C is for CHANGE

Dear diary,

Choosing a topic for letter C was quite tasking for me, I had to choose between charity and change. After much deliberation, I decided to stick with change.

After a long deliberate break from watching the Kardashians, I recently decided to watch an episode and see what’s been happening with them. It was quite an emotional episode as some of the K sisters were in tears. Apparently, the man they had always taken as their father Bruce Jenner, was becoming a woman. In this particular episode, he was explaining to them about how he always wanted to come out of his shell (being a man) for so many years but he couldn’t because he wanted to be there for them as a father. He told them that he needed their support  now that he wanted to become the woman he was born to be. The girls were crying but at the end of it all, they decided to support him. Not all of them understood his reasons but they had to accept it; their 66 year old father was going to be a woman and there was nothing they could do about it.

Moving from the status quo to something else is my own little way of describing Change. It may not be a huge difference from where you were but as long as you are not in that particular position or situation you were in before, that’s change.

Change may come in various forms; it may be positive or negative and that’s the unique thing about it. For the Kardashians, change has come and they have to accept it. The human mind has an undying thirst for change when it has been buried in a realm of static energy. We saw this thirst during the campaign for the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama and we also saw it during President Buhari’s campaign. There’s something exciting about change that makes people look forward to it even though they are not sure of what it may bring.

Isn’t it ironic that the only constant thing in life is change? For you to move forward in life, you have to change something. If you refuse change, you can’t move forward. The change you seek might not be what you get but as long as you have made an attempt to move, that’s a step forward. Mistakes may happen but be rest assured you’ll learn from them. I’ve met people who are terrified of change and honestly, you can’t help but feel sorry for them. The world doesn’t revolve around you and if you refuse to move forward, you will be left behind. Not every change is good but that’s where wisdom comes to play. As an adult, you should be able to sieve the wheat from the chaff.

People change and circumstances change but you have to live with it and move forward. If you are willing, you can choose the type of change you want. A lot of relationships are in a quagmire today and the story most times is the same; its either one person has changed or the other person has refused to change, if you are tired of how things are, why don’t you invoke the spirit of change in your relationship? I don’t mean you should change your partner but you can change your attitude to certain things and watch the wind of positive  transformation whirl around you. 

Change begins on the inside and manifests outwardly. Don’t be afraid of change, try something new today 😊

I'll leave you with the words of a great poet, philosopher and author from ancient china;

  "Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality, let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”- LAO TZU

 

B is for BEAUTY

Dear diary,

Have you ever heard a man in love talk about his partner's beauty and you are like "really? let me see a picture." You look at the picture and smile sheepishly at him while saying to yourself "oh common, gerrarahia!"  Well, in the words of the late Michael Jackson, you are not alone.

Beauty has been defined over the years by various ideologies and opinions. What remains constant in it's definition is that people tend to tie it down to physical attraction. It's kind of weird when you bring someone that is not attractive physically and you expect people to say that that person is beautiful. That's like shooting yourself in the foot.

Beauty defines the qualities that a person possesses that makes them pleasing to the senses or the mind. What's beautiful to you may not necessarily be so to me. Hence the saying, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. It depends on who is looking. You often wonder why people that are not physically attractive end up with drop dead gorgeous people but only the people in the relationship can understand. The beautiful lady may have married the not so physical attractive man because he possesses some qualities that would last forever. It only takes maturity to understand that physical attraction fades but qualities like kindness, charity and meekness last forever. The guy looks lucky in the relationship but the girl knows that she the one living with a gold medal.

Don't always assume that someone must have done a ritual or visited a native doctor just to be involved with a beautiful person, it's only the people on the football pitch that can understand the dynamics of the game. Peer pressure or should I say youthful exuberance, has pushed us to believe that beauty is only defined by physical features and by this, many have lost out on a whole lot. People marry for physical attractions and a year after they are divorced because they found out they married a physically attractive empty container. 

If you are physically attractive and you are also attractive on the inside, that's a major plus for you. You are like diamond in a rough. If you know that you are not physically attractive, there are ways to make up for it. You can be beautiful on the inside and that would reflect on the outside. Please don't let society's immature definition of beauty deny you the pleasure of being yourself. Beauty can only be appreciated by the beholder. 

On a side note, I've always wondered why girls in the clubs are picked up by strangers and they are happy to go home with them. These strangers tease them about their beauty that only they can see but then I realized that the saying is true;

Beauty indeed, is in the eyes of the be(er) holder.

A is for ATTITUDE

Dear diary,

"Your attitude sucks!"

I'm sure I'm not the first person telling you this so please don't contort your face. Okay, maybe I started this the wrong way, let me start over.

Growing up, I was quite reserved. I was that little girl that'll walk into a room and just sit by herself, observing everything and everyone. I was okay with it until I found out that people mistook my quietness and shyness for pride. You can imagine my facial expression during one of our confession nights in high school when one of my friends said to me "I never really liked you at the beginning, I thought you were one very proud and spoilt girl that felt too big to talk to people." Little me that couldn't talk to people because of my shyness, was being portrayed as a peacock. It didn't bother me then but I got to understand that even if that wasn't my true character, people had already concluded on my attitude. 

According to the Mariam Webster English Dictionary, Attitude has 3 major definitions

-the way you think and feel about someone or something

-a feeling or way of thinking that affects a person's behavior

-a way of thinking and behaving that people regard as unfriendly, rude, etc.

So basically, attitude has to deal with thinking, feeling and behaving. 

People describe an attitude based on observation (or assumption) of a particular character. They must have seen a particular behavior, thought about it and concluded on how to describe it. It's sort of like a gabbage in, gabbage out system. They can only conclude on your attitude after observing you in action. The sad thing is that even if you acted out of anger or frustration, people do not care. They just place that bad attitude tag on your forehead and walk away, after-all, first impression maters.

Your attitude helps people to know who you are. Take for instance, you are meeting someone for the first time. In this day and age that gist flies around like a mosquito, he/she would have done a background check on you so as to know you better. If the word about town is that you have a bad attitude, the person comes for that meeting being on the offensive, waiting to attack.

Attitude is fueled by thoughts. In his book, As a man thinketh, James Allen rightfully related thought and character. 

"Thought and character are one, and as character can only manifest and discover itself through environment and circumstance, the outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state."

Your attitude also helps you to discover who you are. You may not know certain things about yourself that are not right until someone says something to you about it. The only way someone can notice something about you is through your attitude. Don't always contort your face when someone says something about your attitude. Sit back and think about what has been said. If you think it's true, you change for the better. If you think they are wrong about you, then send it to the wind. People will always talk, but everybody cannot be wrong at the same time. Your attitude says a lot about who you are.

Take a moment to sit back and think again because there may be a modicum of truth when someone walks up to you and says, 

"Your attitude sucks!"

HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR ALPHABETS?

Dear diary,

*insert Joey's voice* how you doing? 😉

It's been a while I wrote in the diary and it's because I couldn't find my pen (pen means a lot of things right now so feel free to go with whatever makes you happy). I've found the pen now and I'm ready to start writing again. 

During my search for the pen, I discovered a lot things that I haven't discussed with you guys such as virtues, ideas and the likes. I've compiled a list of them and I'm going to be sharing them alphabetically. 

The first post goes up tomorrow. Each letter of the alphabet would be used to discuss a word (or words) for each day. Don't worry, you're not in a kindergarten class. There would be 3 posts up every week. As usual, tell a friend to tell a friend to visit the diary, it promises to be interesting. We all would be learning something new.

Live, learn, love.