THE UNIT

Coca cola in one of its timeless commercials in the 80s showed a group of children spreading this message across our hearts like butter being spread on bread….

I am the future of the world,

I am the hope of my nation,

I am tomorrow’s people,

I am the new inspiration……….

If we all could agree there will be sweet harmony………

Tomorrow, we will build another world for you.

The age old saying that charity begins at home as common as it is, is quite profound. Just like the human body is  made up of cells, so is  the society  made up of family units. Like the cells work together in harmonious co-ordination to make the workings of the body as smooth as cream so does a healthy family contribute to the well being of a society. On the flip side, as some cells go whacky, berserk and become cancerous so does a dysfunctional home contribute to the ills of any society.

In a country like ours where no value is placed on love, courtesy and human lives, an incisive look into the family structure becomes very imperative. Children are the building blocks of the family hence of the nation. This means that the foundation of a nation lies on her having good children, who will grow into responsible adults.

Alas, caught in the pell-mell, rat race, hustle and bustle of  modern civilization, most parents don’t have the time to train their children right anymore. Simple traditions like greeting of elders, saying sorry and thank you are all becoming relics from the dinosaur age. These days children look right through their elders like they are an invisible breed without acknowledging them or even uttering any kind of greeting. Courtesy, curtsy and respect have almost gone the way of the dodo. The pathetic side to all these is that you actually hear their parents say they are too young and should be absolved from paying any penance for their wrong acts.

 In this society, so called parents think having kids is like adding another scalp to your belt of achievements like a Red Indian brave. Small wonder that they usually don’t have any vision for their offsprings, hence we have kids growing into spoilt adults who don’t know their left from their right. They become like city slickers thrown into the heart of the Amazon jungle at night without supplies and a compass. There’s actually no hope for survival because no substance has been instilled into them. In the seas of value and character they drown and hit rock bottom. They morph into heartless Frankensteins, bipedal animals without souls, loveless monsters filled up with hate and blood lust like our politicians. It doesn’t matter whether they are in suits or rags, area boys or CEO’s, beauty or beasts, erudite or ignorant (the results of bad parenting is the same). These ones go ahead to spawn their own progenies and the circle of devastation continues.

There is something that goes intrinsically wrong with anybody who doesn’t receive or imbibe good home training. This goes a long way in explaining why the world is full of rapists, serial killers, ritualists and leaders in Africa who embezzle billions of dollars while the majority of the populace die in poverty and squalor without any hope.

Children are impressionable. They are like an empty canvass on which parents can create masterpieces. The fact that most people around us have an intrinsic twist in the way they talk, act, think, behave, with codes of conduct that leave a bad taste in the mouth like putrid meat, shows that a lot of parents botch this job.

Can you imagine a world like the Louvre with masterpieces all around, the effect will be breathtaking. This is exactly what the world will be like if our progenies turn out right. We would have a beautiful world. The other day I walked in to an eatery and saw small boys with their jeans sagged, limping in the name of bouncing and drinking beer like dehydrated fish. They painted a grim picture of tomorrow.

There’s always been this all pervading fear about apocalypse, Armageddon resulting from nuclear warfare but more is the pity that the world has not realized from the coke song that children are the hope and future of the world. If they are not shown the right paths to follow, then we are running inexorably to the finish line of the end faster than Usain Bolt.

With this knowledge in sight all parents should rise to this challenge to make our children turn out right and to form good family units that will battle and reduce the evil in the world. With the right amount and mixture of love, positive self esteem and discipline this can be achieved.

Our generation is so incensed with the preservation of wildlife and would go to any length for this cause but human life is more precious. Let’s save our children! It is by so doing that tomorrow will be preserved.

     

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (PART 1)

                                                                       

       The ring is a symbol of continuity and everlasting union. A union instituted by God for the good of mankind. It is a token of an arrangement which began in Eden, an extension of paradise on earth. This unification is a product of Gods genius. 
   Woman was created out of man and wowed his socks off. Man looked at woman and gave her a good name, a moniker which was a derivative of his own name. I believe if we had been at genesis we would have seen fireworks exploding against a background of verdant flora, avian orchestra, chirping crickets, glowing firefies, musical rivers, angelic euphony and all romantic whatnot.

  But like it was sung in lion king, it seems when romance is in the atmosphere disaster is in the air. Before one barely finishes saying I do, things have already gone awry. Like a chain reaction from the fall of man till this present day, despite all the fanfare, pomp and pageantry of weddings, the marriage expedition seem to be fraught with more dangers than Ulysses faced in his odyssey.

   This derailed train of events has set off more questions in my head than cannon shots from battleships in a seventeenth century galleon war.

