Perspectives
I was just recently in an intellectual gathering where
the different folks therein aired diverse views regarding a particular topic. With
due respect to their privacy I’ll be quiet about the actual topic that somewhat
sparked up a controversy, but I’ll give an instance.
With acknowledgement to the fact that the world is pretty
much fast changing in terms of development in technology and how we respond to
them both psychologically and physically, things have become perhaps entirely
relative.
Ever heard of Homographs? Well they are words that have
same spellings but different meanings, examples are “bat, a flying animal and
bat, a piece of wood for hitting a ball”, “Lie, be in a horizontal position on
a supporting surface, and lie, a false statement made deliberately by someone
who knows it is not true” and other examples richly abound.
“Everything has its
beauty, but not everyone sees it”…Confucius
My point here basically is that, when we approach certain
levels or by virtue of us fortunately being alive and maybe smart enough to
differentiate between good and evil, and recognizing the privilege as an opportunity
to make the most out of the very precious life that many go extra lengths to
preserve, we’ll truly find there are lots of activities that look us up right
in the face, but ironically on the long run they actually don’t really seem to
matter, or they may actually mean everything depending on your perspective that
is.
“The whole purpose
of education is to turn mirrors into windows”…S.J. Harris
Relative
Relative can mean “in proportion to something else, and
can also refer to a person connected to another by blood or marriage”. Yes we
are talking about how things are relative (first definition) cautiously taking
a cue from Albert Einstein, the crooner of relativity, but that is not our homograph
in question; rather we’re referring to content.
It’s so very interesting how quickly and gigantically
humanity has evolved, adapting to the sometimes harsh world around us, with
each challenge we face making us much stronger and giving us such huge reasons
to appreciate and celebrate life.
“I look to a day when
people will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of
their character”…Martin Luther King Jnr.
Multi-tasking is a term I have very much come to desire
as it proves one to be relatively smart and enabling you to push yourself, convincing
even you that impossible is nothing, and further restating the shrewdness of
killing several birds with one stone.
It can be fun when you say one word or even a sentence,
and people take it in another way and the effect even pays you better, just
like when you walk down a road soliloquizing and some old folk replies you with
a polite feedback with the impression that you were greeting him, accidental
courtesy?
“A business that
makes nothing but money is a poor business”…Henry Ford
Content
Content can mean “a state of happiness or satisfaction,
or the things that are contained in something”. Yes they both actually very
well matter, it’s just that the meaning can largely depend upon how it is used
in a sentence and how you understand it, just like the word read which is used
as a present and also a past tense depending on the sentence, oh I love English
language teachers.
Anyway, back to the matter, I might have slyly given it
all away in the topic of this blog post by the way, Content: What’s (on your)
inside?
For me, this is how far intriguing thought provocatively
gets, why? You may ask. It might interest you to know that content is the new
smart. Evolution of man might have virtually discontinued physically, but the
brain still advances, thereby opening new doors that increase the capacity for
intelligence and how we creatively adapt to new challenges.
How much books have you read, how many movies have you
seen, and what’s the amount of gigabytes of music that you’ve heard or actually
listened to in your entire life? And how much of the summation of the actual
content put together stayed with you?
Due to the fact that we were created and designed for a
purpose, we all have a natural tendency to instinctively set goals and target
for ourselves so that we can feel not only alive but also sane, and a sense of
achievement which makes our rest justified and sweet.
A school of thought suggests that we humans are balanced
mentally when what an activity does is engage, entertain, educate, enlighten
and empower us, it is called the 5e strategy.
Why do we strongly admire actors that have perfectly
interpreted their roles in movies and musicians that seemed to touch our very
souls in their magnificent rendition? It is as a result of the scripts and
brainstorms that have enabled a team of writers, directors and producers to
bring together a wonderful idea that we all can ultimately relate to, giving
the product value and inspiring us to idolize ambassadors of the work.
And about
speeches? you should try listening to the first dark skinned President of the
United States of America Mr. Barack Obama speak and you’d be amazed at the
height of intelligence man can reach in a culmination of ideas that can be
built up into oratory prowess. Same goes for peaceful freedom fighter late Dr.
Martin Luther King Jnr whose speeches for the emancipation of the dark skinned
community inspires black people to tears even till this day, especially when
there is a cause to reminisce the positive effect of the movements he participated
in. Dr. Martin Luther King’s speeches are so valuable that they are
copyrighted, in case you’re wondering why you didn’t see your exact and
favorite speeches in the Selma movie.
“The best way to
understand who your customer is, is to be your customer”…Dino Dogan
Have you ever attended a job interview before? If you
have, and you have been paying attention, you’d realize that the interviewer
simply wants to know if you’re smart regardless of your shiny resume’. He or
she wants to know what you can offer that will add value to their company. You
will never appreciate this exercise until the tables were turned and you became
the interviewer, you’d become more creative on how to feel the content of the
job applicant, impulsively.
Speaking of impulse, as the saying goes “Our character is
like smoke, it shows wherever we go”…African proverb, it is safe to say that it
is self explanatory that our speeches and actions rightly sums up who we are
and can therefore predict our futures in that we get back what we give. If you
do good, then good comes back to you and vice versa.
“The desire to reach
for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise”…Maya Angelou
This further explains that our destinies are right in our
hands, making it crucial to still further reiterate the imperatives of having
emotional intelligence. This goes a long way in inspiring us to strive for the
accumulation of proper content in order for us to be assets to ourselves and
our environment.
Possessing rich content makes sense and in a way can be
likened to being successful, but recognizing the big picture of success can be
like an oasis which can quench long lasting thirst. The content or the success
actually has more and genuine value when it is shared among the lower people
giving them an opportunity to use it as a platform to chart their own courses,
elaborating the beauty of diversity of life, rather than diminishing the
tendencies of hope especially when it has become obvious that a helping hand
won’t necessarily hurt or cost a thing.
On the flip side of content in the context of this piece,
well as obvious as it probably is for discerning eyes and minds, it might
actually interest you to know that in as much as various aspects of life move
either side by side or parallel to each other, we as a matter of principle
cannot amass together in one place all the wealth, content and possibly all the
success despite unconsciously finding a path which etches us towards
perfection. As the saying goes ‘stagnant water stinks’, and nobody is an island’,
so should generosity thrive by implication, which should cause us to
deliberately become discipline enough so as not to let greed take the most of
us hostage, enabling wealth of knowledge to go around. Our attitudes can be
noted as a major flash point at this junction because basically everything is
determined by our perception of things and our environment, and how we react
and adapt to it largely depends on what is inside, inside of us that is.
“He has the most
who is most content with the least”…Diogenes
Thank you.
Akin Abimbola (akinzogee@gmail.com)
Sources:
Brainyquote
Google
Goodreads
Oxford Dictionary
Wikipedia
Teen Ink
Wn.com
Marketplace
No comments:
Post a Comment