CONTENT: WHAT'S (ON YOUR) INSIDE?

“Content is king”…Bill Gates

                                                

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.

“A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month’s study of books”…Chinese Proverb

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

Impulse

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.

“Never play with the feelings of others because you may win the game but the risk is that you will surely lose the person for a lifetime”…Shakespeare

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)

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Marketplace

ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING?

“Listening is the secret to discover great stories”…Fyrefly London

(Hi) story

I am a diehard fan of best-seller works of fiction and their motion picture adaptations, especially the ones that have a unique twist of strange and unknown history to their story. Great examples are ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’, authored by English writer, poet, Philologist and University Professor J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973). Tolkien had amazing literary prowess in creating a rich fantasy world.

Also heard of the Legend of the Seeker? Well it’s a television series based on novels in the series titled the sword of truth by Terry Goodkind. As you progress into the story you’ll find out that certain people possess supernatural powers such as extra-ordinary strength and mystical powers ranging from psychic skills close to magic and even powers as strange as the ability to listen to people’s thoughts, a non-consensual invasion of privacy I’d say, how rude.

Perhaps only God can and is permitted to do that as our thoughts could almost drive us crazy right? But another movie takes listening to the next level, ‘Heroes’ as it is called, here the story tries to convince us all that there may be a tiny possibility that humans will eventually be able to fly, possess super strength like the incredible hulk, heal up with great speed and among other fantastic special abilities, listen to the thoughts of people and also predict the future. But it’s all fiction right?

“Listen with your heart, you will understand”…Pocahontas

Heart

Ever heard the saying ‘live fast, die young’? Well it’s kind of a code, a watchword which some people usually use to put a check on themselves so that they don’t stray off a chosen path. A school of thought says it’s a guiding light which helps people stay level headed even when in the midst of easy looking and overbearing luxury and opportunities, makes sense to me.

Visualizing it’s upside, perhaps it makes even more sense when one realizes that considering the saying that even nature isn’t in a hurry, it is however imperative for us to take time out to enjoy and appreciate the peace and serenity of life, unleashing the powers of heart, allowing to see, feel and love more.

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply”…Stephen R. Covey

According to Stephen R. Covey (OBM) the best-seller author of the 7 habits of highly effective people, in the same book described one of the habits as seeking first to understand before being understood. Here he emphasized the importance of emphatic listening, an emotional exercise which genuinely seeks to take burden away from the person being listened to. The book helps us to understand the powerful effect of listening which in its subtle way is an emotional intelligence. 

“The world is giving you answers each day, learn to listen”…Woody Allen

The Moment

I believe life is extremely awesome, if you took out time to feel it by closing your eyes, taking a deep breath and listening, you’d perhaps magically taste the beauty which constantly abounds around us.

This is well represented in good music and other entertainment such as art which usually requires more than talent, but being in harmony with the elements of life. Speaking about good music, try listening to Jazz, and feel your soul invigorate. I personally recommend Terry G’s ‘The Moment’.

Ironically, each and every day we all instinctively get better at whatever we do, making mistakes and learning from them and slowly etching towards a perfect world. All these reflect through our discoveries and inventions which are actually necessities for our survival perhaps through adaptation.

As I mentioned earlier, and well I reiterate that I am a great fan of smash hit movies, and you probably are too, who doesn’t love to watch action that gets you at the edge of your seat, and thought-provoking drama about other people’s business and personal lives without you being in it.

Anyway, Hollywood got you covered when it comes to great content, picture, sound and special effects, I’d kind of say the same for Indian movies you know, you should agree that their emotional story lines and choreography blows the mind.

The main point here is that, they try to capture the moment which strikes a code in your soul, mind and brain at the same time, reminds me of the term ‘tripling’. Well, some would call it a punch-line, you know when the unexpected twist to the story suddenly surfaces, causing your countenance to sharply contrast, your heart skipping a beat, your head swelling from goose pimples, but of course you know that feeling of awe. You definitely have to listen to catch the moment.

“The word listen contains the same letters as the word silent”…Alfred Brendel

It’s so noisy

Have you ever heard of the story about the frog race? Well, 
I don’t actually remember reading it anywhere, but I vaguely remember attending to it during my years of blind inquisitiveness that made me perhaps open and even vulnerable to every available folklore.

Anyway, it goes like this, some frogs had to run a race, and when it began, the noisy crowds shouted at them. Some parts of the audience chanted abuses and pelted them, and each frog began to drop out of the race one after the other, surprisingly though, one relentless frog gracefully completed the race. When interviewed on how he succeeded, he didn’t reply, only his father came to his rescue and answered that his poor son was deaf. Moral of the story is for us to be deaf to destructive criticism.

