The Transient nature of Friendship

“Twenty Friends can’t play together for twenty years”, the first time I heard that saying was about 19 years ago in Primary school, my teacher said it in class and went ahead to explain what he meant. I have never forgotten since…..

Every time I lost a friend- whether we stopped talking, just lost touch or someone died, this statement came to mind. Usually I'm sad when I think of it; I have friends from primary school that I sometimes wish we still talked; those from secondary school- times we spent ‘discovering’ who we truly are; then University days when you believe “we’re mature and we know each other well enough to remain lifelong friends”. The painful reality is that people will always move on……

I’ve never been good at keeping in touch with people, a bad habit I tell myself started out of not really knowing how to miss people. I’ve had friends complain and complain but I'm really trying now to change and I have friends who have accepted me like that. There are some who I felt like ‘our time was over’, conversations became tedious and normally comfortable silences became awkward, others we just didn’t have the same mind on things anymore.

I had a conversation with my sister about how certain friends got annoyed if you didn’t give them information about yourself; A gets angry that I didn’t tell her when I went out of the country on holiday; B said I'm not a true friend for not telling him my sibling got married and C claims I always visit D and not him. But I wonder, does it REALLY matter? How much information am I supposed to spread before you believe I consider you a friend?

In life we move, it’s inevitable you can’t decide you’ll be 21 forever, time will pass and age will increase. And as we move, priorities will change, experiences will make some people better or bitter and because I now live out of town can become an issue. Your best friend will get married and become best friends with her husband so what happens to you? You work hard for your money and then realize you have this friend who just knows how to call you for a loan at strategic times in the month or just always owes your business, how do you maintain such toxic relationship? Or you constantly talk about Steve Jobs and he only talks about Wizkid, Davido and Chris Brown at 29 years old?

I had a group of friends in my NYSC days, it just seemed natural that we consciously made time to spend together however slowly but firmly things changed; some travelled for masters, changed jobs, made new friends or had a new life to chase. It hurt for a long time and I wondered why but really it was just life happening! Think about it, if 5 years after, we still remained at the same spot in our careers, dressed the same way or chased the same things won’t we think there was a curse on our heads?

The end of ANY kind of relationship hurts- even abusive ones because you will have at least one good time you shared, and you’ll wonder why things didn’t remain good.

If a friend doesn’t tell you she travelled or she’s dating a new guy LET IT GO! Someone I consider a friend recently got married and didn’t breathe a word to me, I was shocked and hurt but faced the hard truth that maybe we weren’t really such close friends anymore or he wanted a small ceremony and he could do without me at the wedding. Or a close friend that I was on her bridal train had her baby and I found out months after through a stranger……these things happen and if I got angry what would have happened? Would her baby return into her stomach to be born after she has informed me that she is preggers? Let’s be realistic, it hurts but should we strip naked and stage a protest because of that?

Life already keeps us busy and bad experiences are inevitable, why shorten your life further with avoidable and dramatic issues? I believe you should try to maintain good relationships as long and as well as you can, yes we’ll have some people who will be our friends forever but some others won’t.  Free people who are obviously disrespecting you, taking advantage of you, bullying you or are simply possessed; have fun with the friends you have presently; share information that you comfortably feel can be any other person’s business; give people the benefit of doubt until you see they are unrepentantly evil; don’t hold on to offences its dangerous to your heart and peace of mind. And above all YOU be the good friend you can be; a woman I admire said humans always wait for people to love them, but there is no harm in showing love first.

 

The image is a drawing of my favorite comic by Bill Watterson ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ who are best friends.

Addiction: Saved by the Purple Lipstick

I’ve always wondered how people develop addictions- medication abuse, excessive alcohol consumption, shopping and hoarding and so on, I came close to the answer sometime in 2012 when for a period I insanely craved ‘something’. I use the word ‘something’ because till this minute I don’t know what I wanted, I just needed something different, ‘out of my routine’ that would make me feel better or good or free or numb!

I wanted something to hold on to that didn’t have an anchor so I didn’t have to be committed; I searched for activities that provided temporary comfort because truly there is always a price to pay for a good you desire- and I wasn’t ready to do so.

At various times I’ve had ‘almost’ addictions (some I can’t mention because I’ll have to kill all my readers) but recently I was faced with a truth “I’m addicted to work”; I have to just keep doing something, if I'm not working, I'm thinking about work, if I'm not thinking then I'm dreaming of work when I fall asleep. I constantly have to do something and when I’m not doing something then I'm worried that I’m not doing something and that I’ve become lazy and I’ll never achieve my dreams and I’ll wake up one morning old, grey and a failure because I allowed myself sleep a few more minutes or I even stopped to breathe!

I measure success by what I see in my hands; which isn’t totally bad but not when I forget the good I have and blindly be consumed by what I don’t have yet. And so it happened, a few weeks ago I fell ill and before anyone could say anything I knew it was because I NEVER rest until I'm literally knocked down and that’s exactly what happened to me. I was afraid of what I had done, first I was angry at the amount of time I had to waste trying to get well until I realized if I died my laptop would be returned to my office, my make up would probably be shared amongst my sisters and my clothes would be given out because I'm the round one whose clothes are too big for everyone in my family. Point is, it gave me time to think.

