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Is she your friend? Yes? Let us see. Would you recommend her friendship to your sister, brother, mother or daughter? If you won’t then why do you have such a friend? You may say it is because you care but being caring is not the same as being foolish. In friendship there should be a fair negotiation where there is reciprocity. You are not in any way morally obliged to make friends with someone who is not making her life better. If she is not making her life better, she is making the world a worse place. Why in the world would you support such a person?

You want friends but you should choose people who want things to be better not worse as friends. Better for themselves, better for you, better for the world. Your friends should improve if you improve and vice versa. One good thing about being in friendship with people who want what is truly good for you is that they will not tolerate you destroying yourself. They encourage you when you are aiming upwards and chastise you when your aim is downwards. If you resolve to improve yourself, they will give you support. Those who surround you but are not true friends will help you aim downwards. They will praise you when you are aiming down and punish you when you are aiming up. They are the ones that will push you to gratify your impulsive pleasures to your detriment. They are ready to offer a recovering alcoholic alcohol.

Is she your friend? Yes? Let us see. Would you recommend her friendship to your sister, brother, mother or daughter? If you won’t then why do you have such a friend? You may say it is because you care but being caring is not the same as being foolish. In friendship there should be a fair negotiation where there is reciprocity. You are not in any way morally obliged to make friends with someone who is not making her life better. If she is not making her life better, she is making the world a worse place. Why in the world would you support such a person?

You want friends but you should choose people who want things to be better not worse as friends. Better for themselves, better for you, better for the world. Your friends should improve if you improve and vice versa. One good thing about being in friendship with people who want what is truly good for you is that they will not tolerate you destroying yourself. They encourage you when you are aiming upwards and chastise you when your aim is downwards. If you resolve to improve yourself, they will give you support. Those who surround you but are not true friends will help you aim downwards. They will praise you when you are aiming down and punish you when you are aiming up. They are the ones that will push you to gratify your impulsive pleasures to your detriment. They are ready to offer a recovering alcoholic alcohol.

How is she your friend if she does not bring any value in any way your way? When you do something and succeed at it, she is jealous. When you speak of your achievement, she tries to steal your joy by bringing up - or cooking up - her past actions so that your achievement experiences a sunset. She is dragging you down. Why? Because your improvement shines a bright light on her fault. Your improvement is judging her and she does not want that. She may even hate you for improving.

In the book of Genesis, the story of Cain and Abel is told. Abel brought his best as an offering to God while Cain did not bring his best. Abel’s sacrifice was accepted and God looked with favour on him. But God did not look with favour on Cain and his sacrifice. Cain became angry. “Why are you angry?” God asked Cain. “If you are doing what is right, you should hold your head high. But if you are not, sin is crouching at the door hungry to get at you. You can still master him.” We know the rest of the story – Cain’s anger leads him to kill Abel.

Why did Cain murder Abel? Abel did what is right and his action shone a bright light on Cain’s improper conduct. Abel was exemplary to Cain. An exemplary conduct is a judge. It judges her who does not act properly. Cain felt this judgement which should have pointed his aim up. Abel’s action was screaming at Cain, “You can be better than this.” Cain however descended to committing murder.

When you aim up, the inadequacy of the present becomes clearer to you and you can see the promise of the future. By doing that you disturb those who are cynical and whose inaction or lack of improvement is unjustifiable. You are their Abel. You should therefore be careful about making them your friend. How can they be your friend when your exemplary conduct is a continuous reminder of their irresponsibility and hence tortures them? Now you know why they are trying to bring you down. Be careful about making friends with them because the spirit of Cain may be operating in them.

It is stupid to surround yourself with people who are simply not good for you, people who are not helping you to at least aim up. But it is not easy to surround yourself with good healthy people. A good person is an ideal and an ideal is always judging. When you stand alongside that good person, you are reminded of your misconduct. Have some humility and accept your sin. Then muster some courage and act right after you must have used your judgement.

For your own good make friends with those who want what is good for you.

Growing:
Is she your friend? Yes? Let us see. Would you recommend her friendship to your sister, brother, mother or daughter? If you won’t then why do you have such a friend? You may say it is because you care but being caring is not the same as being foolish. In friendship there should be a fair negotiation where there is reciprocity. You are not in any way morally obliged to make friends with someone who is not making her life better. If she is not making her life better, she is making the world a worse place. Why in the world would you support such a person?

You want friends but you should choose people who want things to be better not worse as friends. Better for themselves, better for you, better for the world. Your friends should improve if you improve and vice versa. One good thing about being in friendship with people who want what is truly good for you is that they will not tolerate you destroying yourself. They encourage you when you are aiming upwards and chastise you when your aim is downwards. If you resolve to improve yourself, they will give you support. Those who surround you but are not true friends will help you aim downwards. They will praise you when you are aiming down and punish you when you are aiming up. They are the ones that will push you to gratify your impulsive pleasures to your detriment. They are ready to offer a recovering alcoholic alcohol.

How is she your friend if she does not bring any value in any way your way? When you do something and succeed at it, she is jealous. When you speak of your achievement, she tries to steal your joy by bringing up - or cooking up - her past actions so that your achievement experiences a sunset. She is dragging you down. Why? Because your improvement shines a bright light on her fault. Your improvement is judging her and she does not want that. She may even hate you for improving.

In the book of Genesis, the story of Cain and Abel is told. Abel brought his best as an offering to God while Cain did not bring his best. Abel’s sacrifice was accepted and God looked with favour on him. But God did not look with favour on Cain and his sacrifice. Cain became angry. “Why are you angry?” God asked Cain. “If you are doing what is right, you should hold your head high. But if you are not, sin is crouching at the door hungry to get at you. You can still master him.” We know the rest of the story – Cain’s anger leads him to kill Abel.

Why did Cain murder Abel? Abel did what is right and his action shone a bright light on Cain’s improper conduct. Abel was exemplary to Cain. An exemplary conduct is a judge. It judges her who does not act properly. Cain felt this judgement which should have pointed his aim up. Abel’s action was screaming at Cain, “You can be better than this.” Cain however descended to committing murder.

When you aim up, the inadequacy of the present becomes clearer to you and you can see the promise of the future. By doing that you disturb those who are cynical and whose inaction or lack of improvement is unjustifiable. You are their Abel. You should therefore be careful about making them your friend. How can they be your friend when your exemplary conduct is a continuous reminder of their irresponsibility and hence tortures them? Now you know why they are trying to bring you down. Be careful about making friends with them because the spirit of Cain may be operating in them.

It is stupid to surround yourself with people who are simply not good for you, people who are not helping you to at least aim up. But it is not easy to surround yourself with good healthy people. A good person is an ideal and an ideal is always judging. When you stand alongside that good person, you are reminded of your misconduct. Have some humility and accept your sin. Then muster some courage and act right after you must have used your judgement.

For your own good make friends with those who want what is good for you.

Please

Can you help me with any amount of money?

Urban Crest 1

Favorably situated in proximity to prime development projects such as Dangote refinery and Lekki Free Trade Zone, This estate is Commercially viable which makes it a smart investors choice.

Urban Crest 1 is a development of Ayhomes Investment Limited, a reputable real estate company in Lagos, Nigeria.

This estate is beautifully designed to deliver modern technology and natural serenity in a seamless marriage, proposed to redefine estate living standards.

