Tag: HAPPINESS

Today, reader, we are going to wax philosophical because the year is now at an end and as they say, we are not going to pass this way again. This means that we must take stock of what has gone before in order to make what is going to come richer. You will agree that this year has presented very interesting events to the pleasure of some and the consternation of most. After looking through these events, I have been saddened to note that the significant thread that runs through them is this problem of money. Just name any scandal in the year and you will find that at the heart of it is money, running into billions of Naira at year’s beginning and dollars at the year’s close. Clearly, as Hamlet needlessly observed to no one in particular, ‘something is rotten in the state of Nigeria’. More worrisome still, the malodorous content always seemed to stink around or even over the central government.

      Now, one of the hallmarks of this material age we live in is the fact that we tend to fill our lives with dross. You know what those are, don’t you? They are perishable items like vegetables, electronics, people, ambitions or even values. Someone once complained that in the mad rush for success now, people have completely lost sight of the real thing. This means that real people like you and me now regularly sacrifice other people literally to obtain our goals. The story is told of how groups of mountain climbers on their ways to mountain summits regularly climbed over the bodies of other climbers too weak or fatigued to continue their climbs. Heaven forbid that they should think of the alternative: stopping to help, which was often considered too costly as it would mean delaying or cancelling their own ambitions. In your typical Nigerian ambition, therefore, human life has been devalued, ritualised or even wasted to reach the goal: get money.

Now, things are so bad it makes you wonder if anyone knows the real meaning of life anymore. Most have imbibed and internalised the dictum, ‘get abundance that you may have more abundance’. Whenever your average Nigerian can, he/she aims for abundance and more abundance. This is why it is possible for an individual to construct compartmentalised, ceiling-high shelves where different currencies and denominations sit day in, day out, worshipped by the stealer. That’s right; that individual (and others like him) is your fellow Nigerian. Pity your poor workman who finds he has to work in houses where such altars have been constructed for money. Just ask one around you. He will tell you stories of how the obsessed money gatherers daily run their eyes and hands and feet over and through them in ecstasies of worship.

     Yet, when it has come right down to it, money illicitly and indecently gathered has never been of help to the gatherer. Think about it. Most of such monies are useful for purchasing a lifestyle that is not particularly useful – partying, procuring under-aged minors of both sexes for sexual gratification, purchasing Items of Self Destruction (ISD) such as private jets or Items to be Wasted (ITBW) such as houses and islands because those may not even be remembered again after purchase. It is incredible the number of people who have silently gone down into the grave just after piling up under them such monumental heaps of money meant for the general populace. Even as you read this, dear reader, I believe you can think of one or two examples.

      Whenever I have wanted to teach myself a lesson, I have always remembered the story told of M.K.O. Abiola who was said to have pleaded with the doctors to do everything in their power to save his ailing first wife, ‘no matter what it would cost’. When the doctors tried and could not, he was said to have hissed and exclaimed, ‘SHAME ON MONEY!’ You see, he had the money and the power, but that money had no purchasing power.

      Listen, if you want to know the purchasing power of your money, get stranded on the road in the night with no fuel in your car and with you miles away from anywhere. All you will be holding is an empty gallon and a lot of money in your purse. Then instruct that money to get you some fuel. Alternatively, you might find yourself running around the town at night, going from one pharmacy to another, in search of a rare drug for a relative who is sick in the hospital. Someone who had that experience related that he kept pleading with each pharmacy in turn, ‘I have plenty of money here and I’m ready to pay any amount; please just sell me the drug’, but they did not have it.

     It is therefore very perplexing that Nigerians appear to make owning money an end. Some people explain this off as a cultural problem but I disagree. There is no Nigerian culture that licences the owning of money or properties which cannot be accounted for. Indeed, every known Nigerian culture not only frowns at, but even punishes, any illegitimate acquisition of properties. Rather, I think that the faulty physical strapping together of three disparate groups and the absence of a tested, well-formulated foundation (economic, political, moral, etc.) by the founding fathers of Nigeria are responsible for the dissociative life style we are witnessing. Add to that the fact that people have no credible reference points in terms of, say, leadership: for example, China has Mao Tse Tung; Britain has Churchill, France has de Gaulle, etc. In this way, you could say Nigeria constitutes a rudderless ship.

All hope is not lost. Rather than pursue money, Nigeria must join the rest of the world in pursuing things that have more eternal values. As the old year ends and another begins, each one of us must travel right back inside him or her and find those things which make for greater personal and altruistic happiness and pursue them. There are three things we can thus work on emphasising.

First, we can work on emphasising the miracles that happen each day. Miracles still happen and for you and me, they often come at no cost; for no amount of money can be put on the air that you and I draw every moment; our ability to leave home every morning and return at the end of the day; or a helping hand from a neighbour at a right time. More importantly, let us emphasise being miracle workers for someone: rescue a stranded one, bring hope to a depressed and hopeless person, share what little you have with someone else – you will be surprised what you get in return.

 The second is to work on emphasising moderation in everything. Eat in moderation; live in moderation; do bathroom singing in moderation; run after the world in moderation. I always say that no one can own the whole world – God already does, so why compete with him?

Thirdly, work for the interconnectedness of people. Believe it or not, the world is woven around people. We all exist to meet each other’s needs. Hoarding all the resources of everyone else therefore is futile. Sooner or later, nature will balance itself out, with or without you, by forcefully taking what you will not release and giving it out to others.

      The story is told of an old man who called his children together and showed them the multiple houses and plots of land he owned. Horrified, the children berated him for his selfishness. ‘Don’t you have poor relatives you can give them to?’ they asked. Remember, it is not what you don’t have that kills you; it’s what you have. True happiness is sharing what you have with others.