Familiarity breeds contempt

It's true that familiarity breeds a repugnant and an engulfing contempt which finally enstranges a relationship - be it love, business, social or just anything you can think of.

Sometime ago on social media especially Facebook, when you become friends with people, one of the two parties slides into the inbox of the other to acknowledge friendship only because it's a privilege. Other times, it happens in the full glare of anyone who shares their timelines. This, they do at least once or twice even if it was going to be the only chance at friendship. But now.

It has become a haram to openly acknowledge friendship on each other's wall because when you do, you can become an object of public ridicule for a while and sometimes from time to time, through a screenshot to remind you of your folly or when you arrived. It portrays you as a softie who is all sentimental. Therefore, it's now okay to remain friends with people for so many years without a hi, as though that's how we do in real life where we get to see people, animated.

Why are we no longer friendly?

If all we want is to add and remain friends with people just to be privy to their lifes, then why do we add them as friends (and not follow them in worst case scenarios)? Perhaps the laxity of Facebook's terms of engagement has also helped to make this anomaly pervasive, unlike Twitter that thrives on economy, where you don't automatically become friends with people only because they are available. No, you decide to follow back. You decide to be friends with the fellow too, otherwise the friendship remains a one way affair where only the former gets to follow you.

Aside the algorithms that influences friendship, I think that we have become unfriendly only because too many people have become overly friendly - a gesture that freaks most people out, like someone sliding into your inbox for the first time and begins to address you as 'my dear' without allowing the friendship to define itself over time. I also think that technology or the aid of bundled data has made it way too accessible for us to 'see' and interact with each other all the time which ostensibly blinds people to blur the lines.

It is necessary to maintain respect for everyone you become friends with because it's an earned privilege and that would be it, only we don't mind if there are other motives as long as none of it is to hurt them. Only be familiar with people if you can be decorous about it but for those who easily gets awed by the lights, be friends but don't get too familiar with people so you can always keep contempt at bay and this has nothing to do with being anti-social, being narcissistic or too goal-oriented.

Those of you with good lace fronts,  just don't get too caught up in this virtual world. #agb



The writer tweets @vilejah

To Judge Not

Perhaps, there is some truism in the ‘judge not that ye may not be judged’ verse as intimated by the Holy Bible. I don’t know if judgment entails forming opinion about people’s actions and its ramifications thereof but I really don’t know how I can live in this twined world without holding some variables constant.

Notably, people are what they have become; a resultant effect of the sum total of their experiences which invariably affects what they have seen and heard, what they have actualized, their world view, expectations, penchants et al.

Therefore I think judging people just because they happen to be our classmates, spouses, siblings and Facebook friend is uncool. As much as my will would will me, I would try to desist from judging people. They are a sum total of their experiences, not mine and should not live in my eyes. It is totally wrong and downright disrespectful to judge. You must think that the famous economist was wrong when they asserted that the consumer is always rational.

 

 

How dare you think that, that person you are judging didn’t have a compelling need to do what you just judged them for? Have you held on to a visceral belief only to wake up one fine or turbulent day to realize that shit doesn’t make sense any longer?

We are evolving beings and should be allowed to go through the various stages and processes that would inch us to being what is expected of us, not forgetting that our varying dispositions underlie what we are and what would become of us. Judging people only portray you as intolerant especially if these people we are judging do not answer to us.

People should be allowed to be who they want to be as long as they are within the confines of the laid down rules and it would be proper to also stop holding ourselves as the S.I unit for living. We have different callings which necessitate that we tow different paths and do things differently and while you are it, be thankful for knowing the right thing which has become sacrosanct from your standpoint. Be mindful of perceptions and stop holding yourself ignorant.

The writer tweets @vilejah

 

In Your Presence

My longing absence

Only to squirm in your presence

Intense longs after sweet so-longs

The intense need to feed

How unthinkable to miss you in your presence

To miss all I ever had

Something about you, no, yes, no.

Something about me, yes!

Your smile, the ransom.

If only your next move, I can fathom.

You were my keel, then my kill.

Everything I never had…

To tame love, for it is the doing of my mind; my reality.

Hand in hand, we fight

Hand out of hand we tighten loose ends.

To keep on keeping on for love refines the truth.

Fatal Attraction

Once upon a time, a girl who was tired and scheming to switch off from his boyfriend met a fine guy online and decided to take a chance. 

 

Knowing how fatal attractions go, date and venue were quickly set. They couldn't wait to find out what awaits them. They have to stop counting their losses so it was time to meet and they moved towards same direction from different parts of town; all of them telling tonnes of lies to their respective emotional dependents.

 

In-between time and space... 

 

Many hours later in a somewhat forced confession just to make amends with her dashed hopes, she said, of all the many things she ever wanted in life was not to sell her soul for pittance and this, she meant, but it turned out that she had a problem - a problem that would shoot her south in a downward spiral. It turned out that her understanding of themes such as soul or pittance is blurred out in an extremely Gaussian way. It's so mixed up that the nuances have lost out on her. Its two non-negotiable ways; either she doesn't have a soul or she didn't understand the soul concept. 

 

The only reason she walked away is the guy was disabled. No. handicapped. And to make matters worse, he had a wife, which became a good riddance, otherwise, she didn't have a choice than to hinge his excuse on the fact that he was crippled in one leg. Not that, she was answerable or explicable to anyone. 

 

The writer tweets @vilejah