There are three things we spend our lives searching for, three things we unconsciously lust after; garri, groundnut and cold water! Hello everyone, my name’s Gloria and of course Mondays are For Butterflies. First off, I would like to thank everyone that responded to my request through emails and comments, your inputs are cherished, thank you very much, I’ve decided to learn German by the way so wie geht es dir? (How’s it going?). it’s the first day of February, the month of love, I hope you people are not going on relationship hiatus because of Val’s gift, you people don’t dodge, me bai, I’m currently booless so if you’d like to be my Val (just for Val ooo), ring me up, me number is 0806…, uhuhh so you’re thinking you can just hammer, just like that, c’mon gerrahere mehn sheet.
Seriously speaking though, there are three things we yearn for in this life, they’re:
1. Love: Ewan McGregor said in Moulin Rouge that the greatest thing in life is to love and be loved in return (something along those lines), love comes in all shapes and sizes, it could be agape, storge, phileo or Eros but in whatever form it comes, knowing you are loved without condition, for you, not in spite, but because… is enough to get you through some very tough times, it gets us a good support system that cushions our falls and celebrates our successes, and for most of us loving people makes us want to be better persons. Love can make us do crazy stuff too e.g. making a career choice to please a loved one, sacrificing or compromising your beliefs for someone else in hope that they’ll love you as much you do them etc. love on its own is powerful enough to make you soar or crash and burn.
2. Value: A different but equally powerful need is value, it is our sense of self, our perception of self worth a.k.a self esteem. Self worth is a complicated thing, and truth be told for most of us, it is easily shaken, we were cooking jollof rice the other day (truth be told, she was cooking and I was watching, but I know how to cook o before you start yabbing me, wife material, French lace,1000 yards toh bad) and my friend told me “I don’t like to be at the bottom of the food chain”, that’s because our sense of worth depends on different things really, for some it’s spirituality, others religion, most their place in their immediate society, for some it rises with being accepted and goes down with being rejected, it is because of self worth –among other factors – that we want to learn how to get our face beat, get that verified mark on twitter, lose some weight, gain some in those vital areas (I really would like a ‘C’ cup and a little more flesh around the gluteus, baba God pick up the call, na beg I dey beg), buy the latest iPhones or rob Toke Makinwa’s wardrobe. Value is powerful, dare I say it determines how much we enjoy our day-to-day life, a sure sense of self worth will make a barrow pusher in Abuja a king among his peers and a shaky one might get you a weekly appointment with the psychologist for a very long while.
3. Purpose: Miss Third World, what are your aspirations in life? (It does fit in here, doesn’t it? lol) what drives you? Where are you coming from? Where are you going? Is there a time frame? How do you intend on getting there? All these simply complex questions fall under the last but far from the least (the distance from the east to the west really) need – a sense of purpose, actually, this is what keeps you going when all else has failed, it’s why we wake up in the morning and do the nine-to-five routine, fall asleep only to repeat the whole cycle again, love without a sense of purpose will breed laziness and great self worth – purpose = an empty barrel.
Our search for these three ingredients to a meaningful life has been genetically implanted in us, they are what determine our measure of strength, weaknesses, and successes and of course failures, they define us, shape us and give us our identity, they are intertwined at the same time separate entities. When these needs are met in the right proportion, it gives us a strong sense of who we are and it springs in us the will to live, an example is Bill Gates, he was born into a wealthy family with a strong support system, Bill was very smart for his age and got easily bored in class, so his parents sent him to a private school where he found his sense of purpose; computers, today, he’s the richest man alive. But when we perceive that one or two or even three of these things are lacking in our lives, we start to lose a sense of who we are and with that our zest for life, we are forced to find our life’s meaning in the wrong places, a classic example of these is one of the most powerful villains in history; Adolf Hitler, the teenage Adolf and his dad never really got along, he wasn’t doing well in school and he had right cryptochidism, he was largely ignored by his mates, he lived most of his youth in poverty before joining the army, he had no support system and his sense of self worth was most probably down, and when he joined the army he found acceptance, he found meaning in his anti-Semitic ways, these probably led to his visions of grandeur and skewed sense of purpose and when he finally seized power, he poured himself into what gave his life meaning -killing the Jews.
Now the question is where do we search for the ingredients to a meaningful life, who’s capable of meeting these needs? How do we know where to look? … Guys, my lids are so heavy that I can barely see what I’m typing, let’s continue this next week. Please read and share this, don’t be a fish seller.
Xoxo,
Gloria.