LOCATION: Olomowewe, Ibeju Lekki. 3 minutes after Dangote Refinery

PRICE: Residential Price- 10.1m
Commercial Price- 11.1m


NOTE: PRICE IS ALL INCLUSIVE


PLOT SIZE: 500sqm


TITLE: C of O

FACILITIES:
Good road network
Drainage system
Recreational areas
Portable water
Electricity
Fenced and gated community


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Chinese Farm
Lekki Free Trade Zone
Dangote Refinery Complex
Deep Sea Port
New International Airport
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Consider life as a game for a moment. Are you a success or failure at this game called life? Well, there is a problem with that question. The words “success” and “failure” are just too black and white words. It assumes that you are either a success, a singular, comprehensive good thing or a failure, a singular, comprehensive, irredeemable bad thing. The question implies there is no in-between between success and failure. But we are complex beings living in a complex world. To generalize people as success or failure is a sign of naïve, unsophisticated or evil analysis. There are significant degrees and gradations of value wiped out by this success or failure binary system. The outcome is not good.

Life, considered as a game, is made up of many games not one. That means there are many games at which to succeed or fail. You should play games that match your talents and capacities, games that involve you productively and tend to make your life and that of others better. Engineering is a game as well as medicine, law, administration, teaching, plumbing, carpentry. There is no one way of being in the world. There are multiple ways. If you don’t succeed at a game there are many other games to play. Choose a game that aligns with your strengths, weaknesses and situation. If changing games does not seem to be working for you, you may have to invent a new one.

Consider life as a game for a moment. Are you a success or failure at this game called life? Well, there is a problem with that question. The words “success” and “failure” are just too black and white words. It assumes that you are either a success, a singular, comprehensive good thing or a failure, a singular, comprehensive, irredeemable bad thing. The question implies there is no in-between between success and failure. But we are complex beings living in a complex world. To generalize people as success or failure is a sign of naïve, unsophisticated or evil analysis. There are significant degrees and gradations of value wiped out by this success or failure binary system. The outcome is not good.

Life, considered as a game, is made up of many games not one. That means there are many games at which to succeed or fail. You should play games that match your talents and capacities, games that involve you productively and tend to make your life and that of others better. Engineering is a game as well as medicine, law, administration, teaching, plumbing, carpentry. There is no one way of being in the world. There are multiple ways. If you don’t succeed at a game there are many other games to play. Choose a game that aligns with your strengths, weaknesses and situation. If changing games does not seem to be working for you, you may have to invent a new one.

You simply don’t just play one game. You have a job, family, business, friends, associations you belong to, athletic pursuits, and personal projects. Are you a success or failure? Wrong question. You may want to consider judging your success across the multiple games you play.

The specifics of the multiple games you are playing are unique to you. They are so individual to you that comparing yourself to other people does not help you. You compare yourself to your secondary school classmate. He presently has a career whose pay package is significantly more than yours. You have a job that pays less. His wife is having an affair but your marriage is stable and happy. Who has it better? You admire that celebrity who is a drug addict but you are not. Are you sure you want his life? Maybe you undervalue what you have and overvalue what you don’t. Be grateful for what you have. There is real utility in gratitude. It protects you from being resentful.

We all have an internal critic. There are times that critic stops you from acting stupid or dragging yourself to hell. But sometimes that critic can be too critical and this can put you down. In comparing yourself to others in an unfavorable manner, the internal critic is going too far. I have mentioned that we are all playing multiple games in life but your internal critic may select a single game as a domain of comparison. Let’s say it selects the domain of football. When it does that, it acts as if that is the only relevant domain. It goes ahead to compare you to someone who is a superstar in that domain, say Messi. Comparing yourself to Messi in football is a setup that guarantees pain and sorrow for you when you consider football as the only relevant thing. After seeing the unbridgeable gap between you and Messi, you use it as evidence for how life is unfair and how much injustice there is. If you accept this form of self-evaluation you are making things too difficult for yourself.

We started comparing ourselves to others when we were very young. Standards are necessary and maybe that is why we had to do that. We needed to be informed and gain wisdom. That is how we develop our own standards. It is with standards that we give ourselves direction. As we mature, we become more unique and individual. This is as a result of the conditions of our lives which become less comparable to others and more personal.

Each of us is playing a unique set of games. You are good at some games, not that good at some, and terrible at others. Maybe it should be this way. You may not agree because you want to win at every game. But if you are winning at every game it means you are not doing anything difficult or new. You may be winning but not growing. Growing is the greatest form of winning.
Stop comparing yourself to who someone else is today. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday. If you are getting better at a game or a set of games, you are growing.

If you are growing you are winning.

Golden Castle Estate

Located on the north side of the Lekki Lagoon, Epe is part of the new Lagos.

The strategic location of Epe gives it the advantage of a gateway city, while at one end it promises to become the residential capital of one of the largest emerging economic center in west Africa because of its direct link to ibeju lekki, on the other end it has the potential to also serve as the transit hub of all the other states in Nigeria who will be coming to do lots of business at ibeju Lekki.

Golden Castle Estate, A development of Ayhomes Investment Limited located at Eredo, Epe is a residential estate beautifully designed to redefine estate living standards.

With landmarks like Alaro Satellite City, St Augustine University, Epe Resort and Spa, Atlantic College, e.t.c. Golden Castle Estate is the place to invest in.

Location: Eredo, Epe.

Price: 2m

NOTE: PRICE IS ALL INCLUSIVE

Plot size: 600sqm

Title: Registered Survey and Deed of Assignment

FACILITIES:
Good road network
Drainage system
Recreational areas
Portable water
Electricity
Fenced and gated community


NEIGHBORHOOD:

Alaro Satellite City
St Augustine University
Epe Resort and Spa
Atlantic College
Michael Otedola Housing Estate Michael Otedola College of Education
Several Gated Estates

For more information call/ text +2349136579358.

All that matters, from a Darwinian perspective, is permanence—and the dominance hierarchy, however social or cultural it might appear, has been around for some half a billion years. It’s permanent. It’s real. The dominance hierarchy is not capitalism. It’s not communism, either, for that matter. It’s not the military-industrial complex. It’s not the patriarchy—that disposable, malleable, arbitrary cultural artefact. It’s not
even a human creation; not in the most profound sense. It is instead a near eternal aspect of the environment, and much of what is blamed on these more ephemeral manifestations is a consequence of its unchanging existence. We (the sovereign we, the we that has been around since the beginning of life) have lived in a dominance hierarchy for a long, long time. We were struggling for position before we had skin, or hands, or lungs, or bones. There is little more natural than culture. Dominance hierarchies are older than trees. The part of our brain that keeps track of our position in the dominance hierarchy is therefore exceptionally ancient and fundamental. It is a master control system, modulating our perceptions, values, emotions, thoughts and actions. It powerfully affects every aspect of our Being, conscious and
unconscious alike. This is why, when we are defeated, we act very much like lobsters who have lost a fight. Our posture droops. We face the ground. We feel threatened, hurt, anxious and weak. If things do not improve, we become chronically depressed. Under such conditions, we can’t easily put up the kind of fight that life demands, and we become easy targets for harder-shelled bullies. And it is not only the behavioural and experiential similarities that are striking. Much of the basic neurochemistry is the same.

Consider serotonin, the chemical that governs posture and escape in the lobster. Low-ranking lobsters produce comparatively low levels of serotonin. This is also true of low-ranking human beings (and those low levels decrease more with each defeat). Low serotonin means decreased confidence. Low serotonin means more response to stress and costlier physical preparedness for emergency—as anything whatsoever may happen, at any time, at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy (and rarely something good). Low serotonin means less happiness, more pain and anxiety, more illness, and a shorter lifespan—among humans, just as among crustaceans. Higher spots in the dominance hierarchy, and the higher serotonin levels typical of those who inhabit them, are characterized by less illness, misery and death, even when factors such as absolute income—or number of decaying food scraps—are held constant. The importance of this can hardly be overstated.

