What's your career?

History is but a rolling stone placed on the rusty joints of time. When it is broken down into shades and shards of events we see that history is simply the biographies of men and women who were not afraid to live for something unique and were not also afraid to die defending it. Remember Luther!

This force of passion within the hearts of the light bearers of history was their purpose. They put the vague concept of purpose on the wheel of time and made it their carriers, their careers. Purpose put in motion becomes a career, a blessing in disguise, like it was to those guys in our historical archives. Think Michael Jackson, for example, and you immediately think of pop, or think pop, for a moment, and you will, even if you dont want to, immediately think of Michael. The event therefore is the mirror image of the individual, making the bond inseperable. Consider Einstein for a while and see if science wont ring in your  mind. Science was not his spouse, it was only his career. The same goes for Maradona. You can't think of maradona without thinking of football. He never invented the game, he only made it his career.

In all therefore, you see that when you think of anything, you think of somebody. Just as you can't seperate things from people, you cant seperate successful people from their careers. Successful people make their careers their brand.

When people think of you what do they think of?

THINK DIFFERENT

             After a long while of moratorium i sat to write again using shades and shards of scribblings. It had been a while of struggles,up until now, against my inner scruples, and it almost seemed as if the poet had become entangled in a psychosomatic asylum, a psychological abberation.  I would have given a compendious reportage of the arduous bouts i had with myself but space and time abhors vacuous exegesis and since the past is a heap of withered branches i have chosen to ex-foliate it from my being as an excrement. Needful,though, to say, these ordeals have heaped on me mammoth lessons: to make premonitions before peregrinations. It has taught me to recognize the lethargy in anarchy, the principles in simplicity, the beauty in silence, and the dignity in humility. These were colossal lessons for a benign mind.

              Yesterday, i was enmeshing myself in a video clip, and the lessons i learnt from the clip are immortal. The clip talked about some few individuals who had influenced the world positively and immensely. Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther, Wright Brothers... These individuals paid the prize for greatness. The reticence, the denigrations and vilifications, the segregations...the only thing they didn't suffer from was nothing. They were viewed as madmen at first, but due to their importunity, they made the world recognize the slim line between genius and madness. 

              Hellen keller, the blind poet, made a simply profound and profoundly simple statement. she said; "History is simply the biography of great men". I want you to brood over that statement and tell me what you think about it.

               Below are the pictures of some who left foot prints on the sands of time.

                                           MAHATMA GANDHI (1869-1948), The indefatigable puritan

 

                                               ALBERT EINSTEIN(1879-1955), Thinker and Scientist.

At the ariport

Right now I’m in the airport steering profusely for a sit and staring at the ‘puzzled faces’ I see. The puzzles seem so lucid on their faces and I wish I could help out with their personal incubi, but I will not, because if I do, I might miss my flight, besides I am not from Samaria!

        As I sit down to offer a more impalpable help: churn my intellect for solutions, I behold a scene which I don’t think I want to miss. There is this tall and chubby guy arguing with a female staff at the counter. This little argument gradually agglomerates and aggravates from an altercation to a provocation. The man is now angry. I can see him telling the lady not to annoy him. He is pointing his fingers straight at her eyes warning her over and over again. I imagine what could occur if his fingers turned into a shot gun. As I perambulate in my mind thinking that the argument will end like the dialogue between Aristotle and Plato, I am so wrong. The hefty guy drops his suitcase and clenches his fist. (The spontaneity of the action was so masterfully calibrated that I almost thought I was sitting in a cinema). As the lady stands up to leave, he resists her, ordering her to sit in the sit and attend to him. It is at this point that I discover I am not the only one watching the scene. Black berries had become lap berries and laptops had become table tops as everyone's attention was on the locus of the happening. In a twinkle of an eye the altercation soon degenerates into a fight, I beg ur pardon, into an oppression. The watchers soon role-switch and became the watched: everyone gets up to help the poor lady from being beaten up by the desperate macho man who had just missed his flight because of some issues. You can trust me, I didn’t stand up all through the while this was going on. It will not be nice to testify tomorrow ‘a Sunday’ that I arrived at the airport as a complete being but left on a wheel chair because I was trying to save a benign lady from the radar of an atrocious man. God forbid.   

