The end

So its finally the end of 2009!!! Wow! It was a very eventful year for me...I got qualified to practice Law in Nigeria amongst other things. The year was full of lessons of its own and I thank God I have fully learned them and moved on.

Any regrets? None! Yea, be surprised. I made awesome friends, concluded I did not need some others in my life, learned new skills, made up my mind about what i really wanted to do and I have the most adorable business partner!

Nothing like new year resolutions for me...that is so out dated. I now make 5 year plans. That makes more sense than a couple of "I promise not to do this or that"...I can't remember when last I had a new year's resolution but I'm glad I once did and I've realized the folly.

2010 is explosive for me, so many plans are in place; so many strategies and all of God with me. I am so excited. 2010 is the beginning of a new line of events in the world and I am the pacesetter. So many plans to change the ineptitude of the circumstances in which i find myself.

No more complaints, just change.

Change the World?

I seriously am not interested in changing the world...I have no interest whatsoever in pioneering world change. Where people are involved, it is absolutely difficult to change their mindset. I have resolved that the only person who needs positive change is ME!

I am often a lazy individual with no regard for people's feelings (sometimes) and I have a huge problem when it comes to meeting a deadline. My room looks like Katrina and Tsunami both paid it a visit and I would use up all the hot water in the house without considering the next person. I can go on and on about my faults but I have made a mental resolve to change my awful habits.

I have decided to wake up 3.30 a.m every morning, say my prayers, make breakfast for my family and read a chapter each day of John Maxwell's " The 21 indispensable qualities of a Leader". So far, I have been doing a great job of changing (even if I say so myself).

This has come with challenges and rewards of its own. I am more relaxed, I give way to traffic both on my left and on my right (even though i know fully well that the guy on the left is to make way but what does it matter?). I make out time to send texts of encouragements to people around me, I even visit "friends" who dont know where I live?!

My mantra now is "what can I give to the Institutions and Situations around me?. I have decided I need not go into any venture with ME on my mind first.

Once in a while, when I see a well dressed person littering the streets, I walk up to them with a smile and say "Please can you pick up your trash and but it in this bag? I would throw it away for you." I give them the benefit of the doubt...if they saw a trash bag somewhere, they might have put their dirt in it. Sometimes they don't find it funny and ask if I am paid by the Government to force them to pick up their dirt...I smile ever so sweetly and say no, then i just pick up the dirt myself (I surprise myself sometimes). Truth be told, that happened only once and I am not so sure I would do the same if it happened again.

I set out to change myself and what do you know...I am changing my world in the process.

Maybe you should do the same...list out your bad characters and work on them.

Integrity

It is amazing how we respect people from afar and they disappoint us sooner than expected with their lack of integrity. As John Maxwell rightly said : "Integrity is not a given factor in everyone’s life. It is a result of self-discipline, inner trust, and a decision to be relentlessly honest in all situations in our lives". Basically, integrity is carrying out actions based on who you are and not what people think.

When your boss is not at work, do you facebook all day? Is your room a pigsty until your friends or "someone special" comes visiting? Are you notorious for making promises you cannot keep? We all need to set standards for ourselves and surpass them.

I'll go on with the rhetoric. Are you a christian who is gets to church 2 hours before the service begins but gets 2 work an hour late? We certainly all need to examine our lives, actions and beliefs.

Do you for a second think all those people investigated by the EFCC were just mere thieves who deserved what they got? It most probably started from pilfering stationary, beverages, toiletries etc. from the office; then it became electronics, a bit of cash and the next thing they knew, they became kleptomaniacs! OK, i might be exaggerating but you catch my drift.

How can we talk about a new Nigeria when each of us have "petty" sins that have not been addressed? We talk about the politicians who steal money when we refuse to pay our taxes. We talk about the girl who slept her way to the top when we beat the traffic light only yesterday. We talk about the filth on the street when we threw a banana peel out the widow 5 seconds ago. Come on! Let us all practice the art of removing the "bench" from our eyes before removing the "particles" from other people's eyes.

We need to be conscious, ever second, about the need to be held accountable for our actions. Even when other people do not notice what you do at the moment, do good anyway because it would become a part of you and you would have no fear of slipping up anytime soon.

As the bible says, do not be men pleasers...men have short memory spans. You do good today and tomorrow, when you forget to do something for them, you become the bad guy.

Basically, this note is to make you ponder on what you do regularly that needs amendment or improvement. Its all up to you.

My Sexual Dicourse

I have always wondered why a lot of people shy away from talking about the very important topic of sex. I have never had sex so it would be a bit difficult for me to adequately convey what sex feels like; all I know about sex is what I have read in books of people who are not shy to talk about it and girl talk I guess.

The first time I unwittingly found about sex was when I read Gen 4:1 (I was 7 years old by the way). I always wondered how a man would know a woman and she would bear a child. I asked my mum and she gave an answer I cannot remember right now but I am sure she did not tell me the truth. In another version I read when I was 8 it said “and Adam lay with his wife and she bore a child”.