It’s a new world they say, and unfortunately our development, evolution and exposures come with a penalty or several huge prices.

We live in a world where human lives are now calculated in numbers, statistics and pizza –like pie charts and chocolate bars-like graphic representation. The bottom line of fortune five hundred companies has more priority than the possible health hazards caused by constant environmental degradation. Yes we claim to be free, yet we are prisoners in our own minds as governments and the international community continue to do things due to selfish reasons and ulterior motives, classifying all information like the confraternity, secretly wiring propagandas and conspiracies that have spill-over effects by implication diminishing the tendencies of our dear existence.

We virtually live false lives, feigning religion to confuse and distort thing thinking of the innocent, create policies that favour the rich and influential, force a market on large populace to make profit from negatively prevailing circumstances such as creating war in order to provide weapons, which alters the existence of the living, and by implication unconsciously birth terrorism and cause even more senseless and avoidable massacres.

Unfortunately, it’ll only get worse because most of us are trapped in the rat race, we live in a system where we are literally placed in containment, monitored to act in certain ways, requiring super strength to break out of the box.

A school of thought says that a group of people have got the world figured out, and so keep it under check, passing the power down certain lines. Perhaps you’ll get a clearer picture if you saw the movie ‘The Adjustment Bureau’, there really is a lot of noise distracting us from concentrating on things that actually matter.

“The eyes that are calm will see the nose”…Yoruba proverb

Listen

The word listen reminds me of Beyonce’s song which is usually appreciated when powerfully rendered. It emphasizes the need to listen to yourself, within you, it bonds you with yourself, helps you to understand, love and appreciate yourself more, giving you the capacity to love and appreciate others and even the beauty of life and the world.

Listening requires a lot of patience, true love, effort and skill. I was particularly amazed when I read from Stephen Covey’s best seller, 7 habits of highly effective people, that you could actually listen even with your eyes, concentration all your energy and emotion to someone in distress could actually take the pain away. Listening is so powerful that it does stuff that even money can’t do, which is why you’d rather spend time with your poor loved ones that hear you out and understand you than be with snobbish but rich friends, except you’re willing to pay the price of feigned happiness clustered with silent loneliness.

It is definitely high time we snapped back to reality and feel the sunshine, there is still no free meal today, things always come with price tags, freedom is not free, we are all selfish finding our paths to self-fulfillment but not minding our neighbour’s welfare.

We are engulfed in greed for wealth and obsession for unnecessary material gain at the expense of the lives of stereotypically perceived inferior people, aren’t we all one?

ItThe so called xenophobic violence presently going on in South Africa is most disappointing to say the least. This is a country for which the entire world united to help fight apartheid and idolize her hero Nelson Mandela. Although a school of thought portends that it’s an offshoot of psychological inference of the apparent war and oppression which plagued them for decades, suppressing their confidence, self esteem and will power, making it difficult for them to believe that they can’t amount to anything worthwhile. By implication other countries recognized and exploited the void in their system, although improving their economy, they also chose to make South Africa their home, threatening the existence of their unprepared lives.

So what’s your plan, are you going to continue adapting to the present scenario of the world which requires creativity about how to make a change in the world we presently live in, or are you even listening?

Thank you.

Akin Abimbola (akinzogee@gmail.com)

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CHANGE!

“He who rejects change is an architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery”…Harold Wilson

A Paradigm

Change is different things to diverse people; it also is a part of our lives in every possible way, change is generally a process through which something becomes different, thus a revolution which has not only been around from the genesis of mankind, it also has indeed come to stay, leaving us with no choice but to adapt to it no matter which form it takes.

Do you like the American entertainment industry? …well I do, and It sure varies from creative sports to high content Hollywood blockbusters, then to the massive and chart topping billion dollar music booty, many do not realize that they have come a long way for things to so happen for them in this way, such that their style has become some sort of an international model that the entire world seek to emulate.

When American hip-hop star Curtis Jackson A.K.A. 50 cent graced the limelight about a decade ago with his smash hit album “Get rich or die trying”, he was interviewed why he chose the stage name $50, and he simply said “it means change”, it is definitely an interesting perspective no matter how you look at it.

“The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind”…William Blake

 

Are you also a fan of the English Premier League, where the media and an amazing crowd enthusiastically idolize the so called gods of the arena?

