A time comes in life when you have to somehow determine what is important to you, and your part in the society as you pass through planet earth on your journey to the other side. You can do anything but you cannot do everything. You don’t have forever to do what you can do so go ahead and do it now, or say it now, or suggest it now. Whatever it is you are convinced your role is, play it now. Today!
There are two sides to a coin. Every time you cast it, you get one side or the other. I feel like that is how life is sometimes. We have problems and we have solutions. We have questions and we have answers; we have leaders and we have followers; we have supporters and we have opposers; we have the front liners and we have laggers. You are one or the other. If I may ask, which one are you?
Guilty of an offense are not just the persons that commit it but also the ones who keep quiet and say nothing in condemnation. Bad behaviors are condoned in society when good people keep quiet. They are looking for some alien to bell the cat. They don’t want to fall out of favor with a criminal or an extortionist or a greedy politician so they can still remain friends or so they would gain some more favors in the future. And the society keeps retrogressing. The structure continues to dilapidated.
Everybody is not gifted with eloquence of speech or clarity of thought articulation but we sure have brain to know what is right and mouth to say what is not right. I cannot imagine how people live with their consciences after they had kept mute over injustice, wickedness, lawlessness, greed, avarice and oppression. How can I call evil good or simply refuse to call evil evil so my ‘friend’ doesn’t get offended? I have chosen to call things by their real names so am not about your political correctness. It is about time we stepped up and stood out for what we are persuaded about.
Let me go ahead and make it official. Friendship is not a right, it is a privilege. It is a privilege that you call me your friend and it is a privilege that I call you my friend. I do not exercise right neither would you expect that I should tolerate your exercise of right in our friendship. Meanwhile do not make any mistakes about it, there are people you call your friend but they will not remember you when they count their friends. So you are not my friend simply because you call me your friend.
Friendship could be temporary or short term. You are not my friend today because you were my friend yesterday. You are not my friend today because we met at the market the other day or we go to the same church or sang at the same choir. Maybe you were my choir friend because we both love the same kind of music and we did a good job at it but that does not mean I share the same musical, political, economic or revolutionary ideology with you today. So you must understand the setting and the boundaries of our friendship and stay in your lane or else you will be grossly offended when I operate in my other plane where you don’t understand or with which you can’t relate.
Friendship is a choice. You are not my friend because you are my cousin neither are you my friend because you are my brother. You have to understand and be satisfied with where you are with me. We both have our lives to live and our missions are different. You don’t have to compete with me or with anybody neither do I have to compete with you. There is no room for competition, jealousy or pettiness. The beautiful thing about friendship is that you are my friend because we choose to be. Friendship is constantly evaluated in the present. In the US, it is said that we have no permanent friends no permanent enemies but permanent interests, even though the nature of these permanent interests could change from time to time.
If our friendship doesn’t serve whatever your purpose is, please unfriend me and move on. If you take offense and bicker, you do yourself more harm than good. First, I don’t know that you are offended by me being me, and even if I know, I probably don’t care. So why don’t you find people who share in your school of thought and befriend them. I am not as important as you ascribe to me neither are you as important to me as you probably think.
Friendship is dynamic. It changes. When the premises of friendship change, the dynamics of the friendship change too. You could be my friend when we worked for Mr A because we believed in the principles that Mr A represented. If my opinion of Mr A changes, how do you not know that our friendship dynamics have changed too because I no longer agree with what you preach. Move on and keep doing what gives value to your life and do not worry about me. I am probably having fun doing what causes you heartache. That’s how life is. It is what it is.
Finally, if you are still reading, you are probably one of my friends and I appreciate your friendship. However, our friendship should profit humanity and whatever we can do as little as it is to make the world a better place within our cultural, environmental, political, economic or philosophical space please let’s do it today. Time waits for nobody and time wasted is life wasted. Have a blessed day and don’t forget, he that gathers not with us scatters.
@DrMezieOkolo, Analyst
Public Health & Leadership
07/21/2019