"Talking the Talk OR Working the Talk?"

Its 11:34 pm, way past my bedtime and guess what I'm doing? Playing 'Angry Birds" on my ipad while desperately waiting for a ridiculously slow game download of 142MB to get completed! What would that make me?? A game addict? Playing games by 11:34pm, when i should be in bed and then waiting for another download to complete! Oh dear!! Well truth is I'm not waiting for it to complete so i can play more games, simply waiting so i can shut down all my gadgets..

I'm sure most of my ardent blog followers are wondering why I've gone silent lately....I can't say I haven't, I think I've just been preoccupied with recent happenings and my impending relocation to a different country! Anyway that's not what I'm here to talk about! I'm here to talk about...................um...........I don't know! Lately I've been wondering "what da banana's happened to my inspiration?!".. Sometimes i have a million things i wanna talk about and at other times, my brain cells seem fried! Maybe i should talk about the recent bombings in Nigeria and its impact on the lives of the people....? Or maybe i should talk about what we can do to help others in difficult situations?! 

I think that alot of times when people are far removed from disasters, they don't really identify with it and as a result have a limited level of empathy to those who weren't as lucky. What I'm trying to say is that its easy to talk about accidents and events 'in passing' and to proffer a million solutions of what we think the president should say or what the government should do, because we know better sitting our behinds in our comfy swivel chairs at work or couches at home, reading the papers, Internet and watching CNN! How about we start talking about what we can do? And after talking about it, actually get up and DO SOMETHING! Or do we not think we can make a difference in influencing our environment and changing the lives of people around us? I just read an article about a 13year old boy who when he was 5 was inspired to send all his toys to a little girl whose house got burnt and whom he saw on TV (oh the sweet innocence of a child). Well, eight years later, a charity organization has been formed with thousands of volunteers, rebuilding homes and lives and making a measurable difference across state borders in the US all because the little boy saw a need and decided to meet it. Why can't we be like this boy? Now here's inspiration for me to write! Don't get me wrong, I do not ostracize myself from those who talk the talk but can't work the talk! I'm just like you, wishing in your heart that you could sacrifice your time and resources and actually do something; I'm just like you thinking that sending a donation across to the less privileged is doing my own 'biblical CSR' (CSR in this context meaning Christian Social Responsibility)-By the way my download just finished so I'll be wrapping this up soon- and Yes, maybe sending a cheque is good enough but is it "best"?

I strongly believe we are called to do just more than sit in our comfy lives and send cheques or talk the smart talk without doing the work.. There's work to be done, alot but the laborers are few... Its time to step out of our comfort zones and get our hands dirty volunteering to make a difference in people's lives. It could be volunteering at an old people's home or at an orphanage teaching kids or just playing with them and making them feel loved, or raising funds to help out those in dire need of financial assistance to solve real problems or sending relief materials to victims of the crisis in Jos, or spending your next vacation in Sudan or Somalia instead of the UK or wherever else you go (i say this to me inclusive) or even sacrificing the vacation money and raising funds to send across borders! After all true love should be without borders right? People, it could be anything, just start "working the talk"!! Lets do something that counts in other people's lives!

My prayer is that this week God will help me meet the need of someone truly in need... I ask this not with expectations of receiving blessings for myself later, but i ask selflessly with the desire to see someone smile. :)

So i urge you readers, lets get people smiling this week :).. God bless you as you touch a life and as you "work the talk"!!

Now its beyond way past my bedtime guys! Adios!!!!

Letting Him in "On D Plan"