And the hard truth is not all my work exactly brought results; activity didn’t mean productivity and it was painful to realize. Definitely I had learnt things, made less money than I wanted, built capacity, met a few important people that don’t remember me because I'm poor at networking, made the best of friends (that I was slowly losing because I had become anti social) however, I wasn’t satisfied, happy and I still had a lot to learn and a whole lot more that I wanted.

So one day I sit up, consciously relax and get up to take a walk for fresh air and in search of moi moi, yes moi moi because if I didn’t eat it at that exact moment I may have died. As I walked I saw a make up shop I’d been telling myself I’d visit for more than a year now. I enter and decide to make enquiries about certain items I needed. Unfortunately (and fortunately) I met a nice sales guy who after trying to sell me boxes, concealer and eyeshadow finally showed me a creamy purple lipstick.

I’d have to say that the guy is good because I was making enquiries NOT supposed to buy anything but he put the tester on my lips and voila! My eyes suddenly looked brown and MORE beautiful, my skin looked lighter and clearer and my headache didn’t seem so painful- just like that I had been healed by the Purple Lipstick!

I pay for my new purchase, suppressing the guilt until I realized I was genuinely happy! Not only because I just added to my growing lipstick collection but because I did something that made me happy, I didn’t worry that I wasn’t spending time doing hard labour or wasting time or money. This simple act opened my mind to other things I won’t bother sharing but take it from me I’m dealing with my ‘fruitless work addiction’.

Maybe I’ll use another addiction to take me out of my addiction to work; not the senseless type I searched for in 2012 but something fun, decent and doesn’t hurt anyone……like dancing, RESTING when I’m tired or buying more lipsticks!!! LOL and of course eating moi moi too because that one that day was of life!!!

Oh yeah…..Happy Valentine’s Day

In the picture is me being beautiful in THE Purple Lipstick and my good friend (and adopted sister) Ezinne who is lazy to use Make up daily but is an ever ready Face Model when I need one!

What I didn’t plan to Learn

 

A few days ago I wrote a funny article and had plans to post it here; I have a habit of waiting for a while after I write an article because I sometimes feel its incomplete or I could edit better when I'm in a certain mood.

Anyway, the article was incomplete and about lessons of life I learnt from hilarious situations then one day I wake up, check my laptop and realize it’s no more there. I check every folder; either I didn’t save it or it got deleted somehow and I was clueless on what to do, totally devoid of any emotions as I had no one to blame for my carelessness but me.

But this got me wondering, I can actually write the article again but “would it be as funny?” I mean the article was based on actual personal experiences I can recall but, there was a but! Maybe I was just being lazy (a condition I suffer from that I’m currently being treated for) or unsure of my writing.

I recently had a conversation with someone who made no effort to hide his irritation about the condition I mentioned above, the next day I spoke to someone else who was a bit nicer and whose personal road to emancipation opened my eyes to the power of one word- FOCUS.

Learning how to control a wandering (I’d rather use multi talented) mind is one of the hardest things; as I began to doubt re-writing my article I couldn’t help but be true to myself that maybe I wasn’t sure of my intention or the message I needed to pass that’s why it wasn’t coming back to me fully.

We often allow our minds be consumed by many time-bound expectations and then become frustrated when we are standing with our arms empty, forgetting we never really did anything to make them reality.

What we do most of the time is wishful thinking and for some weird reasons expect that they should come through and we deserve it. No one is demanding you narrow your options but rather have pictures, if I had a clear picture of my ‘lessons of life’ article, reproducing it may not have been a task- I could have just gone back to my mental picture and replicated it.

Other times we dabble into so much, with no specific focus and end up with nothing. Check it, even the most successful people who seem to have different business ventures are still focused on one thing that is the binding factor or ties their businesses together.

The first time I was getting a shop with my sister, I literally drew what I wanted on paper, I always referred to it so even when we had to make some changes due to space and furniture positions, I understood what needed to be compromised and what had to stay the same. And for the period I had that facility, not once did I regret or try to rearrange things, it was simply perfect!

Always have a picture of everything you want to achieve or you want to see; I have a picture when I pray so I’ll know when my prayers have been answered or accept to wait if God wants to teach me some lessons so that I won’t wake up after a few months and conclude that God is wicked and doesn’t answer prayers; I try to have a clear picture of what I want to see happen in my business within a period of time (something I had to consciously learn as part of my Laziness Rehab); I try to have a picture of the type of writer I want to be; a picture of what type of wife/mother I want to be; and I even have a picture of how much weight I want to lose.

If we can just focus our thoughts/imaginations/wishes/expectations and make them sketches, then I'm sure we could always go back to the drawing board to eliminate unwanted things, prioritize, get desired results and definitely overcome laziness. I once read that “If you know your WHERE, then you can overcome the HOW”.