Culled from 12 Rules For Life by Jordan Peterson

We use our eyes to see. Our eyes are constantly pointing at the things we are interested in, approaching, looking for, or investigating. I have heard a highly intelligent person say that the purpose of the black in the white of ours is for people to see what we are aiming at. Someone without the black in the eye is not likely to see and he who can’t see is more likely to get killed. We want to see. We have to see. We must see but to see we must aim. Hence, know it or not, we are always aiming.

Our bodies are adapted to hunting and gathering and our minds are built on this hunting and gathering platform. What is to hunt? To specify a target, track it, and throw at it. When we hit the target, we succeed, we score a goal. When we fail to hit the target, we miss the mark. We sin. If you go back to the Greek root of the word “sin” it actually means “to miss the mark.” I don’t want to dwell on “sin” now, let me go back to what I was talking about – the eyes for aiming.

We are navigating our way through this journey we call life. We must always navigate but can’t do that if we have nothing we are aiming at. Say you are at point “A” moving towards point “B.” This means that point “B” is more desirable than point “A.” You deem “B” better according to your values. In this world we are always somehow in a state of insufficiency and we are seeking to rectify to this insufficiency. Even if you have everything you think you need, you imagine new ways things could be rearranged or improved. Hence even when satisfied you are curious. We are living within a design that constantly sees the present as lacking and the future as better. I think this design is good for us. Why? We are motivated to act precisely because we see the future as being better than the present. If this were not so we will not be able to focus on anything. If we can’t focus we can’t see.

But we do see. We do not only see the things that are there, we see things that are not there. We can visualize how things could be constructed or rearranged so things could be better. The advantage this ability to see things that aren’t there has is that we can rectify the intolerable state of the present in the future. We can change the world for better. The disadvantage is that we are always in a state of discomfort or unease to some degree. This is the result of always contrasting what is to what could be.

We aim but we can aim too high or too low. If we aim too high we set ourselves up for disappointment. If we aim to low we do not actualize much of our potential. Apart from aiming too high or too low, we can aim too chaotically especially when we are not well integrated within. She may appear to be living well to others but if she is aiming too chaotically, she is living in disappointment.

How can we benefit from our ability to contrast what is and what could be without perpetually living in disappointment? The first step is to take stock of your faults. What do you need to fix in yourself? If your phone with which you are reading this post is malfunctioning, you are going to take it to someone who will inspect it and diagnose its fault. If he ends up repairing your phone you are going to pay him. Part of what you are paying him for is his ability to find out and tell you the bad news of what is wrong with your phone. If your phone is broken, you want to know how it is broken. If you don’t know it is broken, you cannot fix it.
In one way, shape, or form, we are all broken. So we need to take stock to find out how it is we are broken. You need an inspector for this diagnosis. And you have one – your internal critic. Your internal critic can satisfactorily play the role of an inspector if you can get it to cooperate. But you must be ready for the bad news. You must be ready to walk through yourself psychologically and listen to what your internal critic has to say. People run away from listening to their internal critic because they feel they will be demoralized and crushed by the bad news they will get. Maybe. But if anything in you will be crushed, it will be that which needs to be crushed.

To renovate a house you must be ready for the bad news of the structural deficiencies. To get yourself in order you must be ready for the crushing, lengthy and painful report of your inadequacies. Why is this important? Because to properly fix what is broken, you have to know precisely how it is broken. If you can fix what needs to be fixed within you then you would have cleared out what needs to be cleared. And if you clear out what needs to be cleared out, you would see clearer what you should be aiming at. And if you are pursuing what you should be aiming at, you would experience more positive emotions. More positive emotions means that you are getting some things right.

And if you get a couple of things right your life would at least improve.

Values Orient

Over twenty years ago, a cognitive psychologist, Daniel Simons, demonstrated that what you see depends on what you are aiming at. Simons got his research subjects to watch a video. In the video, there were two teams of three people each. One team was wearing white shirts and the other black. In the video, the six of them were not off in the distance. One could see their facial features. Each team had its own ball which they bounced or threw to other members of their team as they moved within the small space they were playing the game. Simons showed this video to his study participants and asked each of them to count the number of times the white shirt team threw the ball back and forth to one another. After some minutes, the participants were asked to report the number of passes. Most of them answered "15." They were right. They passed the test! But then Simons asked, "Did you see the gorilla?" What gorilla? He said to them, "Watch the video again. But this time, don't count." They watched and saw that about a minute into the video, a man dressed in a gorilla suit came right into the middle of the game for a few seconds, stops, and beats his chest like a gorilla before leaving. It happened right there in the middle of the screen but about 50% of his research subjects failed to see the gorilla initially.

Dr. Simons conducted another study which was even more surprising. He showed his participants a video of someone being served at a counter. The server goes down behind the counter to retrieve something and comes back up. Most of his participants did not detect anything unusual. But the person who came back up was different from the person who went down behind the counter. What!

Why did many participants in these studies fail to detect the unusual? It was because they were aiming at something and blind to everything else.

The world is complex. So is your world. The complexity is overwhelming. You are not capable of concentrating on everything that is happening at the same time. What do you do? You concentrate minutely on one or two things that concerns you and you ignore everything else. This implies that you are mostly blind. You aim at something, you see very few things related to your aim and you are blind to virtually every other thing. This explains why if you were one of the participants in the studies conducted by Dr. Simons, you too could have missed the unusual. You see but what you see depends on what you are aiming at. Now let us go a step deeper. And we do that by asking, "If what I see depends on my aim, then what is my aim dependent upon?"

Let's say you have a desire, you want something. You focus on getting what you want. The price you pay for this focus is your ignoring of a host of other things, being blind to them. This blindness does not matter if you are getting what you want and things are going well for you. But if things are not going well for you and you are not getting what you want, you have a problem. If the problem persists you may end up in crisis.

If things are going well for you, you can afford to ignore everything else that is not your aim. But if things are not going well for you, then what you ignore, what you are blind to constitutes a problem in and of itself. This problem however is not a hopeless one. Paradoxically, the problem contains within it a seed of its own solution. You are aiming at something and blind to everything else yet things are not going well. There is a high possibility that among the host of things you are blind to is something or even a couple of things that can alleviate or even solve the problem you have. This means that you may have to change your focus. To see something different you have to aim at something else. But we still have the question, "What is your aim dependent upon?" Your aim is dependent on your values. What you value determines what you aim at. So we can say that what you see depends on what you value.

It is possible that you are blind to what would be of help to you. In fact a solution you need might be right in front of your eyes but just like the particpants in Dr. Simons study, you don't see it. You don't see it partly because you do not have the corresponding values that would evoke an aim related to it. Your values are your set of tools with which you screen most things out and let a few things in. They have become habitual with you. They constitute what builds you for good or for ill. Indeed they orient you in the world. These values are deep within you hence you may be unconscious of them. Knowing how important your values are, you may want to become conscious of them by asking, "What are my values?" The wrong set of values will lead you down the wrong path. It may be time for you to allow your old set of values to die if they are not helping you on your journey upwards, and allow new ones to be born.

Your problem may make you say, "Life sucks." Well, what can I say? Life is hard and I can agree that there are times when life seems to just suck. But before you proclaim, "Life sucks!" consider this: the problem may not be life. The problem may be you. The problem may be what you are ignoring or blind to. It may be your insufficient knowledge. Maybe it is your values.