I'm not sure what exactly i came here to blog about today! Its been 15days since my last post and in those days a lot has happened! I'm now a year older and hopefully wiser (winks), I've sort of moved houses temporarily (gist for another day) and my future has just been set in stone by the good news i received yesterday! However before I go onto the news, let me tell you about my birthday! I had a wonderful day in the midst of colleagues, friends and family. I got gifts and 3 cakes in total, 1cake i bought and 2 as gifts! Any more cake and i'll be blowing out cake from my nose! lol.. In my company when its your birthday, you get to spend your money on the company instead of the other way round; funny right? Anyway your's truly had to buy drinks and a cake for the office to feed over 80+ people, so getting an extra cake for this feat was more than welcome! After work, spent the rest of the day and night at a bar called SS lounge (i don't know what SS means) where there was a live band and comedy on air.. Loads of friends came (of course with their own friends as is customary naija practice) and we wined and dined! So that's how my birthday was.
Now onto the good news.............drums roll............ your's truly is relocating from Naija!!!! (Mixed feelings).. I'm leaving to the UK to start a masters for the next year and i'm excited and overwhelmed with the number of things i have to do pre-and during study! I've wanted to do a masters for the last 2 years but somehow it never quite worked out before due to circumstances beyond my control, and now its here it feels surreal. On the other hand a part of me is ambivalent about my departure cause i get the feeling i wont be back to stay in a looooong loooong time... don't ask me why, its just a hunch (winks).. Anyway "life is a beach; and then you dive" (slogan on my sister's t-shirt when we were kids)... Life comes in various shades of colors and mine just took on ALL the colors of the rainbow! Yippee!!!
So that's the story of my life lately.. Makes me think back to when i was in secondary school and what i envisioned of my life post secondary education...um..to be honest i can't remember what i thought i would be doing or where i would be! lol.. kinda silly not to remember but hey! Life takes us by surprise, we move onto places and phases we never thought we would be; and in all of it we hope we can look back and be thankful for our blessings.
For me i feel like who i am, where i am going to and all my plans has got absolutely nothing to do with how much effort i put in, its more about how much "in the plan" i let the Big Guy upstairs in on and take control of. For you see, my life is not my own to do with as i please so no matter how much i want something when i want it, he's not gonna let me have it if its not in his own timing! In my place, we say "Oge Chukwu ka mma" meaning "God's time is the best"; my life and my experiences so far is a clear indication that this phrase is true.
What of your's? Are you patient enough to let Him lead and you watch?

Toodles people!
Who else?!

Fear of Getting older

Its my birthday in exactly 8 days from today and i'm going to be 28. I know a lot of women don't like to tell their age, but i ain't one of those women.. Saying my age or not won't take or add any more years to my life or increase the size of my bank account, so what da hell?!Anyway i never thought i would be single at 28 but here i am, single and satisfied! Don't get me wrong when i use the word 'single', doesn't mean i don't have a man in my life, matter of fact i do and he's wonderful... So back to the age thing....I'm guessing my blog title gives the impression i'm scared of getting older? Far from it! I'm happy and thankful for life to this age, hearing the way young people are dying everyday.
Reminds me of when i was 23 there was this tall, handsome, blue-eyes, light skinned guy who wanted to marry me, but i barely knew him and in my naivety i couldn't even get myself to date him cause i felt his ultimate agenda was marriage and there was no way i was gonna be getting married at 23, hell no! In fact i did say to him to leave me alone and move on cause i wasn't gonna be ready even in 2years from then (at 25) to be married. In retrospect, i'm like 'what was wrong with you'? Why shouldn't i have been ready to get married at 25 right? I don't know.. I guess this marriage thing has to do with psychological and mental readiness and i was certain that it would take me more than 2 years to get there. I remember in university when i and my friends would discuss marriage, 26 was my ideal age. I wanted to be married at 26 and have had 2 kids by 30! I guess i'm now 2years behind on my ideal dreams ;)...hehehehe...Then the funny part was my friend who is so opinionated and a very independent type of chic was so sure she wasn't gonna get married before 28 and even said she didn't mind getting married at 30! Need i say who is married today?? Her of course! Married at 26 and laughing at herself for thinking myopically all those years! Guess life can be ironical..
And as i sit and think about the fact that i'm turning 28, i realize that i don't look nor feel 28! I look at least 2 years younger than i actually am and feel 3 years older than i am! Lol! Yep, i feel 3 years older.. I bet you thought i would say i feel 20 or something right?! Far from it.. Call me old-school or old mama, that's the truth! Maybe its because I've realized i behave, have views far ahead of my peers and have been told i sound older! Whichever the case, I would rather be caught acting like a mama than like a girl in her 20s with little to offer intellectually! Just me...sue me!
To answer the question if i now feel ready to be married? The answer is Yes! Not that i don't have my doubts some-days, but ultimately, I'm just about ready to start a new phase in life and curious as to what my babies would look like! lol.. Anyway you know what they say, the race is not to the swift! Time and chance people, time and chance....So live life with no regrets and stand by the decisions you make everyday.

