One of Kumawood’s talents, Bishop Bernard Nyarko died yesterday at the Ridge Hospital in Accra—and several tributes have been pouring in from colleagues and fans.
As usual, when a person dies, his old and recent interviews/messages are reposted online to give us a last taste of what he represented, believed in or said. Social media has been flooded with several videos of the actor who was a dedicated Christian.
I came across a video on my Facebook feed this morning of the now-dead Bishop Benard Nyarko which perfectly captures the biggest mistake he probably made in life, one that many of us will also make.
In this video (below at 7:49 minutes), Bishop stated that he has a feeling that he will become a pastor or wishes to become a pastor in the future or before he dies. That is something many of us do—we procrastinate or wrongly assume there is a future or many years ahead of us, and therefore leave the important things we are feeling to do or wishes to do for this future.
Bishop didn’t know when he will die. And all of us do not know exactly when we will die too. It’s the capriciousness of life that makes tomorrow a bad bet for what’s important or what we will want to become in life.
Today, Bishop is gone—without ever becoming that pastor he wanted to become. He thought he will live for many years, during which period he will become a pastor without knowing he only had a few months or years left.
To me, his death reminds us all of the fact that we don’t know the hour we will be gone and it is a mistake to leave anything important to the future.
We need to look at the length of life with all the cynicism we can by doing not leaving much for tomorrow—but to always remember what is certain is today and not tomorrow.
Whenever I consider the non-timeless nature of life, I remember what Mark Twain once said. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Even if we don’t die, we will still look back and regret that we didn’t do many of things we really wanted to do.