What I Have Learnt
*dusts blog* Please, don’t ask me why I haven’t written anything in months-I won’t have a reasonable explanation for that. *shrugs* Well Well Well,it’s so so good to be back here *smiles* Thanks to a whole lot of you who have always been concerned as to why I stayed off for a while, and also to those of you who didn’t bother to ask…thanks all the same!
Few Months from now, I’m going to be eighteen. Meaning officially, I’ll be an adult by then. Thinking about this brings mixed thoughts to my heart and makes me have mixed feelings. Although I am excited that I’m actually moving into a new phase of my life, I’m a bit nervous about what the future holds for me. Also, I am not too happy ’cause there are a thousand things I could have done in my previous years which I was ignorant of or which I chose personally not to do. I shouldn’t be regretting now, since I can’t turn back the hand of time. Well, let me not bore you. I’m writing this for something and that’s to share with you, what I have learnt so far- sorry, one of the things I have learnt so far. Please relax, sip your drinks, have fun, gain something. Thanks.
Life, they say, is a teacher. The more we live, the more we learn. There can never be a truer statement! With each passing year, I have learnt something more than the previous years, something better, something worse, and even irrelevant things. As we grow older, we learn different things,innit?-good, bad, important, useless. The main point is, we have all learnt different things, we are still learning and until we die, we will not stop learning.
One great thing life has taught me is that I shouldn’t show love to others with the expectation of being loved in return. I have learnt that not everybody would show me as much love as I’ve shown them. If we all knew this, our world might probably be better than it is now( just saying). Many, most of us expect others to love us just as we love them and when they don’t, we become heart-broken and we vow never to love anybody else that much. This really shouldn’t be so. The Bible says, ”Love others as you love yourself”, not ”Love others as you want them to love you”. Many of our relationships fail today because,instead of loving others as we should(forgetting if they love us or not), we prefer doing the ”Love me as I love you” thing or ”If you don’t love me, I won’t love you” thing or because we have predicted that someone might not give us the same measure of love we give them, we decide not to love them enough as it should be.
In past times, I have been hurt because people I showed love to didn’t love me back or didn’t love me as much as I loved them. Now, if in the first place, I had loved them without expecting to be loved back at all, I wouldn’t be as hurt as I later got. This is a great lesson I have learnt from life and this is a great lesson(that I think) others should also learn.
Love others as you love yourself. Love others without expecting anything in return, then let’s see if we won’t have fewer broken hearts in our society.
Thank you so much for stopping by to read this. Now, please, don’t leave without leaving your thoughts. Contributions, Contradictions and Corrections would be highly appreciated.
AFTER A BREAKUP..
I couldn’t stop crying. It was just too painful. I had used up two rolls of tissue paper, wiping my tears and blowing my nose. I’m sure the woman beside me in the molue I boarded was filled with pity ’cause after a while, she asked me,“Aunty, wetin happen?”. I was silent for a while, wondering what on earth her business with that was and was about to reply in a rude manner but all that could come out of my mouth was, “Nothing. Nothing.” and I wiped my tears and I turned back to the bus window, keeping my face plain as if I had suddenly gotten better. I couldn’t wait to get off the bus and when the conductor shouted, “KOLAWALE!”, I replied in an almost inaudible voice.
“Kolawole o wa o”. The driver didn’t hear me, he had almost driven past my bus-stop before the same woman beside me helped me in shouting, “KOLAWOLE WA OOOOO”, and Goodness, I was grateful to her for that. She adjusted her legs for me to pass, telling me, “Sorry o.” arousing attention from others on the bus and before I knew it people were already chanting, “Sorry o. Aunty, e pele o”. I ignored them all and alighted with a small prayer of thanks and a long hiss. My flat wasn’t too far so I walked briskly, opened my door with a sole key in my handbag and badged into the flat. After finding a close sofa, without undressing, I sank into it and burst into fresh tears.
I just couldn’t imagine how my four-year old relationship would end that way. FOUR YEARS! I thought to myself, FOUR SOLID YEARS! What went wrong wasn’t what I could think of. I kept thinking, so I had wasted four years of my life in a hopeless relationship that finally ended nowhere, with a bastard I so trusted with all my life. An Idiot! An imbecile. For 4 days, I kept brooding and brooding over the incident. On the fifth day, I decided that crying over the whole thing wasn’t going to help matters and neither was it going to help me. Things begin and Things end. And when they end, they most probably lead to something new. Some people are not worth being in our lives and when they leave, we ought not to kill ourselves over it. I decided to start a new life without him, forgetting my past and everything that was in it, though it was almost impossible.