Maybe what you desire as a result of your values is making you hold on to things so tightly that you cannot even see what you truly need.

Stop Being Resentful

Say you are envious of the top position in your group. You have your position but you are not the head. You think to yourself, “I should be the one with that top position.” If the head of the group competently sticks to his position, thoughts like that will lead you to irritation and unhappiness. You become envious. And then you move into a state of resentment.

For whatever reason you are resentful, that resentment is a vicious emotion. That emotion paradoxically can be helpful. If you are resentful about something, it means one of two things. It either means that you are immature and need to grow up, accept responsibility, stop whining and being neurotic, or it means that someone is actually oppressing you in which case you have something to say or do that you are not saying or doing. Why do we often not say or do what we ought to say or do? Because it can be dangerous to do so. We are talking about an oppressor hence saying or doing what you should to free yourself from oppression could in itself pose to be a danger. You really can get yourself into a lot of trouble so it is easier to just not say anything. But there is a problem with that. By remaining silent and doing nothing, you protect yourself from trouble only in the short term. It gets worse. The resentment builds and gets out of hand such that it crushes you.

It starts with resentment and then it grows to the desire for revenge because in various ways you will attempt to get at the person who is oppressing you. At any chance you have, you will talk about him behind his back. If he wants you to do something, you will do it grudgingly and badly. At this point, your resentment has grown to become poisonous and that is a problem. If you make a home in that resentful space for long, you begin to craft a story telling yourself how the world is terrible and how that terror is directed at you and how everyone has rejected you. You move closer to the point where you think that existence itself is a poisonous endeavour and that the best thing to do is to go out there and create as much mayhem as you can. If you go too far in that dark space you think to yourself, “I am going to create as much mayhem as I possibly can and my target will be the most innocent thing I can imagine.” If you think no one has gone down that road, you have not come across stories of high school shootings for instance, or stories where a woman wakes up one day and stabs her partner to death. The hole of resentment can suck one into doing terrible, horrible, and dark things.

It is worth repeating: If you are resentful, you are either immature and have to grow up and take responsibility, or you have something to say or do that you are not saying or doing. If you say or do what you have to say or do, you might get into trouble but it will only be for the short term.

Maybe your friend puts you down in public. He did not show you respect. Respect is beneficial for any relationship. It helps in maintaining it over time. It is good for both of you. But maybe you have taken a shot from your friend in public and you are angry about it but you do not acknowledge it because you want to believe that you are better than you are, thinking to yourself, “That sort of thing does not upset me.” Hence you do not say or do anything about it. The problem with that is that you end up not fixing what should be fixed and that is a mistake on your part. It may be better to say something like this respectfully to your friend, “Out there earlier today you said something I consider to be disrespectful in public which I do not think is appropriate. Now, I might be immature, hypersensitive, or even touchy, but what I actually think is that you are playing a power game. I think we should have a discussion to figure out what really happened.” Now this sort of conversation is often messy and people run away from it. People do not like conflict and conversations like this can lead to conflict. But before you run away from such a conversation, consider that some things when not addressed get worse over time. That conversation can lead to a conflict only in the short term. If you do not have it, you end up with a worse fight in the future with your resentment building up. As paradoxical as it may sound, a conflict can help prevent things from getting worse or even put things in order. It can produce genuine peace not the shaky sort of seeming peace that sweeping things under the carpet produce.

Pay attention to your negative emotion and if it is resentment consult it.

Your resentment contains a revelation.

The Goodness of a Morally Upright Life

Ever heard of relativism? Essentially relativism is the belief that right and wrong is not objective but subjective. The relativist therefore believes that the individual can use his personal situation to judge what can be right and wrong. Is that right?

A scientist with the knowledge of nuclear energy can use that knowledge to create nuclear power and possibly make the price of power used to run homes and businesses go down. Another scientist can use his knowledge of nuclear energy to create a nuclear bomb. There was a time in history when a group of people made plans to cross ebola with small pox and aerosolize it so that they can spray it on a population (probably during war) and inflict destruction on a large scale. This is not a conspiracy theory (ever heard of the KGB?). If I ever meet one who says, “You cannot say that spraying a population with an aerosolized form of ebola crossed with small pox is wrong. It is relative,” I will either recommend such a person to a psychiatric ward or categorize the person as being demonic. No kidding. Have you met a relativist who believes that right and wrong is always subjective? Scratch his Toyota Corolla car on purpose. Let us see how relativistic he gets.
There are things that are right and some things are clearly in the category of wrong. What helps us to navigate this terrain of right and wrong? Morality. Morality has to do with principles relating to right and wrong or good and bad behaviour. The aim of this write-up is to briefly make a case for the goodness of a morally upright life. I hope I am able to do so. It is challenging already trying to be articulate on this topic. Not that easy. But I’ll try.

You are an individual. If you are psychologically alright, you went the best for yourself. On one hand, there are things that happen to you in life that are just totally outside of your control. You didn’t get to choose your family when you were born. You didn’t choose your country or your gender. Many things happened to you and keep happening to you that you are not able to control. On the other hand, there are some things that lie within your control. What you do and how you act are within your control. Since morality has more to do with what you do and how you do it, a morally upright life is something you can choose to aim for.

Once again, you want the best for yourself or at least you want your life to be better. Morality comes into play here. You want to act right today so that it is good for you today. You want to act right today so that which you do today ends up being good for you today and tomorrow. But we are just getting started. The good you do over time compounds. So let me put it this way: You want to act right today so that what you do today is good for you today, tomorrow, next week, next year, five years from now…and at the same time be good for you, your family, your group, your community, your country, and the world at large. A morally upright life is good and beautiful precisely because it helps you choose actions such that what you do is good for you today and tomorrow and good for those around you and the world. It is therefore not crazy to say that morally upright actions can make your life and the world get better. You may not see the link between your actions and their consequences but your actions are for good or for ill.

The ten commandments in the Bible are very helpful when it comes choosing a morally upright life. The seventh commandment says: You shall not steal. For the purpose of clarity let me employ fiction. God offers Godwin and Chigozie two options saying, “I command that you work and make a decent living and avoid stealing. But I will not force you to obey me.” Godwin from the start decides he is wiser and knows better than God (sin of pride) and chooses to disobey God. He refuses to do noble work and decides that stealing is his chosen profession. He is a programmer and because he lacks morality, he uses his programming skill to hack into people’s accounts to steal their money. He steals one hundred thousand naira from his first victim. From his second victim he steals five hundred thousand. From the third, one million. By the mere act of stealing Godwin has unknowingly configured himself as the sort of person who finds noble work difficult and stealing attractive. This configuration messes up his psyche such that he justifies what is wrong. If Godwin is able to steal ten million naira with the click of a mouse repeatedly, you may go ahead and offer Godwin a chance to repent with five million naira for free to stop stealing and do honest work but Godwin will reject your offer. Something in Godwin has shifted. He has conformed himself to be a thief. He is his own first victim. To stop is now difficult. His life is worse just that he doesn’t know that yet. His family finds out what he does for a living and they are in pain. Godwin is not having so much of a good life and now his family is in pain. Everyone whom Godwin has stolen from is having a hard time as well their families because Godwin emptied their life savings. Some of them decide that the world is unfair and decide to revenge by stealing from some other people. Godwin gets caught and after it was discovered he has stolen a total of five hundred billion naira from people he is sentenced to life imprisonment. His action of stealing has made his life bad for today and tomorrow and at the same time bad for his family and his victims and his victims’ victims. By stealing and shunning a morally upright life, Godwin made the world a worse place.

