Sometimes, when we safely go through certain events that easily could have turned disastrous if we had done one tiny thing wrong, we forget how badly that whole thing could have turned out and just go on with life like something serious didn't just happen.
A couple of days ago, I saw a video of an hostel on fire. I don't know what caused the fire but the stories/rumors I heard was that it was probably caused by a gas cooker.The moment I heard that, I immediately remembered something that happened late last year.
It was my final year in school and just like everyone else, I couldn't wait to be done with it. I had divided my classes into two categories in order for me to spend less time in school, the important classes and the not-so-important ones. I always made sure to be in class for the important lectures, while it was always fifty-fifty with me when it came to the not-so-important ones.
But on this faithful day, I had one of those important classes and was going to sit for it, but I found myself feeling disturbed, uncomfortable and for some reason I wanted to go home. And seeing how that was going to be my last class for the day, I decided skipping one class wouldn't hurt and immediately packed my books and headed home.
The moment I got home, I noticed there were almost no one at the hostel because everyone else was in school, I also noticed a lot of smoke coming out of my room. I tried opening my door but it was locked from the inside, so I began to knock and with each second that passed, I knocked even harder.
When I noticed that whoever it was inside wasn't responding, I had done the only thing I could do, I had forcefully opened the door, destroying a bit of it in the process. The sight that met me the moment I entered the room was a scary one.
Laying on my bed was a lady friend of mine who had come help me cook but had fallen asleep because she had only just returned from work that morning after a night shift, and on my gas cooker was the source of the smoke, a pot of burnt beans and rice that now looked like charcoal.
I had immediately turned off the gas before rushing to my friend on the bed. Luckily for me, she was well and breathing and didn't even notice that she was about burning down the whole hostel.
After the smoke cleared out, she had apologised and I had told her that it was nothing seeing how she was the one helping me to cook in the first place and I meant it, but looking at the hostel that caught on fire and seeing how that could have easily being the case here, it really wasn't nothing.
My hostel could have gotten burnt and something worse probably could have happened to the lady but just because none of the tragic stuff happened, I overlooked it and downplayed the whole thing like it was nothing serious, when in realities, I should be thanking my stars.
The same thing happens to many of us, we just haven't really thought about it yet but when we do, we will realize how lucky we were to have escaped that situation when it happened.