CONTENTMENT

The first solution to any problem is to know there is problem. If the first solution is not found, even the omnipotent (God) cannot intervene to help you solve the problem. It’s not about underrating God, you know for you to ask for forgiveness you need to be convicted of your sin. I am not discarding the fact that some people do say insincere sorry.

When I was a little boy, I and my siblings always eat together and share the meat or fish we were given among ourselves. There was a day our grandma came around and after the meat has been shared and it was my turn to pick, I stretched my upperlimb to pick the fish adjacent me, but I was scolded by grandma. She told me whenever I am to pick anything I must the one in front of me, no matter its size. I couldn’t cry because you need to see the size of the meet in front of me compared to the one adjacent me. But since then I have adopted this philosophy I called ‘Grandma meat philosophy’.

Many of us would have had this kind of encounter if not as my story at least in words from our elders and parents. We were been advised and trained to be contented. This philosophy, many are even teaching their children.

Baffling it’s that we tend to misinterpret the meaning of contentment. Even our dictionary is not helping either but creates more barb wires around the fence we built via our misconception of the word contentment.

A contented man is he who is satisfied with what he has and still aspire for what he wish, without a strategy of hurting others to get it. Contentment is living within your means with the determination of increasing or improving your means.

That you are contented does not mean you should not be ambitious and futuristic. It  does not mean you should be satisfied with where you are today, eventhough, that is the popular meaning people tagged it.  It is just a portion of its true meaning. It means you should live within your means and not outside your means, with the aim of making all available now as a transport fare to your dream land and not your Canaan land itself.

I could remember chatting with an older friend who told me “You might not be selfish and still not selfless.” You are wondering how someone might not exhibit either, since opposite of selfish is selfless. Then that is why there is the middle. The friend explained using the metaphor of a funnel and a cup.

He said, a funnel doesn’t hold water and yet delivers more than a cup. The cup when filled can’t hold anymore water but a funnel can deliver as much as a tank if given the chance. Think of achieving your goal with the sole purpose of helping others and not only you. The Nigeria football legend Kanu Nwankwo was quoted to say “The desire to feed my family is what made me succeed and today I can feed a community.”

Being contented does not mean you shouldn’t be ambitious as said earlier or else you will curse the day you made that decision, if and only if (as my mother will say) you come to realise you have a problem. It’s very possible for the President of a country to remain in a village as a farmer all in the name of contentment and not solving his first problem because he didn’t accept he has a problem. And without this first solution, other solutions cannot follow.

A contented Bird

There once live a bird in an egg shell, who was happy thinking the world is nothing but whitish. The egg hatched and the little bird now live in a nest. It was happy and contented it now live in a bigger world(which is nothing but darkness). The nest to the little bird is better than the egg or shell world and it thought nothing can be better than that. Thanks to its mother who forced it out of the nest and taught it how to fly. Coming out of the nest the bird now knows there is a great difference between the big world and the nest. Its mother knowing it had a problem of contentment by getting satisfied with little whereas more is out there to enjoy, helped it to overcome the folly. The last time I saw the bird it told me “hey whelp, I am now the king of the sky. Thanks to my mother who helped me over the trap of misinterpreting contentment.”

Thousands, even millions are in the category of this bird who thought the nest is the best thing or place ever, since it’s bigger than the shell not knowing there is more abundance of space to soar out there. Problem of contentment has made many to stop dreaming-settling for less when abundance is out there to possess. They think there is nothing better than that nest which if they can come out of can even make more of it and discard with ease as the bird later did after it discovery of what it has been missing out of.

Always be contented and ambitious, never think of ways of manipulating others to hasten your change of station or level but strategize ways of achieving your goal without hurting others. The way forward is not by pushing others backward.