#Rant198 Warning: Really, this post can be shorter...but it is not. I have talked about how I spent a large chunk of my money in my 20s attending motivational seminars. And all I was rewarded with were men in tanned “Obama” suits and shiny shoes parading the podium feeling better, more blessed than everyone else. “It is by the grace of God…” In summary, that was ALL they get to share after paying N25k to hear them talk. Even in so-called business forums, we are stuck with the it-is-the-grace-of-God declaration so badly that knowledge is not being transferred, people are not learning or growing, partnerships are not formed, businesses are not evolving. -Because how do you question a man further when he tells you he is successful by the grace of God? There’s nothing more to add, nothing to learn, nothing to give or receive; so you retreat to your unfortunate corner of life and pray that God’s grace meets you too. It is a desperate, sad and bland way to live. We live it every day in Nigeria. I ask a man/woman: “how did it work for you?” The answer is at the tip of their tongues; it has tumbled down a thousand times: “It is God.” End of story. In Nigeria (Africa, at large), if you are yet to get to a certain place in life, it must be that God has forgotten you. People destroy relationships with their own hands and their own carelessness/selfishness, but we are caught in this religious web, so we shall blame the devil for “letting him/her walk away”. We free ourselves of blame (or sometimes we even blame the other party for not keeping up with our bullshit). And the cycle continues. You will get in and out of relationships because you have not questioned why you have had many fleeting affairs. It is you. You are wearing a customised piece of charade, buttered with a tradition of religious conviction that makes it impossible for you to see how damaging you are- the trend you set off that kills people’s love and trust in you before it even buds. So how do we grow? How do we get better? I believe in God, but I also believe that there are important principles that can profit the next man and allow the other person get to their next stop in record time. How did it happen for you? Leave God out of it for just one minute…because the next minute you might hit a hurricane; would that mean that God’s grace fell off? Or you hadn’t justified yourself enough for it to save you from this impending disaster. *sighs* The next person needs to be mentored by just one word you can share; dont bury all your wisdom inside a convenient religion. By all means thank God, and share God’s grace upon your life. To the next man it is like dangling a carrot in front of him, mocking him and saying to him, “you cannot reach this one, it’s beyond you. God has done it for me…here, try and catch this carrot.” It is unfair. And so I featured Femi Aderibigbe on #OurVoices… he shared only a few words, but what a truth! It is sometimes not our fault, Nigeria as a country has no structure, we just dig our hands into different available pots to see if we’ll be lucky enough to bring out a piece of diamond. Our lives is a trial-and-error game. Our careers, a depressing guesswork… Ultimately 3 things he noted, that you may have heard many times, stand out; and it is free of blaming the devil for your rot or hiding all the nuggets under grace. By all means be grateful to God…but I’ve said that already, so just read his very straight-to-the-point answer to this question: What unique piece of wisdom has guided you all through the years? It might not be the lottery winning answer to all your problems, but it nursed me... themagazineclubng/ourvoices-femi-aderibigbe/
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 11:27:53 +0000
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