Post by Adesanya Ayotola (@adesanya_ayotola)

THE AUCTION OF SHADOWS

We came into the world with clenched fists, as though eternity had placed a treasure inside our palms.
Then life laughed softly and opened our fingers one by one. We traded hours for houses, dreams for titles, and pieces of our souls for mirrors that applauded our reflections.

Yet every evening, when the sun folded itself into the pocket of the horizon, we stood before the silence and wondered why we felt poor. A river once asked the mountain, "How do you remain so tall?" The mountain replied, "I have learned the art of staying."
The river smiled and said, "I have learned the art of leaving." Neither knew that the ocean was made of both.

So it is with us. Some spend their lives holding on to names, while others spend theirs running from them.
Some build walls around wounds and call it strength.
Others leave every gate open and call it freedom.
But wisdom sits quietly between both extremes, like a tree whose roots descend as deeply as its branches rise.

Time is a peculiar merchant. It gives us everything only to teach us that nothing was ever ours.
The child chases tomorrow. The old man searches yesterday. Meanwhile, today sits on the porch, unnoticed, waiting to be invited in, and words, those invisible architects, keep building cities inside the human heart.

A careless sentence can become a prison. A kind one can become a key. A lie can wear a crown for years, yet a single truth outlives entire kingdoms. Perhaps this is why the stars never argue with the night.
They simply shine and perhaps the purpose of life is not to conquer the earth, but to learn how to walk upon it without becoming heavier than our footprints.
For in the end, we are all travelers crossing a bridge made of moments, carrying suitcases filled with things we cannot keep,moving toward a destination we cannot see,guided by a compass that trembles somewhere between hope and memory.

And when the final curtain of dust returns to the soil, it will not matter how loudly our names were spoken but whether our lives became a lamp or merely another shadow at the auction of shadows.

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