too worried. Vulnerable, but not too vulnerable. Tired, but never so tired that you stop showing up. And when things go wrong, you’re expected to figure it out. Preferably alone.

There’s dignity in being dependable. I believe that. But a man’s worth has to rest on something deeper than his bank balance or his job title.

A man can be struggling and still be honourable. He can be broke and still be intelligent, kind and capable.

And he shouldn’t have to be extraordinary to deserve ordinary kindness.

Work, business, and doing it in Nigeria

Work has had its share of disappointments too. Jobs where I gave everything and learned that loyalty doesn’t guarantee recognition. Opportunities that looked great from the outside and turned out to be detours.

And then the businesses. The plans, the excitement, the money, the optimism. And the disappointment when things didn’t work out.

Entrepreneurship is far more romantic in a book than in real life. We love the story of the founder who failed ten times before hitting it big. Once success comes, every failure becomes an inspirational chapter.

But nobody finds failure inspirational while they’re still inside it. When the account balance is giving you palpitations. When another proposal goes unanswered. When a client disappears after weeks of back and forth. That’s when failure stops being a story and becomes personal.

Now add Nigeria to the mix.

You can make good decisions, work hard, build real skills, and still find yourself fighting things that have nothing to do with your competence. Power. Fuel. Roads. Costs that change every other month. Customers whose pockets are under serious pressure.

It’s like running up an escalator that’s coming down. You make some money, inflation takes a bite. You save towards something, the price doubles. A promising deal finally shows up, then some unrelated economic wahala changes the whole calculation.

Then someone tells you to work harder.

As if that was the one thing you hadn’t thought of.

Yes, Nigerians are resourceful. We adapt, we improvise, we make things work. But resilience shouldn’t be a permanent replacement for systems that function. Adjusting all the time is exhausting.

And yet, you keep going. You learn something new. You start another idea. You send another proposal. Not because you don’t feel discouraged, but because life is still worth showing up for, even when it doesn’t go to plan.

The maths of middle age

The hardest part of your forties might be how aware you suddenly become of time.

At twenty-five, starting over is exciting. At forty-something, it can feel like admitting something went wrong.

You start doing maths you never used to do. How many working years do I have left? How long will it take to build real financial security? Can I still do the things I dreamed about? Have I wasted too much time?

And the scariest one of all: What if I’ve already missed it?

People will quickly point to those who made it at fifty, sixty, even seventy. Those stories are encouraging. But they don’t take away the anxiety of watching the years go by while some of your dreams are still sitting on the shelf.

Let’s be honest. Some opportunities are gone. Some decisions can’t be undone. Some years could have been better spent. Pretending otherwise would be a lie.

But I’ve also started to question the timetable. Who decided certain things must happen by thirty, forty or fifty? And why do we keep measuring our lives against people whose circumstances, opportunities and responsibilities are completely different from ours?

Maybe the goal isn’t to catch up with everyone else.

Maybe it’s to make the most of the life that’s actually mine.

I am not starting from nothing

Resilience rarely looks the way we imagine. It isn’t always the dramatic comeback with the movie soundtrack.

Sometimes it’s sending another proposal after the last five were ignored. It’s learning a new skill when you feel you should already be the expert. It’s trying another business, knowing exactly how much the last one hurt. It’s admitting you lacked focus when you were younger, without deciding you must stay unfocused forever.

And sometimes it’s just waking up, handling what’s in front of you, and refusing to let yesterday’s disappointments steal today’s peace.

I won’t pretend I’ve mastered this. I haven’t. There are still days of doubt. Days I question my choices, my abilities and where my life is headed.

But I’ve come to understand one thing.

Failure taught me things success might never have. Disappointment made me more discerning. The missed opportunities taught me about timing, courage and execution.

I’m not grateful for every hard thing. Some of it I would happily have skipped. But since I can’t change any of it, I might as well collect the lessons.

Through it all, I want to remain a good person. Not naive. Not always available to people who take kindness for weakness. Not someone who confuses being needed with being loved. Just someone who hasn’t let life turn his heart cold.

Because success would mean very little if I had to become someone I don’t respect to get it.

Where faith comes in

Through all of this, one thing has stayed constant. God.

I don’t say that because everything worked out perfectly. Quite the opposite. There are prayers I’ve prayed for years. Doors I was sure would open that stayed firmly shut. Situations I believed would turn around that just didn’t. And yes, there have been moments I’ve questioned His timing.