Chigozie on the other hand choses to obey God. He is also a programmer but he uses his programming skill to work for law enforcement. He is instrumental in the arrest of cyber criminals like Godwin. His family is proud of him. His morally upright work brings about good today and tomorrow and makes the lives of his family and society good. He is the first beneficiary of his morally upright actions as he is at peace with the consequences of his actions.

Do you want to have a life in which you have less to regret and are less ashamed of your actions? Choose to do what is right. There are occasions when some people seem to make a life of immorality attractive. We may see them sometimes on social media or around us. Don’t fall for it. They are telling a lie with their life. All things considered, your life is better and at peace when you choose God and his commands. That is not a promise. That is a guarantee.

A few times, I have had the opportunity to give talks to the young and I listen to them and attempt to answer some of their questions. My experience tells me some of them are looking for direction. They need to hear reasons why they should choose right over wrong. That is what prompted me to do this write-up.

I am quick to admit that I am not a model of the morally upright life. Many weaknesses. But at least we can see reasons why it is worth aiming for and actually aim for it.

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Confront the Chaos

Problems. They just don’t seem to end as much as you try to solve them. In one way or another, they are there or around the corner. Even when you solve a problem, the solution itself can create a situation for another problem to arise. He gives his best to his tertiary education and finally graduates. One year later he is through with his National Youth Service Corps programme. What a thing of joy! But what problem does he have when he wakes up the next day? Unemployment. And even when he gets a job, his very place of work and the people he works with will eventually present their own set of peculiar problems. Problems!

No matter how hard we try to get our lives together, things seem to get complicated. Problems emerge in our work, our health, our finances, our families, and so on. It is just as if nature herself wants us to have problems. This seems to be captured in The Second Law of Thermodynamics which basically says that entropy (a measure of disorder) in the universe is steadily increasing. In layman’s terms: when things are left to their own devices, disorder or chaos increases.

Given this reality, what do we do? We can decide to ignore the chaos that shows up in our lives, pretend they are not there, hide from them, deny them, or in short, run away from them. But every reasonable person knows that running away is a terrible choice. It only guarantees one thing – it compounds the chaos. So, if we rule out the option of running away from the chaos or problems that present themselves to us, we are left with the option of confronting them in order to potentially solve them. Now, that is hard work which some people run away from. Only that when you constantly run away from facing your chaos, you run deeper into a life of meaninglessness and irresponsibility. Hardly anything is good about that.

This issue of chaos presents us with a challenge in life: The challenge of building yourself into the sort of person that can confront and potentially solve problems. Problems that are yours to face. Come to think of it, that is why your parents raised you to become responsible; that is why you go to school; that is why you have that job. You can’t take on every problem. No. You are not omniscient or omnipotent. But you can’t run away from every problem especially if they are yours to solve. All this got me thinking about what exactly one can do to build one’s self into being able to handle problems. I can think of four. And let me emphasize that these are not what you do in one day or one week. These are what you do over time which will definitely span years.

First, seek knowledge. If that thing interests you or bugs you, you may want to seek more knowledge about it. In the process, you may acquire some skills. More skills in your skill set or less ignorance about it makes you better able to confront chaos.

Second, grow a network. You don’t want to go about this one in a manipulative way. There are people who only remember you exist when they want something from you. And even when they tell you what they want from you, they embellish their story with lies. If this is not manipulation, I don’t know what is. Use things, don’t use people. So, when I say, “Grow a network,” I mean, “Build meaningful and reciprocal relationships with sensible people.” I don’t see a relationship that is of mutual benefit as something bad. Now, I mean that in a good sense, not in a morally bankrupt sense.

Third, acquire resources. This one, to a large extent, depends on one’s peculiar situation and opportunities in life. All hands are not equal and all hands may never be equal. Notwithstanding, acquire the resources you can: money, business, property, and so on. I do not mean to say that you should become so materialistic that you worship your resources or become too attached to them. No. I mean, acquire them and be detached from them enough to take a risk with them and put them to productive use. As with risks, you may lose or gain, and so, the result may not tally with your effort. Having said that, acquiring resources and putting them to productive use can by itself solve problems.

Last, attempt to solve problems. A few months after birth, a mother begins “training” her child on sitting. The baby, with her yet-to-be-fully-developed body, really doesn’t know how to sit but the mother gets her in a sitting position and surrounds her with pillows so that if as a result of her position, gravity pulls her head, her head lands on a pillow. But what happens over time? The baby is able to sit. Somehow, the baby learns to sit by attempting to sit. So does she learn to stand - by attempting to stand (and falling repeatedly). So with walking. We get better at solving problems by attempting to solve problems. The capacity of the person who solves problems grows. You can even attempt to solve a problem, fail, and still grow. Say you want to solve problem A. You try all you can but you failed to solve it. What you may not have realized is that in your attempt to solve it you learnt a couple of things. So you didn’t solve problem A but sometime later, problem B shows up and just because of what you learnt from attempting to solve problem A, you avoided mistakes while confronting problem B and eventually solved it.

Be responsible to yourself. Be of help to your family. Be of service at your workplace. Use your leadership position in that group you belong to do good. In short, develop yourself into being the sort of person capable of confronting chaos.

Those are the sort of people God uses to create heaven on earth.

If You Must Compare Yourself

You think to yourself, “Look at that guy. He’s got a good job, a fine car, a beautiful wife, a stable life… Everything is working out for him… But look at me, everything is wrong about me.” And so, you feel terrible. And maybe you should feel terrible for that kind of comparison. The comparison is simply unfair to yourself. Why?

When you are 13, there is much about you that is similar to other children who are 13 years of age. Social comparison may be appropriate at that age. But as you get older and clock say 30, you become quite unique and your life becomes quite idiosyncratic. There are multiple dimensions to your life as well as to everyone: family, friends, work, health, intimate relationships, and so on. All of these dimensions place you in a unique place in life such that your life is unlike any other’s life. And so, you see someone else and think he is doing better than you. Really? You are probably seeing and comparing only one dimension of his life to your entire life. You take what you consider the best of him and compare that to the worst you think you have. Both the comparison and the very manner in which you make the comparison is unfair to yourself. That is not reasonable. You don’t have the whole picture. The bitterness and resentment you get as a result of the unfair comparison are emotions that signal to you that there is nothing good about that.

Before you say to yourself, “I will definitely trade places with him if I can without thinking twice,” consider this: Everybody is carrying a cross and you don’t know the cross that person is carrying. Look at celebrities, with all their fame and money why have a number of them given in to drugs and even suicide? You don’t have the insight into the tragedy of another person’s life. You may think he is rich and successful but you may not know that his relationship with his wife or children is terrible. You may not know he is having a serious health challenge. His son may not even be communicating with him.

Now, are you who you should be? Are you the best version of yourself? Are you all you could be? Probably not. If that is true then there is something you have or need to do. You have to improve yourself. So, you may say to yourself, “Here is my position and situation in time and space right now. Here are my virtues and my faults. There is probably something I can do today that can either strengthen my virtues or at least limit my faults. If I can do that little thing today, perhaps my life can be a little bit better tomorrow.” What you have just done is to compare who are you are today to who you could be tomorrow. If you must compare yourself, that is a good comparison you can make.

