A female friend visited me yesterday afternoon with heavy eyes. She had been crying. Her car broke-down on her way to the mechanic, so she decided to pay me a visit after the engineer towed her vehicle off for repairs. She said the Uber driver tried to console her. According to her, the young man was far from what was drawing tears from her eyes. He thought it was the car’s state.

‘I am tired! I am just tired of this country’, cried Anita (not real name). A mother of two, Anita parted ways with her husband after six years of enduring what she called incompartble chemistry. Anita and I met four years ago in the boardroom of an insurance company located on Lagos Island. I was there to do a presentation and so was Anita and members of her team. After the session, she approached me, expressing likeness for my effort. We exchanged phone-numbers and we have been friends ever since.

Yesterday, Anita just could not hold it in. Tears cascaded down her cheeks as she spoke to me sobbing. She has had enough, I reckoned within me. It so happened that I was able to calm her down after about 20 minutes. ‘This country is full of animals! Nothing works. Everyone is out to make life unbearable for people. I am tired'! I laughed at her last words. Anita kept a straight face, looking every inch dis-interested in the humour of her speak.

‘My sister, there is no where in this world that man doesn’t have problems’, I said to her. I went on for about an hour, narrating, analyzing and encouraging, after which we took a walk to a near-by bar where we had drinks and recovered her smile.

The caretaker of my abode has been on my case. I respect his peaceful and civil nature. The last time he visted, I showed him details of payments pending. Not long after he left, a lawyer friend of mine called, lamenting the intense economic hardship in the Nigerian economy. He said he has not been able to pay his kids’ school fees for tow terms and that he owes over a year’s rent. And his wife? ‘My brother, I regret marrying that woman’! I did my best possible to calm him down. Somehow, I am able to stabilize the emotions of victims of rough and purulent Nigerian society, while bearing my own burden.

Until I got close to Satguru Maharaj Ji, I allowed the ubiquitous mess of Nigerian society to sip into my being and stay in. To survive in this kind of population, you must have thick-skin. Your positivity must be real and resilent. You must block your ears to any and every word from whoever that is either irrelevant to your focus in life or that is detrimental to your happiness. You must be very spiritual in the Light dimension, otherwise you’ll find yourself either gleaning or feasting at the mercy of corrupted and deadly spirits clad deceptively in charm and glitter. If not this, you'll have yourself ambushed and struggling in subservience to congenital nuisances wrapped in tatters and tawdry. Not all that glitter is gold! Not all who smile are sincere! You must also build and maintain the ability to identify and keep the relatively few human-beings around.

Meeting a good man or woman anywhere in the world (black, white, yellow or red) feels like fresh air. You feel strengthened – re-invigorated! You feel secure. You are happy!

Things are tough no be joke, but we are survivors