       Did the scene end well? well, I won’t tell you now, I want you to guess first.  Send your guesses as comments below and keep checking this blog to know if you are correct. 

LAGOS SYNDROME

 After the announcement for the close of the semester was made, I expressed my euphoria without fear or favour. It had been a bivariate semester: an eventful semester with a proportionate mangle of stress factors. Every Covenant University student knows that the milieu of learning at Covenant is ‘ex-cosmos’. In fact some few still find it hard to believe that milieus of such serenity still exist in this present day Nigeria. They think that such environments only exist in the figments of their imagination. For a covenant university student, therefore, a breath of relief might suggest one of two things. It is either it is engendered by the realization that one has just been liberated from the confines of a physical restriction, or it might be the aura of elation when one discovers that he has embarked on a journey to the outside world which he was temporarily alienated from.

           As I embarked on the rickety vehicle (a coalescence of technology and wittiness tempered beyond recognition by the passionate passing of time), I breathed a deep sigh of relief. A relief that was as ephemeral as a simmering tide. My journey through the Lagos metropolis was comparable only to the peregrination of the Israelites through the wilderness: an enervating voyage of nature through nature. As the car moved briskly on the road, I noticed a recurrence of a cosmic ambivalence: a struggle between men and metals, between bodies and cars; a continuous yellow mangle of automobiles and men. The discomfort I experienced greeted me with rancour as if forcing me to be sedated. I decided to abruptly terminate my basking in the holiday euphoria to commune with my external environment.

             I watched the disarray: the perpetual struggle for right of way. I watched as bodies struggled with cars, as bodies struggled with bodies, as cars struggled with cars. Not even houses were left out in this struggle. I saw as persons argued with persons on inconsequential issues, like 5 Naira. Or how consequential is an altercation with a potential aftermath of bruises and hungry stomachs?!   I saw the depressions and suppressions on their faces. Their attitude, from what i saw from other drivers, showed that the word empathy had lost its place in their hearts. Lest you wonder how I was able to observe all these while on the highway, I was in a traffic jam.

         The city of Lagos, by population statistics, is one of Africa’s most populous cities. When all men are out on their daily activities, at the same time, shadows cast by their bodies could prevent the rays of the sun from reaching the ground. That is how populated the city of Lagos is. If you doubt me ask google.com.

            My thoughts resumed as I went through a mental trance, an intelligible one. I began to deduce psychological patterns particular to Lagosians. I discovered that all Lagosians have the ‘individualism-collectivism attitude’: a coalescence of competition and cooperation. A Lagosian can rush to enter an empty bus even if he is the only person at the bus-stop. You might not be surprised to know that a Lagos combi commuter driver ‘aka danfo driver’ is an environment trained strategist. His brain cells have been modelled to strategically manoeuvre hazy traffic situations and apply the game theory without pulverizing his relationship with his customers. It shouldn’t surprise you then when I say that every Lagosian is a walking ‘economist’ and this intrinsic economic acuity comes alive in the face of a bargain. You are well informed not to try to cheat a Lagosian, you might end up being the victim!

            A Lagosian is one person I am always fascinated to study about. The average Lagosian is not moved by the day to day interaction of the forces of nature. To him these things are normal; at least life must continue. This psychological trait presets the setting in most parts of Lagos as communalistic in form but individualistic in actuality. It is an everyman for himself (on your own, OYO) philosophy that subsists.  There is no free lunch in Lagos, and indeed in life.  You shouldn’t also hope to get free breakfast or dinner: you pay for everything you get. Why?! Lagos is not Freetown; if you forget to be accompanied by your wallet you shall bear your misadventure.

             I awoke from my rumination on the basal issues of the Lagos community on discovering that I had arrived at the airport. An overcrowding of bodies is an inevitable feature of any busy Nigerian Airport. The number of people travelling is only a small fraction of those not travelling. Family, friends, well wishers, vendors, wanderers, the list just began. I once heard someone say that when you get into the airport you become a fifty percent owner of your luggage. The slightest loss of concentration is a transfer of ownership to an unknown!

