Tuesday 7 August 2012

THE PAIN OF PLEASURE



 What I want to share with us today is about the pain of pleasure. We live in a world today where we are literally killing ourselves with pleasure. We are dying everyday, not out of pain as we define it, but out of pleasure. And nobody seems to be saying anything about it. We are amusing ourselves to death and nobody really cares. Stella Damascus, the Nollywood actress, shared in her column in PM News about how a friend of hers was mad at her because when her(the friend’s) kids wanted to watch TV the only channel that the decoder was locked on Nickelodeon and the kids wanted one of the “more interesting” channels like Ben Ten where some real violence take place.

Today, entire families sit in front of the television box and are ingesting pleasure capsules hour after hour not realizing that they are dying. May I suggest to you that just like any other thing in this life, pleasure can be addictive? And the addictive nature of pleasure brings about negative repercussions. I don’t have to be a genius to know that unless urgent measures are taken to fight this addiction we are going to keep seeing an increase in divorce rates as families become mere acquaintances of one another. And an increase in divorce rates will lead to an increase in fatherless and motherless homes, which leads to half-prepared children sent out to face the pressure of society, which leads to these kids growing up to be men and women who are not responsible enough to be fathers and mothers themselves but have the tools between their legs to make them have babies. So, when they have kids they abandon them. They never knew what it is like to have a father or a mother so they have no idea how to be one, themselves.

Besides the long term effect of the addictive nature of pleasure like just narrated in the preceding paragraph. I also see that one of the more immediate effects of the pain of pleasure is the reluctance to learn. I see a dearth of knowledge all around. All that is on the minds of recent graduates now is how he or she can get his or her own Blackberry. I hear the cost of a new Blackberry today begins at N20,000 ($130). I even hear that the cost of some go for as high as over N100,000 ($660). Is that true? And when I turn to have a decent conversation with one of these young and beautiful ladies brandishing their Blackberrys all around, I get the shock of my life that all there is is a Brazilian hair and an empty brain. Except for the well developed part of the brain used in pinging.

I and a friend in Benin run what is commonly called a Business Center. Nothing much, just a few copiers, about 10 computers, 2 printers, a scanner, two good digital cameras for passport photographs, etc. You get the drift. He manages the day to day running of the business, since I reside in Lagos. But once a year I go to Benin and spend a couple of weeks there. And whenever I am in Benin, I usually spend some time with him at the shop. In my last but one visit to Benin, I was at the shop with him when a beautiful young lady in her NYSC Khaki pants came in. She needed to work on her CV. The two employees we have working for us are just Senior School Certificate holders, so we just pointed to one of the computer systems for her to use by herself. To my utter disdain she knew nothing about Microsoft Word. Maybe she is only used to Excel, but I doubt that too. It was one of our employees that ended up working on the CV for her. But she had in her hands one of the higher classes of Blackberry. Of course the lower classes are for guys.

I worship in a church where there are over 20,000 regular members. My church seats over 5,000 people per service and holds 4 services every Sunday. And this number does not include children who have a different building. It’s one of the new generation churches. Once in a while corporate trainings are held so members can develop themselves. These trainings are not free but very cheap. As low as N7,000. There was even one that was for N2,500, but the training materials was like N5,000 which was optional. One would expect that for a new generation church where everything from religion to business is being taught there will be a mad rush for such trainings. You will be surprised to know that for some of these trainings only 700 people participate out of over 20,000 members. And these are trainings that go for as high as N100,000 in the corporate world. But why should I spend N5,000 for a training when I can get some good time with my babe in a fast food restaurant with some cups of ice cream?

I advice the young ladies, I am focusing on you because you are at the frontline of the receiving end of the ills of the society. I advice the young ladies, there is more to life than “my boyfriend dresses well and smells good. Hmm! I am so in love with him.” It’s high time you started asking the right questions. How much of his budget does he invest on Personal Development? How many books did he buy in the last six months? How many has he read? What did he learn? When was the last time he spent his own money, not the company’s, to attend a training session for himself. You need to have an answer for these questions because perfumes never made any marriage work. Any marriage where the woman has a flare for personal development and the man does not, can never be a happy one. Just listen to one episode of Real Life issues aired on Inspiration FM 92.3 in Lagos if you doubt me.

If you, referring to the young ladies, would follow through on the advice given on the previous paragraph, I promise you, many of you will be shocked to discover that that guy you’ve been kissing for more than a year now, has not bought a single book in the last one year. That means all he knows now is still the same things he knew like 3 or 5 yrs ago. Except maybe that Jonathan did not have any shoes. I have met guys who never bought a book in the last 5yrs but never failed to renew their DSTV subscription. And when you are the type that wants to spend your Saturdays attending seminars and your husband sits at home to watch football, then trouble is brewing. Why not nip it in the bud now? It may hurt but you will be saving yourself a lifetime of pain.

From my personal projections based on the number of people that have enrolled for the April session of School for Personal Leadership, for the first time in three sessions ladies will outnumber guys by a long pole. And this is a trend that is beginning to show all over the world, especially among the black race. In the United States today, the ratio of educated black girls to guys in the corporate world is about 3:1. There are not enough good guys to go around anymore so sex is now being used as a weapon to keep the few good black guys. The crave for pleasure in the Rap industry is causing a lot of young black brothers to drop out of schools while those ladies in bra and G-strings dancing in the music videos are attending night classes to further their education.

Am I going to continue to see this kind of trend in the School for Personal Leadership that current projection is indicating? More ladies interested in Personal Development than guys? Are guys only interested in buying Blackberrys for the ladies so they can at least get some sex in exchange for it? But I want us all to have a rethink. The problem with the world today is not just pain as we know it. It is pleasure. The pain of pleasure is far worse than any other kind of pain you can think of.

I want to encourage you. If you are the type that has never seen the need to invest in Personal Development, begin with School for Personal Leadership. It holds right on Facebook, completely flexible, you go into the online classroom when it is most convenient for you. You get to meet people from different fields, different states of the nation, and residing in different countries. It is awesome. 

Thanks,

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