ps: make sure y'all be wishing me happy birthday on the 11th of August!
Hasta la vista ;)

The Concept of The Human Race

Charles Darwin grew old trying to figure this one out! photo from  wikipedia.com

Have you ever wondered why the people who sweat their butts the most are the ones who make the least money? Example; commercial drivers, the carpenters, construction workers, farmers, masons, truck drivers etc... They make the least money but labor the hardest under the scorching heat of the day, tilling the soil hoping to reap of its fruit. Their bosses on the other hand wake up in the morning and head off for a run to work up their only sweat of the day, get home and get ready for work and eventually make it into the office say at about 9 or 10am in the morning. They lie back on the swivel chair, turn the air-conditioner and the TV on and listen to CNN dish out more problems the world has, and then start off the day with phone calls and emails on the computer. End of month? The boss goes home with a check at least 5 times more than that of the guy who spent his whole day outside under the sun or in the rain. That's life! Or lets take it back to the corporate world with the bank as a case study; in Nigeria the banking industry is so huge and so demanding that no matter how much the banks pay, a lot of people would rather opt not to work in a bank if they could help it. The junior banking officer gets to work at 630am, handles customers incessant demands from 8am till 4pm in the evening (need i remind you of Nigeria's population) and leaves the office at 7, if she's lucky, she does this everyday for at least 300 days in a year: the junior marketer who's been given a target of 200,000,000million naira is out on the streets everyday looking for customers to open accounts, and worried sick about not meeting her target and possibly losing her job if not careful. And at the end of the year, the banking officer and the marketer take home a lil over 10,000USD for all their hard-work and they do so gladly that at least they have a job in a country filled with so much unemployment. Now we have the bank managers, directors and CEOs who on the other hand are caught between meetings, calls, conferences, flights across continents and the best holidays all over the world when they feel like it and who's only labor is to scream over the heads of their subordinates about meeting the company's overall target. End of year? Well lets just say it'll take a laborer on the street his entire lifetime to make what the director makes in a year!

This all brings me to the question, "what is or was the original concept behind the creation of the human race"? Were we fashioned to be born, go to schools, graduate, find jobs, work our butts off, get married, have kids, sweat to raise them to be useful in life while of course sweating to provide for them, keep sweating to survive even after the kids have grown and left home, get old and become a baby again and then die someday out of old age and exhaustion from the 70+ years of hard-work? Nah, it can't be, there's got to be more. While the stages in life listed are exciting and interesting, it can't be all there is to achieve a fulfilling life... Life has got to be much more than about the number of worldly goods attained. If it weren't so, why is it the more privileged people who tend to be depressed and even take it one step further by attempting to or taking their own lives? I mean the lives of Hollywood stars depict the example of worldly assets being insufficient for personal fulfillment and contentment; they have it all and yet their lives are filled with drugs, extreme alcoholism, immorality, divorce, depression and suicides! So can you see that amassing all the riches can never be enough for true happiness?

In my opinion, the original concept of the human race is fading. The beginning of doom for man begin with the fall of man in a certain garden eons of years ago. The true purpose and reason for which man was created "to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it..." Gen 1:28. Man was supposed to live in a beautiful world without stress and without having to toil to eat! That's the way it was supposed to be. But then man fell and the rest is history! You and I are in a race to find our way back to our true and original domain and i don't need to mention how difficult it is to find the way. This takes my mind to the "road less traveled". This road is narrow, long, winding and filled with obstacles and trials too many to count! Someone said, that "the beginning of Jesus is the beginning of trouble"! I agree. You can't seek to the serve God and face no trials, no its not possible. You see the devil is constantly trying to distract us with the many enticing things the world has to offer; drugs, sex, alcohol, crap on TV, malice etc, so we don't remember what our true and new purpose is, which is to serve God. So the minute we somehow remember and take a 360 step to walking down the narrow road, the devil gets upset and attempts to ruin us by shooting arrows to test our acclaimed faith!

Now some question God and ask why He lets the arrows fly? It's cause that's the only way we'll prove how much we trust Him and that's the way He can show us who's in control! He's hoping you wont chicken out and walk out on the road less traveled. For you see in Christ there is actually peace (though arrows fly) for Christ has overcome the world (John 16:33).
Food for thought.........remember to walk the "road less traveled" people..its easier.

Coco-C