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Please, kindly read ABORTION 2 before proceeding to read the article below.

When you meet your classmates of your former institution and gist starts evolving; a time in the conversation comes when you ask of one of your classmates not available at the meeting. “How far with Lagbaja?” “Lagbaja has moved ahead, he is now a big boy, check out is Hummer, his bling-bling is worth more than 50 million naira, his house in Ajah is bigger than Buckingham Palace, etc.” “How far with Tomedo?” “Tomedo is just there.” This conversation always puts me in the pensive mood and each time I wonder the way people are judged based on their material possessions. This is how the world works and I have learnt to live around it but I keep wondering the adverse effect this particular culture plays on the mind of individuals; the amount of dreams that has been aborted because you want keep up with the joneses, the amount of wrong decisions made because your leanings are always towards the material possessions and the inability to enter your platform of destiny because the platform is perceived not to bring financial rewards.

This is the difference between those that the world perceived to move ahead and those the world perceive to be just there. The difference is in the physical material possession. When you say that Pastor is doing well, you simply mean he has acquired money. Is this what you think the success of the Pastor should be? I am sure most people would disagree in principle but would agree with your heart. Just to substantiate my postulations, I remember a chat I had with a lady I was friendly dating in the university (you know those kinds of dates where you are always with the opposite sex without confirming the nature of relationship that you have, very convenient!). This was the ladies background; of course she is beautiful (but not my light-complexion preference), she wanted to study Medicine but she was in Micro Biology. She was very passionate about this discipline move that it makes 60% of our conversations (Oh was I bored with it). So I questioned her motive;

Dipo: Why do you want to study medicine?

Ebony: I genuinely care for people and all I want to do is to care for them.

Dipo: Why don’t you become a nurse? You would care for people more and to become a nurse is less of a hassle than medicine if your aim is to care for people.

The conversation generally ended. Though she could say all the clichés, behind every choice is general acceptance and money longing. After reading Dr. Life of A Stranger’s article titled “Stayin on ur Track”, I remembered the emptiness associated with pleasing the crowd as against pleasing you and introspectively pleasing God. Every time we pretend to be who we are not in order for people to perceive us favorably, we have simply become the puppet; a slave in the hands of people who don genuinely care if you please them or not. Then why are we so engulfed with pleasing people? Why can we not be ourselves? Why do we buy things we do not need in order to make people accept us?

The “Abortion2” write-up is one of my best write-ups though it was not among the most popular. This write-up depicts my very human nature craving for the finer things in life without understanding the essence of them. The jealous feeling that engulfed me benchmarks my true motivation; to please people. If my friend in the article had come with an “okada” (Nigerian Motorcycle used for transport purposes), I would not have any ill feelings toward him. If he came with a ‘tokunbo” car, I definitely would not bulge but coming in a new car threw me off balance; it revealed an emotion that had never surfaced before. It clearly indicated the reason why I had not progressed at that time; I had not passed the Law of Success “Love your neighbors as yourself”.

If Dupe wanted to get married but has not seen the right man; she goes to the corner of her closet and prays to the almighty God revealing her plans. She does this with all the fasting (dry, wet, only fruits, etc) but if she hears her colleague is getting married and she feels negative towards the announcement, she would not get the right man if she does not attend to the reason her heart was feeling negative. The heart points us to our inner fears and reveals that we are not yet ready to come to the position we have dreamed about. Let me give you a relevant example; Deolu Akinyemi cycled 3 times in Club Freedom before I was struggling to cycle. The feeling of jealousy wanted to hit me but I immediately went to God and thanked him for Deolu’s progress. I (together with my best friend) prayed for him and his family and I was immediately cured of the negative feeling. Though I had not cycled, I was happy for him. I celebrated him and my mind started changing; instead of jealously, I really wanted to know how he was able to do it. I longed to do it too and before long, I was cycling almost every two/ three weeks till the boards slowed down.

One of the keys to moving ahead is to love your neighbor as yourself. Simply put, if you want to see yourself in that position you have to love the people in the same position. To have a positive feeling towards the person in the position that you want to attain then before long, you would see yourself there. At the side of this site is a book I would recommend for reading, it’s called THE SCIENCE OF GETTING RICH. You can download it; it’s FREE!