Well, truth is it was not always this glorious, despite the fact that it was one person’s idea, at first it was probably boring and not as interesting, but a change in someone’s thinking expanded the creativity into enjoyment and employment opportunities, gaining massive support from all angles to translate a dream into the big picture.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”…Victor Frankl

Metamorphosis

The best way to grasp the attention of children is to make learning practical and fun, their minds are so young, free, fertile and inquisitive; perhaps that is why I can vividly reminisce about the complete metamorphosis lesson back in school. Well, metamorphosis is basically a change in form or nature usually the transformation of an insect or amphibian from an immature form or larva to an adult form. The prominent example is that of the leaf eating caterpillar which transforms into a pupa and then gives way for the glorious butterfly to break forth from within it, an amazing sight of nature that genuinely excites kids.

Humans also change, by growth, passing through puberty from a child to an unrecognizable adult. And when a woman gets pregnant, it comes with a lot of discomfort, changing her looks and feelings to unpleasantness and pain, a sacrifice made for a birth which is a good thing for the world, like a healthy eco-system.

“The wheels of change moves on, and those who were down go up and those who were up go down”…Jawaharial Nehru

Change in Nigeria

 

It is evident that quite a number of things have changed in Nigeria. Since the advent of use of mobile telephony and the prevalence of the internet, quite a number of people have been empowered both financially and knowledge-wise, allowing a majority of 170 million people to be more aware of their environment and becoming pro-active to that effect. 

In Nigeria’s world acclaimed and highly anticipated general elections, the main opposition party which is the All Progressive Congress (APC), using a broom as her logo has very widely adopted the word ‘change’  as a slogan for their high profiled and really expensive campaign which put the incumbent People’s Democratic Party (PDP) government jittery on their toes.

Well, the elections have come and gone and as projected and predicted both by apprehension and online polls, something that Nigerians have never experienced,  an opposition for the very first time beat a sitting government at the polls, the APC gallantly defeated the incumbent PDP, literally changing the political tide in the world’s most populous nation of the Negro race.

“If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it”…Mary Engelbreit

Real Change

It is however a major challenge recognizing what the actual change really is or should be.

The ultimate brand of the APC, now President elect in person of Gen. Buhari has a long standing reputation of incorruptibility and of being a principle centered leader, who owing from his historical leadership as a military ruler in the 1980s, has been hailed for abiding by the law, though strictly, he set precedence for discipline, but was not very welcome due to his rigidity and use of force on the highly corrupt Nigeria’s highly placed officials, which subsequently led the overthrow of his two year military regime.

Nigerians are known all over the world as citizens of an oil rich nation, recognized in developed nations as big spenders, described as lacking financial intelligence with the way they squander money acquiring luxurious property, with a higher percentage of the country barely surviving on less than one Dollar per day. With Governors managing larger budgets than some countries talk less of how much the Presidency controls, coupled with the ineffectiveness of the Legal system in the country as there are many allegations of carefree corruption, looting and non-implementation of sparkling budgets.

The truth is that with all these in focus, the government of the day can only do so much, the real change happens when individuals decide to change themselves.

Change comes to a nation when every single individual recognizes the fact that he or she is important and an integral part of the nation, and also has the power in the presence of will, to choose a path for the country to go.

“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory”…W. Edwards Deming

For the first time in Nigeria, the citizens are actually convinced that their votes count, they finally have a feel that they are important and can indeed effect the change that they want, psychologically putting leaders on their toes making them realize that it is not business as usual, but they have to bring on their best game.

In all of this, it’ll be wise to realize that the presidency cannot come down to monitor simple things like stopping a regular guy from throwing trash on the street or monitoring traffic crimes, the real change rests with us.

If I genuinely love my country, no one needs to tell me not to be dishonest before I become incorruptible, it should be my initiative and act of kindness to let the nice old lady take my seat in the bus, I should know better than to throw trash into the sewage or break oil pipes or rob and steal from a fellow hardworking human like me, the world is ours and it’s worth fighting for, countless opportunities fly all around us and it is up to us to recognize them by having an open mind and looking out for the good in others. As the amazing January 20^th 1961 speech by J.F. Kennedy, the 35^th American President, which completely changed the attitudes of Americans, goes, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask of what you can do for your country”

Additionally, in Gen. Buhari’s speech after being declared winner of the March 28, 2015 Presidential election, he said, “…you voted for change, now change has come…”

In as much as a school of thought advice that we should not expect a miracle, but to be rest assured that acts such as economic leaks, corruption and mediocrity will be put back in the right perspective. If we are insightful enough, we would easily realize that the much desired change that we crave for is within us.

Thank you.

Akin Abimbola (akinzogee@gmail.com)

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Annie

Thanks, Michelle