Life ain’t no crystal stair

In his poem titled Mother to Son, the American poet named James Mercer Langston Hughes wrote, “Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It has had tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor - bare.” Wouldn’t you say that through his careful choice of words, Hughes, the logophile, succeeded in helping the reader visualise how tough life had been for the mother?

Wouldn’t you agree that for many people throughout the world, including our compatriots, life is not all beer and skittles? Do you relate to the tacks that some of us had to contend with over the last few years? We have lost people we loved dearly, to accidents, murders, opportunistic diseases, terminal illnesses and the COVID-19 pandemic. While for now, we seem to be enjoying a respite from the pandemic, the truth is, the rest of the tacks continue to flood our life, mercilessly pinching us and our loved ones.

Add to this poignancy, workplace and business redundancies that are a by-product of the virus or machinations of wicked bosses and board directors who have no qualms about firing employees whose integrity empowers them to steadfastly refuse to toe the iniquitous line of larceny and venality. It is akin to emasculation for a man who has been self-sufficient for decades to suddenly find himself hung out to dry, unable to provide basic needs for his family, and forced to rely on hand-outs from family members who are not finding it any easier either. No wonder, people on their beam ends are overwhelmed with drips of sadness and anxiety, unending yelps of frustration, moans of disappointment and freckles of indignation.

What about splinters? Surely there has been no shortage of splinters. Some people had to watch helplessly as their wealth got decimated. In good times, when they were gainfully employed or running successful businesses, they had a great relationship with their financiers because they could afford to service their loans in harmony with the agreed terms. They were given flattering titles like private and high-net-worth clients. Once a sharp reversal in fortunes hit them, the relationship went skewwhiff, and they turned into a bothersome burden. Positioned in the south end of affluence, they earned themselves slighting and denigrative titles like delinquent and defaulter, in that order. Foreclosure beckoned, and eventually, they lost their assets to the hammer. In cases of marriage in community of property, homes and other important assets have been lost, and families have been forced to move to much smaller rented quarters. Children have been moved from private to public schools. The dearth of peace is one of the splinters and part of the collateral damage normally soldered to financial challenges at home. When the going gets tough, eventually, smiles are replaced with sneers, congenial chats with heated wranglings, meaningful hugs with unenthusiastic cursory chest-bumping, intimate kisses with frosty and detached brief rubbing of lips, and quality time with family members substituted with prolonged silent treatment and unjustifiable absence from home. This is at best a recipe for separation and at worst a harbinger of doom, or shall we say divorce.

In his poem, Hughes also mentions “Places with no carpet on the floors - bare.” Families that are charred in financial dire straits often find themselves lacking stuff they used to take for granted during the good old times. Much as they try to focus on their needs and place their wants on the backburner, they find themselves barely able to sustain their day-to-day necessities. The quality of food, drinks and clothes often goes down the drain on the back of a compromised ability to generate income. The pain and suffering increase day by day as their dignity rolls in the mud and fair-weather friends abandon them, deliberately leaving them to languish by themselves in the lurch.

Whenever this happens, it is not unusual to find men willing to venture into the autodarwination route. But why do people choose to commit suicide? Tiffanie DeBartolo, an American filmmaker, provides a simple but telling answer, “No one commits suicide because they want to die. Then, why do they do it? Because they want to stop the pain.” Yes, when people fail to navigate the double jeopardy wrought with pain and failure, it is a huge incentive for them to listen to the saboteur in them and consciously make the decision to check out!

When we can hardly keep our head above the water, oftentimes we feel inadequate and ready to call it quits. As we continue drowning deeper and deeper, thoughts of necking ourselves would occasionally cross our minds and if we do not seek help from friends, family and professionals in good time, the regrettable thoughts would linger on our minds, and we might end up carrying out the sordid deed of self-annihilation. It is at this point, when dying becomes more enticing than persevering, that the value of Hughes’ poem comes to the fore, “But all the time, I’se been a-climbin’ on, and reachin’ landin’s, and turnin’ corners, and sometimes goin’ in the dark, where there ain’t been no light… Don’t you fall now - for I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbing’, and life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” Carefully considered even by those on the verge of committing suicide, these words would breathe a tonic dose of sanity into their minds and convince them of the enduring value wrapped in diligently slugging it out, purposefully absorbing the blows and meaningfully wrestling with the challenges while avoiding the dreadful path of least resistance.

People suffering from a low Adversity Quotient (AQ) are prone to throwing in the towel easily. AQ measures one’s ability to resiliently handle stress, challenges and hardships. Alongside other universally accepted cognitive measures of intelligence such as IQ, EQ and SQ, AQ is extremely important. Interwoven with this measure of intelligence are positive traits such as self-motivation, fortitude, stability, tenacity, versatility and optimism, qualities that endow people with that steely backbone required, not to run away from challenges, but to confront all foreseeable and unforeseeable stress-inducing moments in life, and fully commit to either successfully overturning them or persevering through them. I cannot put it better than a British author named George Eliot who said these mightily insightful words; “Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.”

AQ is the ladder of perseverance if you like, the ability to see a way when others can only see a dense thicket, the optimism that comes with knowing that one must work hard to climb a mountain in order to enjoy unadulterated panoramic and scenic views of a beautiful piece of land, and the wisdom to appreciate that adversities are often fleeting, they are not, and will never be, a life sentence. For one to raise his level of AQ, he must appreciate the sanctity of life, the fact that his death could bring untold suffering to his loved ones, and that many other people are facing similar or worse challenges but in a more responsible and mature manner.

We may think we are the only ones going through rough patches in life only because we see the exterior of other people. The truth is, unless we are close to them, we may never appreciate the full scope of what they are going through. The multiple grins and smiles that we see could be concealing a grim mood, masking intense sadness and camouflaging immense pain. For good reason, Thomas Carlyle, a 19th century Scottish philosopher said, “Perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: it is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.” May we always remember that, for many people, “life ain’t no crystal stair,” and hopefully this will endow us with the fire in the belly to keep going despite the monumental challenges that we face.