Hi, I’m Sam,
One of the easiest mistakes we make
in life as human beings not only as Africans is thinking we are all alone and
it always manifests in a negative situation. Whenever something happens we
automatically feel like our situation is the worst and that we can never get
over it or out of the situation. Whenever anything is about to happen to me or
it has already happened, I always say to myself if it is a negative thing,
“It’s well” or “It could be worse” and once I say that I get a realization that
as bad as I think things are someone else is probably wishing it was like that
for them; just like a dead person would rather be in a hospital bed, and
someone confined to a hospital bed would rather just be on bed rest and the
person on bed rest would rather be healthy and the healthy person would rather
have a job to pay bills and the person with a job would rather want to be rich
and famous and the rich and famous would rather have a simple life and the
person with a simple life would rather want something else. We always wish we had
something else going for us and that is not always a bad thing but we need to
learn how to be contented or nothing will ever be enough. We all have that one
or two things that people think we either over-estimate or underestimate about
ourselves and for me, people always seem to think I understate how much access
I have to money, and whenever I complain about being low on cash they look at
me with this disdain look like I just told the biggest lie on planet earth; I’m
not a big spender especially on myself so people don’t know when I have money
and when I don’t because I don’t spend in any case and I give out a lot, even
if it’s my last; but I hope to become a big spender in the future especially on
myself so that after working hard to earn my money, I can spoil myself once in
a while.
“Never Let
Anyone See You Break” this has
always been my guide words as far back as I can remember. I never let anyone
see me at my lowest point, no matter who you are; family member or not, so long
as you are not me, you can’t know what is going on inside of me; I’m working
hard to change that lately. I made this my watchword when there seemed to be a
widespread of fake friends everywhere, I didn’t want a situation where I’m
trying to share my burden with a so-called friend not necessarily for them to
help but to get things off my chest and I end up hearing it from a lot of
people as Friday night gist. I’d rather die in silence than speak to anyone;
that’s why sometimes I envy those who go to therapy and that binding contract
for therapists to keep their mouths shut. The things I go through were not so
major compared to what teenagers else go through. Sincerely I’ve learnt that
sharing always helps; just a few words someone may say to you can lift your
spirit so high that you forget you were having any troubles to begin with. A
lot of teenagers die in silence because they think if they talk to someone they
may be bullied or made fun of for something they obviously cannot control. I’ve
been so low emotionally that I googled “How to make God answer your prayers
immediately?” I forgot that in every situation I’m to give thanks to God
Almighty because so long as there’s life there’s hope.
Things
happen and there is always a chance that you are not the first person something
happened to. Just like we were taught in our programming class, there is no
error you are going to encounter that has not been encountered in the past, and
because someone has encountered such an error means there is a solution to it;
all you have to do is look for the solution or ask for help from someone who
has more experience. No man is and can ever be an island, which is why
surrounding yourself with genuine people can never be overemphasized; build,
maintain, and fight for your genuine relationships. Putting someone first only
works when you’re in their top 5. In some cases, it is also important to have
surface friendships, they may not know the deepest thing about you but
sometimes things they say in passing end up being the key thing we need to hear
to make a positive or important decision in our lives.
Learn to
ask questions and help the right way, just like the keywords we use in our
Google searches can narrow the answers we get, the way you ask for help or
advice also matters. Our communication styles differ depending on who we are
talking to at a particular time. Knowing your people deeply will better help
you know how best to ask for advice. In some cases, people say “hypothetically”
just to distance themselves in a way from what they want to talk about and that
is fine if you do not completely have confidence in who you are discussing with
and there are situations where you narrate everything. Whether we choose to
admit it or not, we have different levels of trust in different individuals in
our lives, we know what, how, and when to share different details of our lives
depending on the level of trust we have in that individual. The trust level can
equally go up or reduce depending on the situation and actions of the
individuals.
We are
never alone, even when that is all we want to think to further victimize
ourselves, there is always someone who genuinely loves us and wants to be there
for us through it all. Our lives will always have ups and downs, so the
important question should be “Who do you want by your side through the ups and
the downs?” think about that!