Friday 19 June 2015

So Westlife Lied


I'm gonna take this moment

And make it last forever

I'm gonna give my heart away

And pray we'll stay together

'Cause you're the one good reason

You're the only girl that I need

'Cause you're more beautiful than I have ever seen

I'm gonna take this night

And make it evergreen

This is one of those songs that we all played growing up, thinking and hoping we find that love that is ever green.

Wake up my dear from that dream, because it only happens in Telemundo and Zee World. Infact they even go through a lot self to get that Happy ending.

Love is a weird concept that sometimes even I struggle to grasp. It is one of those words that there is a lot of confusion about its basic meaning, come to think of it, when it is going so well it is called love.  I am so in love with her that is why I bought her a house, that is why I quit my Job for him and also when it going all bad it is called love, I love you that is why I am staying with you even though you can’t give me a child, the long spectrum that love covers sometimes is so unbelievable.

Which is it, is it staying with your partner in the high times or is it staying with your partner in the low times (my friend will call it trying times). As I said to define love is an attempt to define God, no wonder the bible said God is Love.

The issue with romantic songs is that they build up love to be something you can capture, maintain and ignite at self-will, but we all know it is a big lie, in the song above the band West Life said they will make the love evergreen, HOW?

Whatever definition of love you have, I will simply say there are two parts of love, love the feeling and love the action, both are needed in your relationship and most times one is enough. If all you have is love the feeling, sooner or later your song will change to Toni Braxton Un-break my heart (lol).

Love will never be evergreen, from my little opinion sha, there are times love the feeling deserts you and you stay with love the action, and in those times that you stay with love the action, in all honesty you are not evergreen you are just holding on. but that is the tricky thing about love, love the action will always bring love the feeling with it, if you stay long enough with it.

So did WestLife really lie? do we lie at our wedding vows when we say I will always feel this way about you?

Yes you Did.

But then Love is not just the feeling, it is also the action, and when the feeling goes that is when the Action steps in.

So switch your song to Westlife's - More than words

Wednesday 17 June 2015

Score Cards...

Don’t look at me in manner or talk to me in that tone... Yes you know exactly what I mean (straight face).

If you want a guaranteed way of frustration and pain in a relationship,  all you have to do is to continuously keep scores of what you are doing in the relationship and what your partner is doing or not doing.  If you want to go ahead and compound your frustration you can go ahead and tell your partner how he or she is not meeting up to your expectation in the relationship. How you are sacrificing and giving up so many for the relationship.
     
This is what most people do in their relationships on a continuous bases, always in the face of their partners reminding them of their efforts in the relationship. I know this is tempting to do, to give them a little reminder of what you have been bringing to the table all this years, or what you gave up to make this work.  You think of how many times you have cleaned the house, paid the bills, bought gas for the car, stayed awake to feed the baby etc, but you have to consciously resist that temptation.

Sometimes we keep score card because we are afraid we won’t be appreciated, so we keep score cards as a tool so that when they try to act funny you remind them of all the things you do or have done in order to make the relationship work.

Another reason is d mild resentment going on in the women community where we are asking the men to recognize that being a full time house wife is also a Job, if you resent your partner for asking you to stay at home and raise the kids keeping a score card of how staying at home is also HARD WORK is tempting.

But the truth is keeping score cards always back fires, when you are constantly thinking of all the hard work you put into a relationship it turns into resentment and anger towards your partner and your loving habits will diminish. The connection between your thinking and your actions is undeniable, as you continue to dwell on your perceived unfair task load you will feel burned out and taken advantage of and in the long run this will give your partner the feeling of negativity around you and this turns to spiral with no end

This negativity in your relationship you have created now makes your partner defensive and he sensing what you are feeling begins to be defensive about how much he too is giving into the relationship and the ability for meaningful communication is totally lost.

So when you are tempted to keep scores, remind yourself first and foremost that this is not a test or competition of who can do more, it is about US not me. If my own contribution in this relationship for now is to bear the bigger load it is worth it, and in the future we will reap the fruits of my little seed. A well-trained child is a fruit, a clean house is a fruit, happiness is a fruit, better standard of living is a fruit. So even though the seed is tough now to plant, don’t keep score cards. Just do it as an act of love.

Throw away the score cards.

Monday 15 June 2015

Short Message Syndrome

When text messages were invented in 1992, I am sure no one knew how it will take over our lives.  Since its creation it has metamorphosed into newer and better formats but in reality they are all still short message Service(SMS) or otherwise called instant message(IM) (whatsapp, Bbm, facebook messenger etc)

 These plartforms have even gone to the extent of turning lazy teenagers into abbreviation inventors, abbreviations like SMH, L8R, OMG etc are now becoming acceptable on plartforms as a proper means of communication.

 Now I am not pointing fingers at people because I am also at blame but I want to point out two of those abbreviations that make me go mad. An example of there usage is in the conversation below:

 Unknown- sup
OY - good morning to you too
Unknown - hw ya end?
 Oy - Very well thank you.
       - pls who is this?
 Unknown - your BFF
                -lol
                - Jk
 and that is how I have not replied this BFF since that day

 I am so sure many of you have experienced worse, on various platforms, and the only reason I think this is on the rise apart from laziness is the fact that maybe, just maybe no one took the time to teach them how to use short message service so am going to try to give a crash course on SMS;

 1. Manners apply here too
      I understand that most times in other not to forget the message we want to pass to that person, we just go straight to typing and sending the message. I too have done same but when i am done writing I try to greet the person. Our manner of approach matters a lot, you might think it only has to be when you meet with the person personally but the way you also converse with someone depends on the manner of response you get.

2. Stop being lazy
      I think the energy channeled to type the three letter word "sup" which has nothing to do with greetings or "hawaye" will be well appreciated if it was a hi, hello or good morning. In my case this dude was awake by 7.20am and felt to say "HI" but the word "SUP" was the choosen medium of waking me up from sleep. Now there are some cases that this rules don't apply, for example when you are chatting with a close friend, you can even open your chat with "LOL". (Just joking). Abbreviations are wonderful but please when you can do without them please do, and when you can use a little more common one please do,that leads me to my next point.

3. Don't leave people guessing
   I know you are the new oxford dictionary of abbreviations and you update your software everyday. Some of us don't, we just know the basic abbreviations to help us get by, so try as much as possible to help us understand what the new ones mean, the first time I saw "IDK" I could not understand what it meant because it was used inappropriately, and for the fear of looking old, I didn't reply, I just asked a friend who it took over 4hrs to reply me the meaning and I was able to continue the chat, so please even with the abbreviations try to make sure the other party understands what you are trying to communicate.

4. Age has nothing to do with SMS/ IM
      In Africa seniority has always been carried over to everything that we do, so much that the person who sent the first message will wait for the person repling to say the greetings,  come of your high horse, greeting your younger ones, does not mean they are now your age mate, just greet and you then scold them if that is the aim why you sent them an SMS.

5.They are informal
 Most people have lost Jobs or relationships because of SMS /IM, this the reason emails are there, have you not stopped to wonder why almost all smart phones when you type and chose options has the email and Text side by side, the email is just a formal version of your SMS/IM platforms. Someone sends you an email and then you reply on BBM. (You need help). Now there are people who take this to the extreme too, I have seen friends who query you because you have not called them in a while but you have kept in touch through SMS.

As I said its a crash course on SMS/IM not a project topic *tongue out*, I hope we all learn to use the "sup" when necessary, come to think of it, waking up to "sup" as the first greeting of the day is not a good thing abeg.

Feel free to write any other SMS/IM habits that you have come across