MESSAGE TO THE INSECURE PERSON

Good Evening fam, it’s yet another blog post Thursday. I apologise for taking a one month hiatus yet again, it’s due to the long work of fiction I’m working on. I’ll soon be done anyways that’s good news.

Today, however I write with extreme passion. This specific fire has been burning in me for a week plus now and I couldn’t just wait for today to make this post.

Today my message is for the insecure person. Now there are several types of insecurity but today I’m talking of one type and that is ‘Personal Image Insecurity’. I know it probably doesn’t exist but necessity is the mother of all inventions.

What is Personal Image Insecurity, it is when you aren’t content with yourself and so strive to be part of a different group of people.

We all go through this insecurity right from when our 5 year old selves wanting to be part of the older kids and play with them or when we wanted to be part of the cool kids who oblivious to us were even our age mates. It’s naturally ingrained but as we grow through childhood and into teenage, it’s expected to disappear. We are expected to accept ourselves but very sadly most of us never grow, we remain like those children who want to be part of the ‘cool kids’. The problem with wanting to be part of the cool kids is when you eventually become part of them they suddenly seem like the dull kids and you want to be part of another mentally created cool kids and on and on till you lose yourself.

William Shakespeare once said,

“To thine own self be true!”

That means don’t lie to yourself. Be yourself and don’t live under a façade. Christian Hip Hop artist Lecrae also in his track Free from It all said,

‘Live for everyone else gotcha losin’ yourself’

Now to why this post has been burning me, it is so unfortunate and misfortunate all together that many people in our world today refuse to accept who they are and what they have and want to be what they aren’t. What do I mean? There’s this infamous story of this young man whose mother had a badly damaged eye which made him ashamed of her. One day she finally told him she had incurred that injury while saving him from death as a baby. The part I’m focusing on is ashamed of her. But this example doesn’t illustrate my point well. About two weeks ago I heard that a young man in JSS3 denied his father. His father was a poor man managing to educate him in one of Jos finest Secondary Schools. Because he was ashamed of his father’s clothing and car, he told his classmates that was his driver. Long story cut short the Principal found out and punished the boy and I commend her although not fully because counseling him would have been much more effective anyways she just saved this young man a lot of future stress that’s if he got the right message.

Many of you will be quick to call him foolish boy but many of us do the same thing. Lemme give some examples. You’re a young guy and manage to feed your hungry phone with 200mb every week which is really stringent but you’re aspiring and saving up to buy an IPhone7. Question?

How are you going to feed that IPhone? Why do you want the Iphone? The same reason that boy called his father his driver, you want to fit in, you don’t want to be looked down upon get it?

Another example, your parents are poor people managing to pass by every day and they manage to send you to the University. When you reach there, you start forming big girl. The garri you will normally soak without groundnut sef and eat with your parents at home, on arriving campus you won’t even near Garri, you’ll join ‘pepperdemgang’ and form ‘Shawarma burger’ girl.

It doesn’t end there, I’ve personally seen adults and it pains me do this.

You’re a single lady who just got a job and you begin to see the successful pimping single girls around. Immediately you want to be part of them. Mary K Products are in vogue, you go to your friend who sells Mary K products and take products on loan (bashi) of N150, 000 (N stands for Nigerian currency Naira) Tomorrow you see a new kind of shoe in vogue, you go and take N20, 000 bashi. By next month when you’re supposed to pay off your Mary K products, you pay half and go and take bashi of another N100, 000 Avon products because Avon is in vogue. Then you notice your car is out of vogue, you take car loan and go and buy a very expensive car. Before you know it, you’ll reach broke because of your salary deductions and your creditors will start calling then you’ll go to this friend borrow N20, 000 and pay one off, go to the next person and borrow N50,000 on and on till you exhaust your friends. My question once again is who you were deceiving?

And even married people suffer this…You know you and your husband don’t make much but because you want to level to the other women around, you force your child into an expensive Primary School, Secondary School or even Private University. Then you can’t let your child go to school with biscuit or inferior provisions, etc. because it doesn’t level up. By the time you’re done sending the child to school, you’ll soak garri and eat with your husband. Who are you deceiving? Who is being cheated?

Folks, truth is we can’t all be even in life and whether we like it or not, there will always be a higher class than us. They will never get exhausted

So what am I suggesting. Again

‘To Thine own self be true’ be 100% authentically real

Don’t lie. When you catch yourself envying the ‘cool kids’ remind yourself that trying to be them won’t make you them but working hard and diligently might take you where they are and even beyond one day. For those of you like me whose Parents managed to escape the village by the tip of the river bank, if they lived false lives, they wouldn’t have been where they are today and able to give us the lives we live even if it doesn’t measure up to what we want.

Something I do every day when I see something I want but don’t have is I use it as motivation and fuel to work hard so one day my children will not ‘be ever seeing but not having’ like me. So that I can provide it for my own children that’s the life. Truth is bitter so I understand for those of you who find this hard but all that money and time you spend trying to be like ‘dem guys’ will fare a lot better and produce more if you spend that time working hard to make it.

So fam, I’ve said it at least, I feel a huge load off my chest.

Be you, don’t lie to yourself, and accept where you are and work hard!

Song Recommendations – Tedashii Be me and I’m Good. Group 1 Crew – I Know

God bless ya’ll have a blessed day or night as the case may be.