CONTENTMENT: a refresher course from my Indomie aboki.

I closed late at work, as usual, with stacks of customers’ complaints left unattended. This is another unfulfilled day in summary. Famished as I was, the only other thing that got my attention was the little boil forcing its way out of my eyelid. It was drizzly, so it wasn’t hard to decide what I was to have for dinner: hot aboki Indomie it is.

He was in the middle of a package when I got there. "Shall I go for a package too, or the total package", I thought.  The last time I went for a total package, I wasted a ton of it. I will rather settle for a bite I can chew. As I peeped to see how far along the sizzling pack on fire is, he caught my gaze and regarded me with a warm salutation “Oga welcome”. The smile was the only other smile I remembered after the few ones I gave when we just opened to customers earlier in the day. Wait, did I even smile at anyone today? Maybe the other day.  I have been gloomy at work of late, zobo-red eye worn around most of the time.

“Which one you want”, he interjected. “Gimme one medium-sized Indomie and two eggs”, I replied. “Tonight, I am not a man”, I thought, “neither am I as hungry to consume and contain the hungry man size package”. He smiled, got a cup and started the ritual.  He is always fun to watch, but not tonight. The smoke, stirred up by the soft weather was drifted everywhere and wouldn’t lemme enjoy how he does his thing. With a pack soaked up in hot water in a cup, he got another cup to mix the eggs and the sauce. While doing all this, he chatted me up about work, asking if it was good. The traditional “fine, thank you” came by reflex. This abokis can be nice sha! Then I remembered another of my bachelor servicing mama-puts. That one go just bone like say somebody die. She no dey even get change. This aboki is far better than mama Sunday, walahi.

Instant noodle is the name; it wasn’t long before I was served.  I paid.  He deserved a tip, but the penny-wise being dwelling inside me inclined me to collect my change. I was now set for where I packed my car. Then the thoughts came: what motivates him? What makes him and keeps him happy at this job? He seems to have it all. I went further to analyse how much interest he could have made on my package. Maybe 50 Naira or a little bit more, or less. If he is able to sell 10 of that, he could have made N500. 50 of that and he would have made N2500? I get tips fatter than this on a very good day! Now that’s crazy. How does he sustain his family? How much does he save? Does he even own a car? Does his hajia wear Brazilian hair? Strings of questions queued in my mind unanswered.

I concluded it is not about how much the money is, it is about been happy with what have, what you do at a point in time. It is not about driving the latest car, or using the latest technology. With time and chance, you can attain whatever you desire, but you gotta be content with what you have now! I mean, if some of us are asked to trade places with him, we’ll just nag ourselves into extinction or something close.  He may as well over-flex his muscles assuming he is a god, if endowed with that “riches you are not content with”. There is always someone who has it better and someone who has it worse. Some of my readers out there are already earning the armed-robber salary, so to say, and we are never contented. Don’t get me wrong, I am not clamouring for you to be complacent, or that you should not aspire for greater heights, but, hey, while you are doing that, something tells me you ought to live a healthy life. Be satisfied with what you’ve already got. A bird in hand, whether dead or alive, is worth more than ten thousands in the bush (except, of course, you own a poultry farm somewhere in the bush). Being content is a neurophysiological experience, whatever that means. *smiles*

Uncle Lao Tzu was at our place the other day and said “be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are.  When you realise there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”  You don’t need more to be thankful, you just need to be more thankful. I have learnt a new lesson, and I will be applying it a long time. The meal, by the way, was good as always, you need to try it out sometimes too.

Great day awaits you!

You can engage me on twitter @bimbolanko

What if all you have is 40 years?

Do the math. Let’s say you are 20yrs old already! Then you have a whooping 20 years more. In football, one will say you are at the “half time” period of your life. From your perspective, life is just getting started. You have time; you can always do whatever you want to whenever you deem fit. You can always take it easy, no rushing. No pressure. No qualms.  In reality, you are half way done. Life is like a Blackberry battery, better still, a Nokia battery. As soon as you disconnect the charger, it starts discharging, running low and low, depending on the activities, until it is flat and out.  Of course, some maximize this battery life while available: quality phone calls, presentations, publishing, sharing, ads, quick searches and look-ups, what have you.  Others do other things which just make the phone go hot!

To have a goal is good, to pursue it is better, and to do so on time is the best.  You cannot continue to push tasks off to the last possible minutes. If you think it is stressful to do it now, wait till when you settle to do it later and find out how much pressure has mounted. Executing your idea may seem overwhelming and stressful, pushing it forward only compounds you woe.  Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow. The old mantra says “Don’t leave for tomorrow what you can do today”. I’ll rather kill today’s trouble than push it forward, and add it up to tomorrow’s.  If it is worth the effort, then you shouldn’t wait.