The very next week, my cousins came over to stay with us for the holidays and I woke up in the wee small hours to find one of my male cousins on the same bed with me! I was alarmed and I could not go back to sleep. I prayed so hard that I would not be “with child” and I wondered who the stupid person was that told my cousin to sleep on the same bed with me (mind you, it was a big bed, my sister was sleeping soundly beside me but what was that to my small mind?). Thank goodness I was not pregnant.

Then I read Sidney Sheldon’s “The Naked Face” and I had to check the dictionary for the meaning of sex, homosexual, heterosexual and many other big words. I was shocked! All the while I thought sex was a description of whether you were male or female. Thank God for The Naked Face. The more novels I read, the more the word sex popped up (by the way I never read Mills and Boon and all those romantic bunkum, whenever my neighbour gisted us about any M and B she read, I felt it was for people who were soft in the head...apologies to those who read it; it was an opinion of an innocent little child).

I went on to secondary school and like most of us I heard more about sex during biology classes (sexual reproduction class to be specific) and more gist from mates who either had read books on sex or had already had sex. I do not even recall when exactly I decided I was not going to have sex before marriage but I know it was majorly because I did not want to be gravid just yet; I did not trust all those pills and the condom.

Later on, I became a Christian and decided I would not have sex because the bible instructs us Christians not to have sex. It is as simple as that for me but it still does not mean that I am a prude. I have a salubrious curiosity about sex even though I say so myself. Come on, I am a human being for goodness sake!

It is officially annoying how many religious groups, especially Christian ones, behave as if having sexual cravings is a sin. Instead of teaching about sex and how to channel your energy and thoughts into other things than sex or something of that sort, they pretend as if no such topics exist. What, the Pastor just hugged his wife and they had 7 kids, yeah? Was it yet another immaculate conception? Or did he impregnate her via Bluetooth?

The funny thing is that sexual escapades are more prevalent in the church than in the “oh so sinful world” because there is general ignorance of anything sexual.

Teach us that it is healthy to have sexual appetites and do not let us find out from our friends who are just as clueless as we are or from Cosmo mags and the like. Do not force us to make chastity vows or whatever they are called but let us make the decisions for ourselves.

I cannot count the number of such vows that have been broken because the people who made then did not fully understand what they were doing. Put such a girl in a room with the cutest guy in the world whom she simply adores and watch her remove her clothes faster than you would say “hey” when he touches her. (Jack Robinson is too long, by then she would be in another world).

Then again, why would we condemn a world for not being chastely when they do not even believe in God or have any sort of religion or beliefs? If another’s religion encourages him to engage in sexual escapades, who are we to say he is wrong? After all some people believe that it does not make any sense waiting till marriage to have sex while others believe otherwise. I am in no position to say which belief is wrong or right generally but I am in the position to say what belief is right for Christians because it is expressly spelt out in the bible. You cannot choose what to believe in the bible, it is either all or nothing. Having established that, if you are not a Christian you are excused from my tongue lashing.

Now to you Christians and other religious groups that advocate chastity. Why do you preach it as though it is unbelievably easy to abstain from sex especially when you have had sex before? Do you not think you should focus on teaching people how to overcome temptations than to tell them not to even acknowledge that such temptations exist? You are the ones who make people, even married folks, feel that sex is a dirty, horrible topic to discuss yet the Songs of Solomon express sex to be a beautiful experience. Some even go as far as saying couples should not engage in sexual activities unless they intend to have kids.

Get off your high horse already! If for centuries the same approach has been used to curb illicit sex in the church and it has not worked, does it not amount to unadulterated madness to continue using the same approach? Why do you cast out the pregnant, young woman from among your midst and yet say nothing of the choir lady who had an abortion yesterday? It is only in the church that we shoot our wounded soldiers.

I know ignorance is partly to blame for this but why must we continue wallowing unabashedly in it. Let’s get back to the drawing board. The Corinthians to whom Paul was writing were Christians yet he encouraged them to abstain from immorality. He did not ban them from the church (well, except the man who slept with his father’s wife) but lovingly encouraged them to cast off all sexual sins from their lives. Read 1st Corinthians chapter 5.

I can go on and on about my ideologies on sex and whether you agree with me or not is a different matter all together but I am sure we all agree that we do not have a healthy sex education in this country (I am not sure we even have one in this world). I definitely am not saying that as soon as children can talk you tell them all about sex but don’t give them that crap about the

We need to release sex from its closet and from the various misconceptions about the healthy nature of sex. I am not saying we should have sex on the roof top of our houses or on the street: indecent exposure; all I am saying is that sex should not be seen as a dirty act or a taboo subject.

On the other side, we should respect the act of sex enough not to put such scenes on national TV but that is a topic for another day.

...cheers...