But when I look back, I also see what I survived. The help that came from nowhere. The opportunity that showed up right when I’d almost stopped looking. The situations that could have ended far worse than they did.

I see grace, even in seasons I would never want to repeat.

Romans 8:28 says God works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Notice it doesn’t say all things are good. There’s a difference. Some pain is real. Some losses leave marks that faith doesn’t simply erase. But I believe God can work even through the parts of my story I wish had been written differently.

Then there’s that beautiful promise in Joel 2:25, about God restoring the years the locusts have eaten. I don’t read it as a guarantee that every lost opportunity or every lost naira will come back. But I take comfort in knowing that wasted years don’t make the remaining ones meaningless. The future can still hold purpose, joy and abundance. God isn’t limited by my mistakes or by the time I’ve lost.

God has never failed me. That doesn’t mean I’ve always gotten what I wanted. It means that through everything, I’ve never been beyond His reach.

And that’s reason enough to keep believing.

Enjoying what is

Ambitious people have a habit of treating the present like a waiting room. We’re always working towards the next thing. The next contract. The next milestone. The next version of ourselves.

There’s nothing wrong with ambition. I still want to build meaningful things. I want financial security, successful ventures, the ability to take proper care of the people I love, and the freedom to enjoy more of what life has to offer.

But wanting more is different from believing that what you have is never enough.

Sometimes the wins come. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you work hard and something big happens. Other times you work just as hard and have very little to show for it. That’s life. Maybe maturity is simply not letting either outcome decide how you feel about yourself.

You can have a good life that looks nothing like the one you imagined at twenty-five. You can be grateful and ambitious at the same time. You can enjoy what you’ve built without pretending you don’t want to build more. You can celebrate other people’s wins without treating them as proof that you’re behind.

Peace. Good health. People who love you. A clear conscience. Being able to sleep well at night. These are achievements too.

Some of the things we take for granted today are things we once prayed desperately for. That’s worth remembering.

Making peace with yesterday

One of the best gifts a man can give himself in his forties is permission to stop punishing himself for not living a perfect life.

For the relationships that didn’t happen. For the people who didn’t appreciate him. For the missed opportunities and the failed businesses. For the times he lacked confidence, lost focus, trusted the wrong people, or simply didn’t know any better.

Taking responsibility for your past is one thing. Serving it like a life sentence is another.

Philippians 3:13–14 talks about forgetting what lies behind and pressing on toward what lies ahead. I don’t think that means pretending the past never happened. It means refusing to stay locked up in it.

I can’t go back and tell my younger self to speak up sooner or believe in himself more. I can’t recover every naira lost, every opportunity missed or every year spent on something that went nowhere.

But I can decide what happens next.

I can stop measuring my life against other people’s timelines. I can forgive myself for being human. I can be kind without being naive, ambitious without being eaten up by comparison, and confident without needing constant validation.

And I can enjoy the life I’m living now, instead of postponing happiness until everything finally works out.

Because that’s another trap, isn’t it? I’ll be happy when the money comes. When the business works. When the missing pieces finally fall into place.

Meanwhile, life is happening right now. In the uncertainty. In the waiting. In the middle of figuring things out.

The weight doesn’t get to decide

I won’t pretend the past has no weight. It does. Some memories still sting. Some regrets still show up uninvited. And some days, the distance between where I am and where I want to be still feels enormous.

But I’ve carried these things long enough to know they don’t get to decide where I go next.

I’m in my forties. I’m not where I thought I’d be in every area, but I’m not doing badly either. There have been wins worth celebrating, failures worth learning from, people worth knowing and experiences worth having. I have reasons to be grateful. And I still have reasons to hope.

I don’t know what the next ten years will bring. Some of my big dreams may come true. Others may change as I do. Either way, I want to keep learning, building, loving and making the most of what’s in front of me.

I want to be successful, yes. But I also want to be happy, healthy, at peace, and surrounded by people who value me for more than what I can do for them. I want to look back one day and know that, despite the disappointments, life didn’t make me bitter.

Above all, I want to stay grateful to the God who has brought me this far.

Because when I really think about it, the fact that I’m still here, still hopeful, still dreaming and still willing to try is worth something.

The past may be heavy.

But I don’t have to carry all of it into tomorrow.