The gospel truth is, the longer you procrastinate, the lower your self esteem gets. The sense of fulfillment is not there. Self-doubt creeps in at will. The odds are higher that you may not get to do what you ought to do as you allow time tick by. Start! Dive in first. Something tells me the farther you go, the more committed you’ll get. Come to think of it, I procrastinated writing this blog. Occasionally I just drifted away. I even left it completely for Wordosaur the other time. See! The easy things are always really not worth it after all.

Quick appraisal: What were the targets you set for yourself, say, 1^st of January this year? How many have you seen through? Did you truly pursue them?  Some of them do not take 8 months to achieve, remember? You’ve still got more than enough time before the year runs out….”maybe not”.

You only live once. Sad enough, most people utter this as a defense for the reckless life they lead; the easy escape route. It is the perfect excuse to waste life.  You only live once, but the impact you have could be eternal. Solutions you bring may be unquantifiable. Time is of essence.  Time is a resource, manage it. Idle time seems to pass more slowly than occupied time. In reality the time ticks seconds after seconds. It is our perception of time that differs.

Do something, it’s almost midnight.

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Don’t fold your arms.

Who invented electricity?  

That was the question that came to mind instantly.  I already know who invented Facebook. Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, right? Yippee!!! Brilliant me! I sometimes stare hard and long at the pictures of that guy. 29 years old. He looks as normal…and as distracted as the rest of us. Jeez! looks can be deceiving.  So I turned to Google, my second best companion, to check out who really brought about electricity.  Different names started popping up: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Michael Faraday, Allessandro Volta, William Gilbert and soooo many others. I was bent on knowing the friend and the foes. I just needed a name. How on earth will someone invent something that just shocked the hell out of me earlier in the day?

The first link I clicked was reluctant to open, thanks to MTN Nigeria. Then another thought dropped into my mind: what if these inventors folded their arms? What would we have got? My wild imagination resumed full time and I could see a 10-million capacity stadium  filled to the brim with Arsenal and Aston Villa fans, all holding binoculars and telescopes as long as, if not longer than, the Vuvuzela, trying to catch a glimpse of the proceedings on the pitch. It’s either you watch the game live or you get nothing.  I wouldn’t even be able to recharge my phone or laptop – that is if the ones who brought about the invention of these gadgets didn’t fold their arms too.

I imagine our Facebook inventor folding his arms, graduation with honors, being employed by, say, Google? He will not just be on his supposed competitor’s payroll, Maybe we would all still be on Hi5 by now.  It also means there wouldn’t even have been internet. No Google? No yahoo? (maybe naija woulda been better off with the riddance of yahoo bois and girls tho’), no automobiles and aircrafts? It is hard to imagine, but I think all we would have been left with are lush green attires, manna from heaven, and we would have continued to be fruitful and multiply. 

Evidences of engaged hands abound everywhere. Just look around you. From penicillin to the food stacked up in your cabinet. The boogie-boogie you rock and those cute shirts that make you look fly. Imagine a world without cassava bread (laughs), preservatives, anesthetics and you’ll know what I’m talking about. We can go on and on. The list is inexhaustible.

    

We don’t know what we are missing until we have it.There are a lot of thing the Milky Way still deserves. Don’t fold your arm, who knows what you’ve got in there? Maybe you will be the one to bring about the kind of electricity that doesn’t shock!

Do something!

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Vanity: which version?

Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

But there are varieties of vanity.

The fulfilled, Ferrari driving, empire running, mansion dwelling, fat-account owning, buffet chopping, popular and highly-placed type. This class I refer to as the sweet vanity. Some names are coming to mind, right?

There is the middle class. The average. The comfortable. The unfulfilled. The we we.

There is also the okada riding, garri soaking, fufu-filled, minimum-balance checking, landlord fighting, loan loving "vanitarians" chilling uncomfortably at the base of the food chain.

It is a reality, as much as it is a caution sign, the proclamation above. Some of us however use the quote, or rather, the wise saying too often to console ourselves. It quickly comes to mind when we couldn't achieve a feat someone just clinched. When one is defeated. Wouldn't it be funny if at the end of last EPL season an Arsenal supporter goes to a ManU fan and tells him "all na vanity"? The trophy all 20 teams coveted so much? So it is with success. All is vanity, but succeed anyway.


Don't get me wrong, but if you have settled for what you currently got, except for the few of us at the top, of course (few of 'em I mean), it is a shame. The last time I checked, the ones at the top are even the ones running harder, aspiring higher. Pulling strings so stuffs will be rosier. Wherever you currently seat in the listings, please look up, as we speak, and you'll find space. There is always space up there, out there, and the higher you go in this regard, the spacious it becomes. If however you can't find space, then you are being crushed. probably in a deep mess at the moment. You have a little digging around to do.


