Bang five minutes later the phoned buzzed. I snatched the reciever off the hook and jammed the mouth piece to my left cheek. "Ernest on the phone." Gosh i hate answering the phone this way. There he was again. This time he didn't hesitate. He vented out his dilemma. "I dont know what to do with myself." he said. "What do you mean?" I said in a joking voice. "I say mean things to my girl friend." I could hear him breathing hard over the phone. It felt very close. "I can hardly believe I say the things I say," he went on. "Calm down," I said and added "So what did you say that is troubling you so much?" After a giffy he said "I told her last night to leave me alone and go somewhere for a while." I smiled. I guess my reaction should have been like saying you-crazy-son-of-a-bitch why would you say that? Hell no experience has taught me much this far even though I'm still learning everyday. I simply asked, "and why is that troubling you so much?" His response was as expected. "Because I am supposed to love this woman and not hate her."
I anchored the phone between my cheek and left shoulder and quickly typed a response to a requested chat from one of my MSN buddies. On the phone. Can we chat later? I wrote. In today's world, one has to learn how to perform many chores at a time if one was to keep up with everyone and everything else. This must be a hard one for men I guess going back to stereotypes!
Meeting someone, hanging out for the fun of the moment and having a good time is probably one hundred times lower in the commitment rung when compared to living together. It means primordially changing one's life style to accomodate another's. Having to plan everything for two (cooking, laundry, movies and you can name it). We all know that the beginning is fun when we all have butterflies tingling in our stomach. Its amazing that the same things we used to enjoy together suddenly will boil down to a horrendously boring routine. At that instance, I began questioning myself what I got myself into.
The questions is why do relationships fail? Why do we get bored in each other? Why do we always loose track of the beautiful things that came with meeting someone? This doesn't only apply to conjungal relationships but also to all sorts of partnerships. I will not try to answer these questions as I am sure they will warp my mind into a state of numbness due to their complexity.
I simply told my brother, in every relationship we need space. The best we could do is to ask for it when we need it. Telling his girlfriend he needed that space at that particular time was not a sign he loved her less which was his greatest worry. I told him that as we move from one relationship to the other, the bliss in the beginning will always end at some point and then we have to work damn hard every blessed moment to keep that spark going which is needed to fan the flame of love between two individuals. Unfortunately, humans are a damn lazy bunch at that!
Of course this is the same brother who two years ago came to me with tears of joy in his eyes that he had found the greatest girl in his life. It is the same brother whom I spent last December with in Africa who was driving me insane with jealousy and irritation from his frequent utterances of how much he was missing her and just wanted to return home to be with her. He even said he was gonna have that baby that she had been nagging about. Yeah right its been seven months ever since we returned. I am still to see her develp a protruding ominous belly.
So the big question again is what is happiness and how do we reach it? Sorry misters and misses I dont have an answer to that cos I am looking for that myself. I am not a depressed individual just one that thinks one step ahead. So be careful where you place me. One thing I know for sure is that happiness in my world is often maddeningly beyond my control as I dont live in isolation.
Lets follow this sequence: I might get out of my bed in the best energetic and happy mood but not assured to return to it at the end of the day with a smile on my face. Isn't it great to have a bed? Think about it, it welcomes us regardless of what ever mood we are in. It doesnt complain, we ride horses and climb undulating mountains on it. it doesnt complain. We snore and even drool on it, it doesnt utter grievances! We mess its cover. It doesnt complain and so on and so forth! Think about that.
Back to where we were. Take a typical scenario of me getting up in the morning, run a warm shower while whistling, grab a great breakfast, don a good outfit and feel like I am on top of the world. Then there I go out into the warm summer breeze with the strong beams of the eastly rising sun filtering from the horizon stroking my body and heating it up. My blood begins to boil with relish and i get a rush of adrenaline in anticipation of a beautiful day. I quicken my steps lissomely in bliss and in total satisfaction as I pluck a pink rose near by on my way to the bus stop. On the way I again contemplate how great my life is. What a good family I have and how lucky I have been to study up to the Ph.D. level, or what an amazing career am having with all the bunch of renown scientist scattered all over the globe!
Well this was a good morning indeed cos my happiness did not end at my door this day (probably if the weather was horrible I would have hated that very moment when i stepped over the door threshold into murky poodles of run off). Then bang in the bus some bloody drunk offers a racist statement, at the office a colleague who had a bad day at home is not doing his stint of the daily work. Then at twelve noon, the phone call I have been eagerly waiting for from the girl I met on friday did not come and I am forced to have lunch with some boring colleagues that all they talk about are crying kids at home and plans to celebrate yet another birthday for another child of theirs. Not that I dont like children, I just dont care because I dont have any myself at least not now and its my least worry for the interim.
So out goes my happiness straight through the window. Before the day ends, so happens other series of events before i finally return to sleep in the same bed that I went up from with an inflated ego and filled with joy. But not everyday is a bad experience. Maybe the lady calls the next day at noon and invites me out for lunch and the tragic rejection the day before turns into a pleasant suprise or maybe my colleague who was incensed the previous day gets out of bed on the positive side and so on. Turn it whatever way you like, the bottom line is that, our happiness is hinged on others and our immediate surrounding. No single living entity on this planet is an island.
