INSPIRATIONAL MUSINGS

— Adegboyega Ojuolape

There"s an African proverb that says "if you treat your precious clothe as a rag, so will people treat it, also if you treat your rag as a precious clothes o will people treat it".

I observed something for a while when I used to squat in a friend"s house in a housing estate in Abuja Nigeria a few years ago, there were two houses in the estate quite close to the house we lived at, one was a well painted graceful duplex with a beautiful lawn in front of it, while the other was a duplex as well but in dire need of renovation because it was in a state of disrepair and the gate was unhinged, you could notice all sorts of refuse in front of the house in contrast with the one with a beautiful lawn right beside it. Initially, I a.s.sumed the greasy and dusty house had no occupant but on observation a few times I realised it had even more people living in there than the finer house beside it. Curiously, pa.s.sers-by used to thrash all sorts of refuse in front of the smeary house, some even had the audacity to pee on the fence of the house, but the one right beside of it with the beautiful lawn was left untouched without any form of dirt on it, no one dared come close, that was glaring from the neatness you will notice around the house and also a three-minute observation of the att.i.tude of pa.s.sers-by toward the two houses will tell you all.

The reason for this isn"t farfetched, the beautiful house had life in it, and the owner also took time to make it look decent enough and in the process people accepted it that way, they simply copied the culture of neatness and decency practised by the owner.

This is just one example to explain this topic as best as I can, another good example is the office right beside my own, a number of times my staff and I have noticed the unruly nature of the people working in the offi comesce, many times our security personnel have had to go intervene in one skirmish or the other involving the staff of the company and their clients. From the way these staff dress, it will tell you all about the corporate culture of the organisation, this got me curious and I had to ask questions, I found out that the owner of the company was hardly ever around, and even when he is, he allows the workers of his organisation to do things the way they deemed fit, there was actually no leader in his stead once he"s away, so once he is out of town, chaos reign. Why this happens is because of the way he handles his business and company, the staff only follow suit.
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The two examples I gave just now simply tells you what happens depending on the value you place on anything you own, people are watching you and invariably they will copy exactly your characteristic att.i.tude towards your prized possessions or otherwise. I need to drive this point home further with more examples.

Some husbands treat their wives like thrash in the presence of guests at home. Go to their homes, you will be completely disappointed at the way they boss their wives all over the house just to prove to you they are in charge of their homes. If for whatever reason you are reading this and you are in the habit of playing the role of the big stick wielding boss in your home, please desist from continuing on a path like that, because if you don"t, soon enough you will notice that one or two of your domestic staff will beat up your wife someday if that hasn"t happened already, that is if your staff in the office haven"t done the same already. Rather, if they notice that your wife is treated like a prized possession she ordinarily should be by you, they will do same and hardly will there be any feud whatsoever between your subordinates and your wife, except for rare exceptions.

The same goes for parents that are in the habit of physically beating their children into submission in the presence of relatives and house helps, in no time your children will turn to objects of ridicule in the hands of your domestic staff and people a like.

I am sure some of us have taken rides in taxis we dared not eat anything while in the car, whereas in some cabs we thrashed used burger wrappers on the car floor mats. It is a clear rule of life that it is the same value we place on things dear to us that people around usemulate.

Now I wish to ask what value do you place on your work? What value do you place on your marriage? What value do you place on parenthood? What value do you place on your spirituality? What value do you place on your finances? What value do you place on your health? People are watching and they will do the same as you do to whatever you own even when you think you are being nice. Don"t be "nice" with the things you place value on, let people know clearly what value you ascribe to something you hold very dear. Some of us try to lower our standard as it concerns what we hold dear to please people, we allow them to treat us like thrash or the things we hold very dear because we don"t want to appear bad or not caring. In the end we will be the ultimate loser because people pretend not to know what is right till you tell them through your words, actions and characteristic disposition. I wish you understood this properly.

Several years ago when I was still a student of the Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State, Nigeria, I brought a car to school, this was something rare at the time amongst my cla.s.s mates. I could count on my fingers the number of people in my set who had any car at the time, at the time I was the perfect "nice guy," I handed my car keys to anyone who needed a car to go anywhere, for me once you can fuel the car you can take it to anywhere you wanted, at times I might not see the car for hours or for 24 hours at times, the car eventually developed a kick-starter fault after a while, because there was a lack of control. Now you need to understand the logic behind this story, I wanted to help but I didn"t define boundaries or state the terms in which the help was going to be rendered to people who needed help, in the process my help was seen as weakness because I treated what was a prized possession like something ordinary, so in the process it was treated in the same way, if for any reason I had set clear boundaries, the car wouldn"t have developed a fault when it did, I would have had it around for a longer period and ironically a lot of people brought cars from their respective homes after that semester but they never treated their cars the way I did mine.

The lesson here is simple and straightforward, from the example of my car and the business owner beside my office, you will notice that it is reckless to allow people treat what you have without thought to consequences because you want to be good or nice. The offi patience,ce owner in his case had a measure of closeness with his staff (this I later found out), he wanted to be seen as a kind boss, so he allowed his staff to treat what he owns any how thinking that made him appear kind, rather they were killing his brand and business at the same time. Never make this mistake in life, let people accept you for who you are, never treat what you hold dear less in any way because you want to please people.