What is that “little” thing you could do today that can help make your life a bit better? You could tell less lies, be more sincere, work more diligently, be more faithful, stop the manipulation… The point is, you yourself know what you can do to improve yourself. If you are honest to yourself, you know. If only you could do those “little” things every day, the positive effects on your life compounds over time. Doing this for three years may transform your life in ways you presently don’t see. Aim for the highest good and attend to the day.

You should be better than you are not because you are the worst of all but because you are not everything you should be. There is definitely more to you. You have to make the right comparison. That is ennobling and makes you hopeful. There is definitely no doubt that you can be slightly better tomorrow than you are today. Attend to that. Movement towards the good increases exponentially. That trajectory can make your life experience better. It can make your cross lighter.

Stop comparing yourself to who someone else is today. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday. If you have made any progress, be grateful for that. And then continue the movement.

The Value of Personal Responsibility

Let us look at that story again – the story of Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel bring their sacrifices to God. God accepts Abel’s sacrifice but rejects Cain’s. Cain is outraged and he protests. God responds to him, “Why are you angry? Why are you dejected? If you act rightly, you will be accepted; but if not, sin lies in wait at the door; its urge is for you, yet you can rule over it.” God tells Cain that the outcome he got was as a result of his action but Cain was not in the mood to hear that. Cain essentially abdicates personal responsibility. In his rage, he kills his brother Abel.

I see two reasons why Cain kills Abel. First, after God’s rejection of his sacrifice, Cain was full of hate. He hated life, he hated existence, and he hated God himself. Cain no matter how bitter he was cannot hurt God so he turns his attention to what he can hurt – God’s creature. Cain kills Abel in order to spite God. His action was satanic. That is what Satan does. Having lost his place in heaven and not being able to hurt God, Satan makes war with man, God’s beloved creature. Satan attacks man to get at God. But back to Cain. Cain’s failure to look at himself and see where he has gone wrong leads to being possessed by a satanic spirit which leads him to murder just to “teach God a lesson.”

The second reason I see why Cain kills Abel is that Abel is a constant reminder of whom he should be. Abel, just by living and breathing judges Cain constantly. The ideal is always your judge. Cain, not wanting to change, was also not ready to keep seeing him who constantly reminds him of his “deficiency.” He kills.

Sometimes life is joy and sometimes it is pain. When life is pain, before you blame God or fate, look inwards. Don’t make Cain’s mistake and end up in bitterness and suffering. I am not in anyway saying that all the pain you experience is your fault. No. There are many things beyond your control so sometimes, undesirable things just happen. A mother can try all she can in taking care of her little daughter and that child can still get sick. Neither the mother nor the child is to be blamed. You may be a good employee at your place of work and before you know it, your company is sold to a new owner. The first thing your new boss does is to lay off some workers and you are one of them. You don’t have to blame yourself; it just happened. He is driving his car carefully on his lane but the truck coming opposite him with speed is being driven by a man who is high on drug. Accident. The man in the car is not to blame. He just does not have the capacity to control all things. In the final analysis, we are all susceptible to despair, disease, aging and death and we are definitely not the architects of our own fragility.

But are there some things that lie within our limited control? Yes. And it is a good thing that this could be the case with respect to some form of pain we encounter in life. First, do away with bitterness or vengeance no matter what. No matter how you try to justify those negative emotions, they remain enemies of productive thoughts. The American/English poet T.S. Eliot explained why in his play, The Cocktail Party. One of his characters is not having a good time of it. She speaks of her profound unhappiness to a psychiatrist. She says she hopes that all her suffering is her own fault. The psychiatrist is taken aback. He asks why. The woman who has thought about this tells him of her conclusion: if it is her fault, she might be able to do something about it. If it is God’s fault however - if reality itself is flawed and hell-bent on ensuring her misery – then she is doomed. She couldn’t change the structure of reality but she could change her own life.

A reduction of pain or an improvement of an undesirable situation by fifty percent is better than remaining the same. And if this will come about if you could take personal responsibility and see where you could change things for better then it will be something reasonable and worthwhile to do.

Don’t be a Cain.

Periodically Examine Yourself

There is a pattern with the travails of the Hebrews of the Old Testament. They enter a covenant with Yahweh. Under the leadership of a great man, the Hebrews organize themselves into a society. As their fortune rises, pride begins to set in. Arrogance and corruption raise their ugly heads. They forget their agreement with God, forget their duties to widows and orphans, and overindulge their impulsive pleasures. A prophet arises and courageously criticizes the arrogant king and the wayward people about their failure before God. He warns them that if they do not repent, doom is around the corner. The king and the people ignore the warning of the prophet and soon they experience a horrible defeat in battle and generations of subjugation. The Hebrews at last examine themselves, recognize their failure to adhere to God’s word, and accept they could have done better. They repent and begin to rebuild for good. But the cycle repeats itself.

That is our experience in life. We build families, states, and countries as structures to live in. God gives us the principles to ensure that our structures are stable and our experience is not hellish. We make some progress but soon we allow our achievement to breed pride in us. We turn a blind eye to God’s commands and take what we have for granted. We stop paying attention and don’t notice that corruption is taking root. Things fall apart. Whose fault is it? God’s or ours?

In 2022, flood devastated parts of some states in our country. Reports have it that billions of dollars were lost in properties. People died and a lot more were rendered homeless. Was the flood a natural disaster? Or was it that willful blindness and corruption prevented us from building the structures we should so that our country does not experience such tragedy? When preparation is necessary then failure to prepare is a sin and every sin has a consequence.

After things went haywire, the ancient Jews finally blamed themselves and got their acts together. They acted with the belief that God is eternally good and took responsibility for their failure. The alternative is what we do today. We blame everyone else including God for our failures. That is the height of irresponsibility.

Part of what we should do as Christians is to pray. We are taught that prayer is the raising up of our hearts and minds to God. But prayer is not only, “God give me this…God give me that…God, why are you not answering me…God don’t allow us to quarrel…” Prayer is also when you raise your heart and mind to God and say, “God, show me where I am going wrong.” If you pray that sincerely, you will receive an answer like a revelation. Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” He who prays, “God, show me where I am going wrong,” is asking, seeking, and knocking. Vocal “radical” prayers may not take the place of your own examination of your actions and inactions. I may not completely agree with Socrates but I can understand why he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

We find it hard to beam a searchlight on ourselves to see our failures but we are so eager to look for other people’s failures, quick to see them and quicker to castigate them for their failures. You see that person condemning Buhari, criticizing Sanwo-Olu, and shaming all politicians for embezzlement of funds, give that same person an office that makes him the one in charge of funds for your group and association and come back in six months. You may come back to find two things: one, abracadabra is happening to your association’s account; two, money can fly.

I am not saying you should never criticize constructively but could you please consider removing the wooden beam from your eye first so you can see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye?

How To Create A Sense of Order in Your Life

Many of the problems we face in life can be traced back to a lack of order and structure in our environment and our habits. In other words, we need to "clean up our lives" if we want to achieve our goals and live a fulfilling life.

So what does it mean to clean up your life, and how can you do it?

1. Start with your physical environment

The first step in cleaning up your life is to take care of your physical surroundings. This means keeping your living space clean and organized, getting rid of clutter, and creating a sense of order and structure in your environment. A messy and chaotic environment can contribute to feelings of stress and overwhelm, which can make it harder to focus and be productive.

To get started, try setting aside some time each day or each week to declutter and organize your space. Start with small tasks, like clearing off your desk or organizing your closet, and work your way up to bigger projects. You might also consider getting rid of items that no longer serve you or bring you joy, whether it's old clothes, books, or other possessions.