             I went on to the counter to complete the travel requirements. I was disappointed with the service delivery. It was pathetic that a customer service personnel could not spell out the ethics and ethos of customer service. What I experienced was void of service, it was customer dis-service. As I waited, I began to lament. I started to write to reduce the burden on my mind. I fermented words from the chamber of my mind based on my experience in Lagos. What you just read is a part of what I wrote.

           As I sat down to meditate, I focused my mental sieve on the Lagos community. I was surprised about how profound environmental factors are in moulding a personality. I discovered that the environment could give birth to geniuses and anarchists, at the same time. The influence of our society on us is thus colossal and vast, and that is why you easily know a Lagosian when you see one. The tremendous influence of the Lagos society on Lagosians cannot be overemphasized. A psychologist might call this trend behavioural disposition but I call it the Lagos-syndrome.

 

ON THE 9TH FLOOR OF MY HEART

HOW SAD!!!

          The man died but did not decay, he resides in a tomb on the 9th floor of my heart.
          On that fateful day of his demise, the day was faithful but only to its cruelty. I recall the blood-stained sledge which was said to have shattered his soul to pieces- small, tiny, pieces. It was reportedly said that as he climbed to the top of a ladder to fix a mechanical fault, he lost his balance like a pole vault and fell on the edge of a sledge. (He became the mechanical fault that was fixed!) Although his wounds were unimaginable-the slize in his head was like a butcher's cut - but his wounds are nothing to be compared to the wound I have right now in my heart.
          On that fateful day, he ended his peregrinations in a gruesome way, and now he resides with me on the 9th floor of my heart.

ETHICAL QUESTIONS

In the world where does power flow from-

Skill or destiny or divine right?

In a government where does power flow from

The president or the people?

In a forest where does power flow from

The hunters or the hunted?

In a home where does power flow from

The husband or the wife?

In a human where does power flow from

The body or the soul?

In a gunman where does power flow from

The gun or the man?

In reality where does power flow from

The chicken or the egg?

In you where does power flow from

Life or death?

These questions are trickery

After thinking, think again!

THE ANTEDOTE

        Many people are selfish and egocentric.They refuse to accept that each person is entitled to their intellectual rights on their opinions and views.  

       It doesn’t make any sense to some people that a tree does not make up a forest and a man does not make up a community. 

        (The right to live is a universal entitlement that no one should steal from another!)

       There are several ways you can steal the life of another. Weaponry of outrage and fatalism is surely one way, but indeed, it is the least ubiquitous of ways. The several ways that are overlooked by many are the most debilitating and callous of ways. Starving someone of love is the most acrimonious of ways; refusing to listen to someone else's views is another; starving somebody of happiness is yet another...there are so many. We tend to overlook them, may be, because the victim does not die physically but who says the victim does not die in spirit or in soul?

         The neglect of many of these silent killers is what makes the world a terrifying place to live in. A world where parents want to have it their own way, not caring about what their children have to say, ( they feel they have biological rights to control the lives of their children); A world where employers don’t care about the feelings of their employees,( they see themselves as humans and their employees as machines!); A world where leaders don’t care about the feelings of their followers, ( they are quick to chop off the hands that cast the votes)...

       Making the world a better place does not only mean dropping our guns and ammunition- that will be one way, but most importantly, we have to annihilate our selfishness and hardheartedness, afterall guns do not shoot themselves and bombs do not throw themselves! We need to be perceptive to the feelings of others bearing in mind that we all are co-inhabitants of the world. We need to start showing appreciation to others, genuinely. Even when we correct, let us do it with love, lets not do it with slanderous or denigrating vocabulary. We need to offer our ears and hands to others, lets be others' ears and hands. Lets love until it hurts. A wise man once said "If i love until it hurts then there will be no more hurts, only love". Lets love until it hurts.

      When we start living a healthy life- a life of love, we won’t need to visit any physician, we won’t require wrinkle removers, we won’t need psychologists, we won’t need pain killers, we won’t need these any more.

       Let’s start today always bearing in mind that no one is too small or too big or too rich or too poor to be loved. 

       Lets make love our legal tender today.