1.       Why is something initiated by God surrounded by so much controversy and pain?

2.       Why is it that love seems to turn to hate faster than the time it takes to say I love you?

3.       Why is it that the more of a fairy tale, the wedding, the more of a horror the marriage appears to be?

  My deliberation on this has led to a few observations which I believe cause more marital conflicts than fighting scenes in the lords of the ring.

Firstly, Shakespeare said in one of his classics that to your own self be true but when it comes to the nuptial flight this is often not the case because people live in a rose coloured world of self deceit. Various reasons make people take this leap without looking or telling themselves the absolute truth. I believe this is worse with the female sex because of their labile emotions.

   There’s something about the confetti and the angelic brilliant white gown that make many throw all caution to the wind without a moment’s thought. They go in with their hearts alone instead of their heads and hearts. If you are thinking of getting and staying married to someone happily ever after, I think it’s a given that you should engage the kind of “Einsteinic” deliberation that cracked the riddle of the relativity theory about your intended soul mate. Timeless attention should be paid to the plan of your nuptial flight like a transatlantic pilot before take off. The tragedy of this is that most people (especially ladies) spend all the time preparing for a wedding that is as ephemeral as a snow flake in the caress of the summer sun than in the permanence of the marriage. This permanence ought to have the consistency of the Himalayan mountain range.

      The unfathomable thing, is why we lie to ourselves even when our intuition gives us signals that are like red flags to an enraged bull. You get bad vibes about your intended mate but you enjoy the attention and other things that go with it, so you take the plunge which is like diving headlong into a shallow rocky pool because its sapphire blue colour is so beautiful.

       As a romantic at heart, I know that we imbibe a lot of things while growing up, mills and boons, cartoons, soap operas, etc that make us all mushy and schmaltzy but truth is, marriage is not a fairy tale. It’s serious business that is intricately connected with our destinies and the quality of life we live on earth.

       As hard as it might sound it’s foolish and extremely ignorant to rush into this union like lemmings.  One could end up with nothing to show for it like a heart broken, foolhardy, gold prospector who lost everything in the Californian gold rush. Just like a world class automobile mechanical engineer goes to school to learn skills for his profession, marriage also needs skills from a college we never graduate from. What is more amazing than Spiderman is that people would go out of their way to spend millions on a world class wedding (there is absolutely nothing wrong with this if you can afford it) but have never read a N500 marriage book all their lives. A wedding is for a few exhaustive hours (especially around here) except it’s a very low key one for example in Vegas or the pacific islands with very few well wishers.  A marriage is for life. We invest into our future when we pay more attention to it.

      In the Nigerian cultural setting, singles especially ladies are usually subjected to a lot of pressure to get married and have children. This is worse with advancement of their age, to the extent that older singles see each new year like the final seconds to the detonation of a time bomb. This could make a lady desperate enough to think that with a smackeroo she can turn any beast that approaches her into a charming prince. As harrowing as loneliness and emotional trauma may be its still not enough to mortgage ones future for or enter a torture chamber in the name of keeping up the appearance of a married life.

      Though the veracity of God’s timeless wisdom that it is bad for man to remain alone cannot be contested, I believe that it's better to stay alone than to tie the knot of the marriage covenant with a wrong person.
      What has thrown the spanner into the wheels of God’s perfect plan?

      Our thought processes, decisions, preconceived ideas and choices. People have wrong notions about how some things should be because of the environment they grow up in. Some people’s perception about marriage is like someone still holding on to the thoughts that the earth is flat.

For example, some people get married just because of sex which is akin to putting the roof before the foundation in the construction of an edifice. Utterly flabbergasting!

      What about instances where ladies are asked to get pregnant to prove their fertility/fecundity like guinea pigs before they are walked down the aisle. I met a gorgeous educated lady like that once and you could have knocked me down with a feather because she willingly followed the guy like a lamb to the slaughter. I kept wondering how things could have degenerated to an extent where a woman would throw away her dignity like used up tampon. One does not have to be a Socrates to know that love at its best is unconditional and when someone puts down conditions before getting married to you, a waterloo worse than Napoleon’s is waiting in the wings. What turns people into bats in the full glare of the sunlight of truth when it comes to taking the aisle launch? Why would any sane person take a leap into an uncertain life time commitment without looking? Why would anyone go into a never ending union that is only bound together by banal things like sex, looks and money? They are great but have the tensile strength of a spider’s web when push comes to shove?

      Sauron and his orcs are out to destroy the world and the essence of the ring but with more thought, better wisdom, deeper insight, sharper judgment, we all like Frodo and his unique friends will be able to preserve and make stronger the fellowship of the ring.