2. Develop a routine

Another key aspect of cleaning up your life is developing a routine. Structure and order in our daily lives, as it can help us stay focused, reduce stress, and achieve our goals. This means setting aside time for work, exercise, leisure activities, and other important aspects of your life, and sticking to a consistent schedule as much as possible.

To create a routine that works for you, start by identifying your priorities and the activities that are most important to you. Then, try to schedule these activities at the same time each day or each week, and build your routine around them. You might also consider using a planner or calendar to keep track of your schedule and stay organized.

3. Take responsibility for your life

One of the most important aspects of cleaning up your life is taking responsibility for your actions and your outcomes. This means recognizing that you have the power to shape your life, and that you are responsible for the choices you make and the consequences that result.

To take responsibility for your life, start by setting clear goals and developing a plan for achieving them. Take ownership of your mistakes and learn from them, rather than blaming others or making excuses. And remember that you always have a choice in how you respond to the challenges and opportunities that come your way.

4. Cultivate positive habits

It is important to cultivate positive habits that support your goals and your well-being. This might include habits like regular exercise, healthy eating, meditation or mindfulness, reading, or creative pursuits. By incorporating these habits into your daily routine, you can create a sense of structure and purpose in your life, and improve your physical and mental health.

To cultivate positive habits, start by identifying the habits that are most important to you and that align with your values and goals. Then, try to incorporate these habits into your daily routine, even if it's just for a few minutes each day. Over time, these habits can become a natural part of your life and help you achieve your goals and live a more fulfilling life.

Cleaning up your life requires effort, discipline, and self-awareness. By taking care of your physical environment, developing a routine, taking responsibility for your life, and cultivating positive habits, you can create a sense of order in your life.

True talk my brother. May God help us all.

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For Pleasure or For Better

Before God kicks Adam and Eve out of Paradise, he first tells Eve, “I shall give you intense pain in childbearing, you will give birth to your children in pain. Your yearning will be for your husband, and he will dominate you.” Then he turns to Adam, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, accursed be the soil because of you! Painfully will you get your food from it as long as you live. It will yield brambles and thistles, as you eat the produce of the land. By the sweat of your face will you earn your food, until you return to the ground, as you were taken from it. For dust you are and to dust you shall return.” That passage tells me that suffering is part of life and God has a hand in it for reasons best known to him.

What do we do about that? I can tell you what some people actually do. They are like, “God I am not in for that suffering you are talking about. As for me I choose to live for the moment.” And by that they mean, “I will follow my impulses. I will pursue pleasure. I will lie, cheat, deceive, manipulate, and do whatever is expedient not to get caught.”

Here is Wisdom 2:1-9: They who said among themselves, thinking not aright: “Brief and troublous is our lifetime; neither is there any remedy for man’s dying, nor is anyone known to have come back from the nether world. For haphazard were we born, and hereafter we shall be as though we had not been; because the breath in our nostrils is a smoke and reason is a spark at the beating of our hearts, and when this is quenched, our body will be ashes and our spirit will be poured abroad like unresisting air. Even our name will be forgotten in time, and no one will recall our deeds. So, our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud, and will be dispersed like a mist pursued by the sun’s rays and overpowered by its heat. For our lifetime is the passing of a shadow; and our dying cannot be deferred because it is fixed with a seal; and no one returns. Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are real, and use the freshness of creation avidly. Let us have our fill of costly wine and perfumes, and let no springtime blossom pass us by; let us crown ourselves with rosebuds ere they wither. Let no meadow be free from wantonness; everywhere let us leave tokens of our rejoicing, for this our portion is, and this our lot.” The point is that people started living for pleasures a long time ago.

But why not live for pleasure? Why not choose pleasure over the suffering of this life? Why not grab all you can get whenever? Or is there a better way to live?

Prof. Jordan Peterson says something about this in his book, 12 Rules For Life.

Our ancestors worked out very sophisticated answers to such questions but we still don’t understand them very well. This is because they are in large part still implicit – manifest primarily in ritual and myth and, as of yet, incompletely articulated. We act them out and represent them in stories, but we’re not yet wise enough to formulate them explicitly. We’re still chimps in a troupe, or wolves in a pack. We know how to behave. We know who’s who, and why. We’ve learned that through experience. Our knowledge has been shaped by our interaction with others. We’ve established predictable routines and patterns of behavior – but we don’t really understand them, or know where they originated. They’ve evolved over great expanses of time. No one was formulating them explicitly (at least not in the dimmest reaches of the past), even though we’ve been telling each other how to act forever. One day, however, not so long ago, we woke up. We were already doing, but we started noticing what we were doing. We started using our bodies as devices to represent their own actions. We started imitating and dramatizing. We invented ritual. We started acting out our own drama in these stories. We coded our observations of our own drama in these stories. In this manner, the information that was first only embedded in our behaviour became represented in our stories. But we didn’t and still don’t understand what it all means.

Learn to Sacrifice

One of the consequences of Adam’s fall was the necessity for work. Adam woke up to the reality that if he did nothing in the present, much suffering will be waiting for him in the future. Work is what you do today so as to gain something in the future. When it comes to work, you sacrifice now to gain benefit later. The word “sacrifice” is of much importance in the last sentence. In this context, there is little difference between sacrifice and work.

Can you bargain with the future? It seems you have a chance. If you do whatever you like whenever you like without regulating your impulses or behaving properly, the future will most likely not smile at you. So what do you do? You control and organize your impulses so that it could be well for your future self. You delay gratification. When you work or sacrifice, you essentially delay gratification.

The bible records that the people of old were into sacrifice. They offered something to God – sacrifice – so that God can bless them. Before understanding can be articulated in words, it is often acted out. Our ancestors acted out what they understood but probably were not able to articulate. A child is not able to articulate what being a mother is but she can act out or mimic being a mother. The ritual sacrifice of our forefathers, on some level, seems to be an extension of the logic of work – sacrifice now, gain later.

To solve a small problem, a small sacrifice may suffice. To solve a bigger and harder problem, a larger sacrifice may be required. You can decide to play video games all day rather than going to class or going to the library to read. But you should know that doing so will be costly to your degree. You sacrifice the pleasure of playing your video game much of the time so you can have a good degree which can be much helpful when you start looking for a job. The discipline of a law school will interfere with a licentious lifestyle full of partying. Giving the partying up is a sacrifice. But a successful lawyer can be of much good to his family and his community. It is necessary to sacrifice to improve your future and larger sacrifices, depending on the situation, can be better.

If you are sacrificing for a better future, what could be the best sacrifice and what could be the best future? The best sacrifice is the sacrifice of yourself for the highest good. If the highest good could be made manifest in the future, then that future will be the best. Our highest good is God. Jesus sacrificed himself completely for God. We may not be called to sacrifice ourselves exactly the way Jesus did but in some way, we are all called to sacrifice ourselves, in various degrees, not for nothing but for good. Our collective sacrifice for good can bring about a world we may not have conceived.

Have you observed what happens when two people who are aligned in purpose come together to do something good? They achieve what each could not have achieved individually. What prevents us from sacrificing ourselves or cooperating with others to realize something good? Our selfishness. Selfishness may get you short-term gain but it denies you long-term good. In this regard, the selfish may think she is smart but in her short-sightedness, she fails to see all she is losing. Selfishness is what leads you to a life that seeks impulsive pleasures or hedonism; selfishness is what brings you a wrong sense of entitlement; selfishness brings you a lack of empathy; selfishness is what deepens your need for admiration. The extremely selfish person could be called a narcissist. Go check the meaning of narcissism.

