I used to wonder why people cried during proposals, weddings and their love confessions but now I get it. The thought of having someone love you for you, being there for you no matter what, making you happy, having someone to share this brutal life with, together makes me tear up
I have friends who are older and very fit because of their lifestyle. They don't drink or smoke and exercise daily. They also have the most unfit kids who don't follow their example. This has always worried me as I am raising young children. I have also seen families with hard-working and wealthy parents who raise the laziest and most entitled children.
We always want our children to do better than us, but when and where does this go wrong for most people? I think it comes from the time and attention we personally give our kids and the lapses we allow.
My wife and I are early risers. I have a particular sleep problem I am still trying to solve, but my kids can sleep all day on vacation if you let them. A friend with an older son who had just graduated and was back home, jobless, used to tell me how alarmed he was that the son would go out all night, come back early in the morning, and sleep all day.
I told him then that if he didn't force him to change that habit, he would remain jobless and stay with his parents longer. They eventually forced him to change, and he moved out. He has a job now and struggles a lot. His parents are concerned that he isn't thriving. He is now almost 30, and I think about this all the time. At 25, I was a beast and had started many businesses.
While we want our kids and young adults to experience life on their own terms in a world vastly different from the one we grew up in, we can't help but notice that others whose children were more disciplined are thriving better. One indicator I have seen that correlates with success in younger people is fitness.
A friend’s son started going to the gym regularly, and he even inspired his cousins to do so. I checked on LinkedIn recently, and he is doing exceptionally well as a lawyer and investment banker without any family connections or assistance. His younger cousins, who are looking up to him, are following in his footsteps. I decided to get my kids to spend more time with him.
The role models our children need may be closer to their age than ours. It is why we need to amplify the lifestyles of young, disciplined, and successful people more. Not every person will make it through creative pursuits. I stress this to my kids all the time. There are billions of YouTube channels, but there is only one MrBeast or IShowSpeed.
Social media is highlighting more unrealistic role models than the most useful ones. My daughter is likely one of the most intelligent young children that I know, but because she doesn't want to be seen as a nerd, she is adapting to popular culture to blend in, in a way that scares me. This sometimes affects the way she learns. While I don't want to restrict her now from experiencing the world, I have realized that she needs different role models.
My son’s role models are nerds, and he nerds out in ways that surprise me and it is also worrying. We can be watching a movie, and he goes online to research it and summarise the plot so he can leave to code. He is not experiencing life enough outside the internet.
They will either eventually be ok in a world very different from ours or struggle in a world that becomes worse than ours, without the skills to build personal resilience and strong social skills.
I recently had a personal experience that made me realize I was fortunate to have left home early and to have different role models from my parents. Having a broken home led to different outcomes for my siblings and me, but the fact that I had strong personalities like my mother’s uncle and the uncles I grew up around helped me learn a lot more about life and priorities.
The world is a very complex place, and life is not a bed of roses. While we want the best outcomes for our kids, we have to finally admit that they will learn far more from others than they will ever learn from us. The best thing we can do for them is expose them to the right kind of people early enough, then hope and pray that we didn't misread those people.
One thing I have enjoyed on my weightloss journey is eating proper food.
I have not cut out carbs, will never .
It has taken me 5 months if counting by a stretch to lose 13kg. I don’t care how long it takes . I eat at least 2 -3 times a day.
I have 10-14kg to get back to my pre pregnancy weight. I don’t check the scale as it’s really useless for me.
When Khalil Gibran said, “Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most love is lost”
When Jane Austen said, “And sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in.”
When Fyodor Dostoevsky said, “Much unhappiness has come into world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”
When you hear men talking about how they want kids to “continue their blood line” but Nizar Qabbani wrote “Give me a daughter with your stubborn heart, or your even temper. Give our children your dark-bright eyes, or your enchanted smile. So that even when we are gone, the world will find within them all the reasons I loved you”
The only thing I can stomach when I'm really ill and don't have the appetite for food is pepper soup.
A lot of people have laughed when I tell them, thinking I'm doing ajebo, but I let it slide because I never really told them why.
You see, on one of those occasions when I was extremely ill and still living with my grandpa, I couldn't eat anything.
And trust me, a lot of things were brought to my table. I even asked for some of those things, but when they eventually came, I couldn't eat them.
Sometime around 11 p.m., my grandpa – uncomfortable with my condition and the fact that I wasn't eating anything to help it – kept asking what else I thought I might like to take.
When I didn't say anything, he randomly said, "Okay, will you take pepper soup?" I said yes.
I thought I wouldn't take it anyway, but just to make him stop worrying a little bit.
This man left the house past 11 p.m. to go find pepper soup for me. And when he brought it back, I was able to eat it, surprisingly.
When I finished it, he asked if I wanted more. I told him there was no more. It was already late, and all that. He said that wasn't his question.
So I said yes, I'd like more.
And my sweet, sweet man left the house again to go get pepper soup for me.
It was past midnight the second time, but he left anyway.
He didn't think twice about it.
Any regular person would have told me to wait till the next day.
Not this man. Not him.
So now, I don't fully understand how my brain makes the connection, but whenever I fall ill, the first thing I reach for is pepper soup.
In a way, what I'm reaching for is my grandpa.
My husband and I have a deal that whenever we fight or disagree about something, the first one who notices it’s getting heated needs to speak up and say
“hey just a reminder that we’re best friends”
and for the last ten years this has worked remarkably well. It really snaps us out of whatever escalating path we might’ve been on and contextualizes how small the discussion is relative to the big picture.
Anyway happy saturday ☀️
Happy birthday my queen.
You’re special in many ways.
Your love is sweeter than wine and your care, like the tender mercies of heaven.
Your wisdom has saved me from many troubles.
Thank you for being the sweetest friend, wife and mum
Love you immensely
I was waking up daily by 3am, to head to the hospital for my mum, leaving Gbagada general hospital to Magodo by 11pm sometimes 12am every single day for months..
The moment I get to the hospital, I text this man “Goodmorning, if he’s awake, he calls immediately, regardless of how tired I am, I text him on my way home, or sometimes we stay on the call while I drive home…
In a week, I only had 1 day to myself, I was building a business same period I was going through the stresss…
But you know what I did with my one day off, I visited this man, even if most times my visit ended with me sleeping immediately I arrive because of exhaustion..
Don’t get me started on traffic, rinse and repeat, constant leg pains from driving and spending hours in traffic 🥹
The point, these things don’t take even a minute to Text/ call/ or even communicate with your loved ones..
It’s the same reason why no matter how exhausted you are, you still show up for work because it’s “important “
Excuses will only come when the person isn’t important enough but go off🤭