This is for everyone out there who is going through something similar to this. The end of something doesn’t mean the end of everything. Recovering from a break-up, especially one you didn’t for-see could be really hard and painful but like they say, time heals all wounds. Crying and starving yourself over it wouldn’t make you feel better. If the relationship ended, it means that person wasn’t for you and therefore you’ve got to wait for or search for someone who is yours. After a break-up, don’t think your world has collapsed, instead, have a positive attitude and tell yourself that a new and better world of yours has just started. Forget whatever happened and look over to the bright side of things. After a break-up doesn’t come the end of it all but the beginning of a more-fulfilled life which you never thought of at first.
Thanks for reading. Please leave your comments. Contributions and Corrections are highly welcomed.
WHO CARES?
Last week Sunday, my sister and I woke up really late. We had a programme the day before and being so tired, we slept early and slept in the next day. We woke up so late that I considered not going to church….On our way to church, while we were still on our street, something-or someone rather-caught my attention.
“Oyinlola, Oyinlola, see!”, I roughly nudged my sister.
“What?”, she queried.
“Can’t you see that girl? She stays on our street, doesn’t she? She’s pregnant”, I said, shocked and hardly believing what I was saying myself. The girl is my age-or at most, a year older than I am, which was why I was surprised.
“Do you want to tell me that you’re just knowing?, Oyin asked me, indifferently.”Since all these years, so you’re just knowing that she’s pregnant. Na wah for you o.” She said and hissed. I remained silent for a second. I had ‘carried last’.
“I never knew she was pregnant. We finished secondary school together!”, I continued with disbelief. If someone had just told me that the girl was pregnant, I wouldn’t have believed. They say, Seeing is believing, but in this case, I saw and I couldn’t still believe. Why was I concerned? What was or is my business? We don’t talk. I don’t even know her name. But I was sad and I still am.
After the service, I brought up the idea of the pregnant girl while some of my friends were around. I can’t remember that incidence without telling anybody around. Even when I got home, I still told my mummy and daddy. I still wonder why or how she got herself into that position? Perhaps she was wayward-like most people would think. Or maybe a victim of circumstance. I can’t tell. More saddening is thinking of the fact that thousands of other teenagers are in this position. You might think it’s all right, but I think it’s not. Imagine the stigma she’s going to carry around now, the difficulty she’ll go through during labour-that’s if she doesn’t abort, the ostracizing she’s going to receive from the society…if she finally gives birth,will she be able to go back to school? A girl of 17 or 18…Gosh!
I am not going to criticize anybody-let the sinless one cast the first stone. I’m going to act like this is a normal case knowing fully well that people perform certain actions for certain reasons. You may think it’s a normal case but I disagree cause for a girl who has no means of livelihood, this case is perfectly not okay. Well, we live in a society where no one cares, no one bothers, and everything that would initially have looked unacceptable has now become acceptable. Wait, what’s my own sef? Who send me message? Am I a relative to the girl that got pregnant? Or na me send am make she go get belle? It’s her life, is it not? We ask this questions. Nobody cares. I don’t care either, but I care.
I wrote this because like I said earlier, I can’t remember this without telling anybody around. Nevertheless, I sincerely think something should be done about this, although it seems impossible. So what do you think? Who cares?
Thanks for reading. Please don’t forget to comment and share.
THE BABY’S STYLE
I have a baby brother who just clocked one. Most of the time, we’re usually together. Over the months, I’ve learnt to understand him. For instance, I know he’s hungry if he begins to take his mouth to my breast. I know he’s sleepy if he begins to rub his face awkwardly with his hands. I know he wants to stay on my back if he keeps crying even when he’s not hungry. And I know something could be wrong if he totally behaves different from normal. I understand my brother. One special thing I love about him is his smile. Whenever I’m a bit sad and he suddenly smiles, I smile back and I forget what’s making me sad. Sometimes when I see him cackling, laughing hard and saying words I don’t understand, I say to him, “Baby, you aint seen anything yet”
Babies have such innocent personality. Never hating, never doing most things that adults do. And I wish I were a baby. Wouldn’t it be so nice to live such an innocent, less-complicated life? Being at peace with all, hating none and cheering sad souls with your smile.
Truth is we almost can never be like babies. The older you grow, the wider your world becomes, the more your troubles are, the more you gain enemies, the more you find a lot of stuff annoying. That can’t change, can it? But it would be a lot better if we sometimes lived like babies-never hating, never criticizing,loving all and accepting all. Learn the baby’s style. To me, it doesn’t make you a baby. It makes you wiser instead and it also gives you a more innocent life to live. And I want to become a baby again.
Thank you for reading, and please don’t forget to share.