Till hell freezes, some golds will never be mined. Hope you are not one of them? Go all out. Be the best you can be, though all is vanity. Kill complacency, though all is vanity. Don't be too conservative, though all is vanity. Bring forth goodies. Be! Or which will you rather choose: Sweet vanity or Bitter vanity?

If you find this odd, then seriously, I'm just kidding.

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Pregnant again?

A lady may have all the excuses for getting pregnant the first time. I mean, all the scary stuffs she heard about being pregnant sounded exaggerated, she could keep up with them. What's so hard in carrying few extra pounds? These nagging pregnant women are just too lazy.

Then she misses her period. No big deal. A lot of other things happen and she suddenly changes. She is swollen all over. The way the dough rises when yeast is added. Our shapely lady becomes huge. The incessant puking and desire to eat, though contrasting, are also ever present. She becomes edgy, and her mate is quick to give her some space. She paddles this canoe all by herself. She cant even sleep on her belly like most of us do.

On and on these go until the delivery day. Scary movie!. Screaming, pouting and whining. I learned some wives even curse their husbands for putting them through this excruciating pains. Blah bla blah, and the baby is born.

This is over with. Lesson learned. This mistake will never be repeated. Not again. Then you hear she is pregnant again! How? Why? For what? Is she really so quick to forget what she went through the other time?

                                                *    *    *

Nothing good comes easy. Whatever motivates that experienced mother to get pregnant again is what pushes successful people to succeed. If our mothers left it a one-off thing, most of us wouldn't be here, you know. The baby-producing section in heaven would have been closed down since since! No excuse is tenable for failure. You can go on and on listing reasons you should call it quit. Reasons you should abort. You can cry me a river, nobody cares. All you need do is go though those harsh and hard times, squeeze hard, push through and bring forth the goodies in you.

Have a great day.

@bimbolanko

Don't kill yourself, you will still die!

I came across an avi on a friend's DP not long ago that carried the line above, and I practically begged for it. It amused me and got me really thinking.

The author got it right, forget stories. I mean, let's analyze it. What could you be going through that''ll make you wanna commit?

HUNGER
I know there is this chronic hunger level that resembles hell. Your meal is always flat, featuring no terrestrial or aquatic delicacies. The thing dey even hard you to swallow cos of the lack of motivation. Imagine, your wife now added salt to your injury by placing some strange cutlery (fork and knife) beside your bowl of pap and sugar, just to drive her own point home? In your mind, you think she is gonna give you heart attack. Look on the bright side my brother: cholesterol no dey for your meal *winks*, not to talk of too much of it (hypercholesterolaemia) which causes Atherosclerosis, Angina and heart attacks. Your wife, not to mention life, is trying to preserve your life. Be thankful.

MONEY
It's hard to convince you not to kill yourself if you don't have money. Go ahead, kill yourself.

But wait o, what if Uncle Jonathan had killed himself that time he had no shoes? Maybe Nigerians would've been happier, but not Jona, or his family members.

The guy go just land for hell fire gbam, devil go call am:

(Devil)

Ebele, come and see "u ar" future. This is where you promised fresh air, this is where they voted for you,

this is where you pepper rest finish, see you dey carry 2.3 bhi dey chop annually.

Goodluck go zoom in, laugh hysterically before saying "if na joke make you stop am o!". "You dey craze?, This no go fit be m......wait wait na me o, Chineke!". "See as I arrange! See shoe! See people, Chineke nna! Abeg wey that gal wey I been dey eye?".

(Devil replies)

Patience? Na she be your first lady now! I don fast-forward pass where u become deputy gov...

(Goodluck interjects)

Na Lieeeeeee! Pechie marry me? I don hammer, I don die!

(Devil smiles and whispers)

Yes you don die.

(Goodluck retorts)

Nwane, I have to go back, I will set up a committee to look into selling of rat poison on the street. I strongly condemn it. Damn it.

(Devil snaps)

Sharrap there u! You see your future now, u begin dey speak igbo? The rat poison don chop your intestine and your destiny. Fire burn you!

My wild imagination. But the truth is, he could have killed himself when the going got tough. Don't kill yourself for money; your future (fit) bright, if you do what is right, now.

MAN/WOMAN

He broke your heart? Awww! I'm so sorry. How could he do this to you? What you guys had was rare! Jeez! he really sucks.

Stuff like this happen every time and individuals react in different ways. But why will you want to kill yourself? He is definitely not the one for you? Just learn the lesson and move on. He probably will beat you up regularly after marriage, or maybe he''ll just pour correct acid on your face, Lobatan.

There are better things to do when you are momentarily tired of life, like closing your eyes and crossing the express road. Just kidding.

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Enjoy this Saturday.