For seven years, I had been travelling to work on the very same route and for most of the time, I found the journey dull, bleak and boring. In the last three years, i felt myself slowly embracing  a familiar sense of emptiness and I could not figure out why.

In all those years, I had not noticed the colourful energy of The beautiful trees and  their new language each morning and even the bright sun had given up on feeding me with its subtle rays of brightness.

I had not even noticed those smiling faces that greeted me wih the first fresh songs of the day- GOOD MORNING – even though the signs were clearly written in their eyes. I had become a prisoner in the puzzle of routine, I had become a lost passenger.

And then one day, as I got back from work, I saw a big signboard just before I could open my door-  the words on the sign board were bright and had been made out of light bulbs in different colours-  its read “if he sky is clearly blue, but you are seeing it in red, the chances are- its probably you- Change and Happiness starts from within- What matters is not what you see but how you see it”. I stood in silence and a whole new journey dawned on me- a journey i had not read in detail and yet, I knew i was not born to be a passenger.

The next morning when I woke up, I instinctively tok a different route to work, I took a slower route that had no shortcuts, I wanted to explore detail, I wanted to drink from nature and I wanted to be part of the music that danced in circles in the wind.

For the very first time, I began to take notice of the simplicities of warm signals I began to understand the language of the beautiful trees and the open secrets of the smiling sun.

On my long route to work, I now stopped and spoke with those strangers who had blessed me with smiles all along-  and as months passed by- thier story became part of their story, my story became part of their song and I began to understand how everything around us is connected.

I now only take that long route to work- even though I am now always late- but my boss of seven years does not mind- he would rather see me late than sad

written by Tony Tokunbo Fernandez