I dare say that the antidote to selfishness is the practice of voluntary sacrifice for good. So, take care of yourself. Yes. But learn to sacrifice when necessary.

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For Good or for Evil

Life is partly joy and it is partly suffering. Jesus’ instruction to take up your cross is no joke. The suffering of life often motivates the desire for selfish, immediate gratification – for expediency. But work and sacrifice are far more effective at keeping suffering at bay than impulsive pleasure. We keep talking about suffering; what is the source of this suffering?

You could say the source of suffering is tragedy. Tragedy is the arbitrary harshness of society and nature set against the vulnerability of the individual. Earthquakes and storms could be considered tragedies. Tragedy however is not the primary source of suffering. There is evil which is far more potent in producing suffering. The world is not an easy place for us but man’s inhumanity to man is something that has shown itself to be very difficult for us to deal with. It brings hell unto earth. Our work and our sacrifice are what we use to combat tragedy and evil.

We work because we are awake to our vulnerability to pain, anxiety, disease, and death. So, we see the future and we can either prepare for it or live in denial which produces terror. Hence we sacrifice the pleasures of today for the sake of a better tomorrow. But it is not only the realization of mortality and the necessity of work that was revealed to Adam and Eve after they ate the forbidden fruit. They were also granted (or afflicted) by the knowledge of good and evil. What could this knowledge of good and evil mean? Let us look at a possible interpretation (and I may be wrong).

When you become conscious, when you become aware of yourself, you come to understand the nature of human vulnerability. You know what it is like to be susceptible to disease and aging. You know what pain means. You understand what it is like to be angry, bitter, resentful, and fearful. You know such feelings in yourself and can understand how they are produced. The thing is this: once you know how these feelings are produced in yourself, you know how to produce them in others. It is in this manner that the self-conscious beings that we are become capable of malevolence. Thus, we have the knowledge of evil. It is therefore not an accident that following the story of Adam and Eve’s fall and how they came to possess the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis chapter 3, the next chapter tells the story of man’s capacity to be malevolent or evil in the story of Cain and Abel.

God accepts Abel’s sacrifice but reject Cain’s. If you are rejected because you didn’t do any work or make any sacrifice, you can understand the rejection. You know in your heart that you are to blame. That knowledge prevents you from having an outrage. It is a different thing however when you forgo enjoying what you have in the present in order to have something better in the future but end up having what you gave up rejected. In such a situation, you have lost the present and the future. Your sacrifice turns out to be pointless. When this happens, your world may darken, and your soul may rebel.

Following God’s rejection of his sacrifice Cain becomes furious and was hell-bent to make God pay. God says to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why are you dejected? If you act rightly, you will be accepted; but if not, sin lies in wait at the door: its urge is for you, yet you can rule over it.” That is not the apology Cain wants to hear from God. Cain goes on to have intercourse with sin and an offspring was produced – evil in the form of murder. Cain, to wreak vengeance, kills his brother, Abel. This could have been prevented if Cain had done right and offered the right sacrifice. This violence of Cain continues with his descendants. It is actually worse with them. Lamech, a descendant of Cain says, “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for bruising me. If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times” (Genesis 4:23-24). Tubulcain, the son of Lamech, is the ancestor of all who forge instruments of bronze and iron. Such instruments could be weapons of war. Evil is multiplying. Not long after this story comes the story of Noah and the flood. When evil compounds, a destructive flood is being invited. The way these stories are arranged in Genesis to teach us something deep and true is no accident.

What can you do right or what can you put right to prevent evil from propagating? You just don’t know how much good you bring and how much evil you avoid just by doing what is right.

Regardless of what the world may say to you, your decision to do what is right or consider to be good is not something trivial. It is worthwhile.

Religion Has Value

There are people who are quick to dismiss religion. They see religion as something for the unsophisticated. Some of them, claiming to be woke, see no value in religion and would love to put an end to it. I really believe that those who see no value in religion are not as wise as they think. They have eyes but do not see. It could also be a case of willful blindness.

In school we are taught physics, biology, chemistry, and other subjects. As good as these subjects are, the knowledge they present to us is not as deep as that my Catholic faith or religion brings especially when it comes to how one should conduct himself through life. There is a point we get to in our lives when we ask deep and serious questions such as, “How come I exist?” and “Why am I on earth?” Let me rephrase those two questions: “Who created me?” and “What is my purpose on earth?” You can try all you can to seek the answers to those questions in mathematics and geography but they can’t give you the answers. Those questions are too deep for those subjects. But the bible answers those two questions. Let us go straight to the bible passage where the answer is: Genesis chapter one. And by the way, another word for “Genesis” is “Origin.” The book of Genesis tells you about your origin.

Genesis 1 starts thus, “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…” The very first chapter of Genesis tells us God created all things. God reveals this through the author(s) of Genesis. It is a revelation. Had this not been revealed, I am not so sure a lot of us could come to that knowledge just by thinking.

Genesis 1:26-27: “Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth. God created mankind in his image.” The question, “Who created me?” is answered: God created you. Verse 28 goes on: God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth.” When you juxtapose this verse with the goodness of God’s creation as mentioned in multiple verses in the same chapter, you find the answer to the question, “What is my purpose on earth?”

In this first chapter of Genesis, after God created light, the bible says, “God saw that the light was good.” He created earth and sea and we read, “God saw that it was good.” The earth brought forth vegetation through God’s Word and “God saw that it was good.” Virtually after each creation, we read, “God saw that it was good.” Everything God created was good. God did not create evil. That is a topic for another post.
We come to God’s creation of man. The bible says, “God created mankind in his image.” He blessed the male and female He created and gave them dominion over the earth. If a man has a son and we speak of the son thus, “This son has the image of his father,” we mean that there is something about the father in the son. The son may therefore look like or act like his father. The bible passes a powerful message to us when it says that we were created in the image of God. There is something about God’s nature in us. You have the image of God. What does this mean?

When you carefully consider the way this creation story is structured, you may find the revelation of man’s purpose. God did His creation. His creation is all good. He created man. In His image. And He gave man dominion over His creation. Man, on earth, has the responsibility of working with God to continue God’s creation. I don’t think we can say that creation has ended. Creation is still ongoing. God is still creating through man. Just one instance of that is child birth. You who are reading this post did not exist 200 years ago. But you do now. You came to this world through your parents. But God was not totally absent in your creation. You may have the body of your parents but your soul came from God and you do have a soul.

Having the image of God, your purpose in this world, in the light of Genesis 1 - I think - is to cooperate with God in bringing about good in this world. That is your God-given responsibility. Good should be happening in this world through you. Why is this message important today? Because a lot of people complain too much and do nothing. They leave the good they should do and would like to see happen to someone else. They surrender personal agency completely. For instance, if every good person who can be a good leader runs away from politics, we leave power to be grabbed by the very people that should be far from power. Everybody cannot be in politics but I believe God has called some good people to go there. Do they respond?

In your world, cooperate with God and do good in your space. You are God’s hands and feet when it comes to doing good. God’s creation is ongoing and you are not just a participant in it but also a co-creator. Because individual talent and situation differ, what we do or engage in will vary but essentially all we do should be aimed at good. If you know your creator and live in alignment with your purpose, fulfillment is yours both now and when you are called to depart from this world. And depart you will – someday.

I really don’t know much of the bible and I am not a good interpreter of the message therein but this is what I partially see in Genesis 1. Imagine what a knowledgeable person can teach about some passages from Genesis to Revelation.

Who says religion has no value?