The madman we shun today will become the most precious thing tomorrow if he was the last person left on earth with us. We need each other, we depend on each other just like my brother called to debunk the burden that was crushing his day. My talking to him helped me understood myself even better on the other hand. For one thing I understood why I am sinlge despite the number of girls I meet regularly. The answer is simple, I have become caught in the twisted vice of the modern world. Like everyone else, I am looking for ultimate love and happiness. Dont giggle! I am sweating in the crook of my palms thinking on how to make sense of where the word ULTIMATE came from.
I write a lot, see a lot; probably more than I should. I talk sometimes too much cos my head is brimming with ideas good sensible and crazy. Some times horribly dumb too. In my world everything has a place. I fantasize and sometimes hate when those fantasies come true. Even though I had wished for that. I like people at first glance but it has never really worked hating them in the same way. I am infectiously spontaneous to a fault sometimes but still shyness has its place when it derserves it!
My academic mind is sometimes warp in imaginary romatic display that perplexes me. However, as i get up each day while I have gotten older overnight, I go "here comes another day, hey dude what we got here?" It has taken me so many years to come to understand that the basic instinct to search for satisfaction in life is in parity to hunting for happiness.
I am sometimes dismally disappointed that despite my search for happiness on a day to day basis, I have never been able to fully grasp it in its entiety. As a literal example, one goes to his best retaurant, eats and gets satisfied, three hours later one is as hungry as hell again. You meet a magic girl and bang one is blissfully happy. A week or take what ever time span one starts going like hmmmm am not so sure about this. I have known people that up to date, despite thier desire to persue an academic degree they never were able to find that right education that fit their mental desire. Who is a superstar? He or she is someone that spends a great part of his or her life working hard to gain success and recognition and then when it comes, he or she spends the rest of it behind shades hiding from paparazzis, fans and stalkers! You can name the rest for yourself.
The question then is; is there anything like maximum happiness? Is there a thing like maximum satisfaction? My concept about falling in love today is that as our societies become much more modernized and advanced there has been a tendency to shift to individuals looking for ultimate satisfaction in everything. I am sorry to say, this blogg triggered by my brother's early morning phone call tells me nothing but that ultimate love and happiness is utopic. There is no consistency nor neither is there any constancy. There aint no such things. Did someone just slap me?
For Food and Shelter: Emigrate or die my friend
I was on BBC news online and a story headline captioned ‘Attacking Europe's border fences’ vividly captured my attention. In this compassionate narration, the author traced a group of young Africans willing to face all the huddles and risk to cross to Europe by braving the treacherous 23 km stretch of the Mediterranean Sea waters that luxuriantly wash the shores of Spain in wealthy Europe and the shores of Morocco in poverty stricken Africa. Inhabitants of both shores are now accustomed to dead bodies of Africans being washed up upon their once beautiful shores now turned into a dead trap and burial ground for many.
These young people get drowned as they try to reach the coast of Spain (where it is believed that milk and honey is abound) in small boats usually overloaded or not fit to stand the strong currents of the Mediterranean sea. I can hardly imagine that a 23 km distance is the determining factor between wealth and poverty, between two continents so close but so different from each other. Between 2 continents one in which food is bountiful and one in which children die everyday from malnutrition, one in which life expectancy of its inhabitants towers by a factor of 2 above that of the other. One in which literacy rates of 100 % are a norm and one in which in some places less than 50 % of people can read or write. Sounds to me like the Mediterranean, represents the big chasm of death separating hell from Heaven indeed.
The quest for shelter and food is ancient. Early men sojourned the earth in search of basic comforts of life. Sailors braved the dangerous seas to conquer and explore exotic lands in quest of wealth. The Vikings were roving plunderers with intent to cease and accumulate wealth. Several million Europeans immigrated to America, some to South Africa, Kenya etc in a similar venture. Migration has therefore always been and is still a common phenomenon in all realms of living species. People, like birds and other animals migrate for several reasons. Today, the western nations are attractive destinations for people emigrating from poor countries. To get a clear view of the underpinning forces of immigration, in the early 20th century, Sweden one of the most prosperous and rich economies in the world Today was one of the poorest and almost 1/4 of its population emigrated to the US to look for greener pastures.
I read everyday about how political leaders are looking for ways of curbing illegal immigration. Some countries are building walls several meters high, on the US/Mexico boarder, it is common to find several kilometres of barb wired fences manned by gun tooting guards. The solution to illegal immigration must be obvious even to the stupidest of all minds. Make the world a better and equal place for all. The ability to live a good life regardless of where one is located will harmonise human existence. I am looking forward to the day when one will fly to the horn of Africa and see all healthy and smiling kids. When one will stop in India, Bangladesh and places in South America and realise that they can live a long and fulfilling life as it is elsewhere in the developed nations. Then it will be time to start breaking down the high walls and fences we have built around ourselves in embarassment because no one will bother coming near them.
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