WHAT IS LOVE?

(A repost from somewhere.)

"A man and his wife went to the zoo. They found a Monkey who was passionately playing with his female. His wife said to him, "What a romantic animal."

Then, they found a Lion and his Lioness separated from each other; the silent Lion sat alone in his corner as if the Lioness doesn't exist. His wife said to him, "What a sad scene without love."

Her husband then said to her, “Throw that stone at the Lioness and watch.” When she threw the stone at the Lioness, the Lion roar to defend his Lioness, then she was asked to repeat it with the Monkey, the Monkey then jumped up and climbed the tree 🎄 and abandoned his female to save his own skin. 

Her husband then told her, “Do not be deceived by what you see as romance in outward show, often times, it is a deceptive appearance just to hide an empty heart; there are others on the contrary who are relaxed, but their hearts are full of sincere love."

Presently, we have so many in the monkey 🙊 shadow, and few Lion 🦁 nowadays."

Reposted

TOXIC EVER AFTER

They say that the happily ever after of any relationship is dependent on the foundation that you set your relationship on. There are those who met and the foundation was rocky but they worked hard to maintain the respect and peace in their family and it worked out for them. Others swam in the ocean of matrimonial bliss until shit hit the fan, and they could not handle it, so war broke out and they parted ways. Now in the category of those who parted ways, there are several types of couples. There are those who went ghost on each other completely, choosing selective amnesia when it comes to their previous lover or partner, there are those who chose peaceful breakup and peaceful coexistence, and then there are those who refuse to let peace reign, they prefer violence and chaos over anything else, casualties be damned. 

I know of several relationships that began with the promise of happily ever after until they became addictively toxic to each other.

There is this couple that has been married for close to 32 years. You may say to yourself, 'wow, they have been married for so long, it must be nice’. Sure they have, and it is by the mercies of God that the woman is still alive. That marriage has been built on both verbal and physical abuse. The woman keeps taking it because, initially it was for the sake of the kids, and now the kids are all grown. She refuses to walk away now because 'what will people say' about her. She forgets that when the husband finally succeeds in killing her, society will still have plenty to say anyway. So many stay in abusive marriages because they fear how society will perceive them.

Then there is this particularly peculiar marital relationship that baffles me to date. The wife has on several occasions tried to take out the husband using snippers. The two of them know each other so well, yet hate each other with so much passion. The hate these two love birds have for each other would make Hilter blush in envy. Neither of them would let it go and the game of sabotage is still going strong after 40 years of marriage and 10 years of legal separation. I think they have never moved on from each other, and the toxic sabotage links them. Maybe they will stop when one successfully ensures the other has permanently turned their toes upwards. Or maybe nature and good reasoning will intervene for them one day.

The other couple is a divorced one. The husband was a Cassanova (not one with a pleasant face) and the wife was too verbal. He had a temper and on several occasions (maybe too many occasions) he laid hands on the wife in violence. She luckily escaped one night when he had had enough of her shenanigans and was intending on sending her to life eternal. She never looked back, the abuse was enough. But, as much as she had left that abusive Cassanova, she still kept tabs on his love life. She is always informed on the current fling, and he has had many current flings. For every woman that Mr. Cassanova dumps, the woman gains a new friend. So far the women have formed a support group which I hope is called 'surviving Mr. Cassanova'. 

The final couple has a very short story. It was all roses and rainbows until the wife gave birth to their first child. The husband lost his job and developed anger issues and sadly turned on the wife. He tried his wrestling career on her while she was still nursing their newborn. The child was barely a year old, and after three months of acting as his punching bag, the lady packed her things and left. Normally you would expect that with a child that young, the woman would bring him along, but not this woman. She left the child behind, changed her number, moved to a town where no one knew her, and we never heard from her again, more than a decade later. That is what you call moving on cold turkey.

Toxic love has been on the rise in the recent past, and I hope that we have all observed our surroundings and taken the lessons on display. They say it's all fun and games until you are a casualty of a bad relationship that you could have avoided. So think of yourself and take care of yourself. A temporary heartache might just save your life, so don’t wait for it to turn toxic, walk away. Don’t let a toxic relationship drag you down to depression.

Myself to Self

 I am seated at this grotto

I am trying to explain myself to self

I do not understand my explanations

Not that there is a language barrier

But this is self

Why won't I understand?

Why is it not clear?

I desperately need to get it.

It is a prayer grotto

My thoughts are shifting to the smell of the roses

The beauty of the place is mesmeric

I am unable to understand myself

So I will focus on my surrounding

I will appreciate the alluring scent of the roses

And I will thank the maker for the magnificence of this environment.

By Orpah

TO SNITCH OR TO LET DEATH

When you are born in the ghetto, where crime, violence, and prostitution are the order of the day, you tend to grow up quickly and make decisions about your future early. When you don’t make a conscious decision at an early age, you will get sucked into the vortex of crime.  

I recently lost a friend to crime. A young man so full of life and a promising future. Like me, he made a decision early in life to be different and to do better for himself. We went to the same primary school, but I had the luxury of having both parents, unlike him, who was an orphan. He made the best out of his circumstance, he worked his best. He was an honest and exemplary man, and it was easy to use his life as a good example of what a young boy can become if he wanted to do better in life. 

This guy went missing a few days ago, and there were mobilization efforts put in place to try and find him. It is not normal for a grown man to go missing unless he has been injured in some way, and we were praying that he will be found in one peace. Unfortunately, he was found some days later, dead. On the day that he went missing, he had left his house early for his usual morning run. It is believed that he was getting robbed, and he resisted, so he was killed and his body hidden. 

You may ask, didn’t anyone see the crime being committed? Chances are, someone did witness the crime, but they could never tell. You may ask again, why would the witness not say anything? There is this culture in the ghetto whereby, snitches get the actual stitches or permanent silence. Depending on whoever is committing the crime you witnessed, you can either demand a fee for your silence or be silent for free. Either way, if you snitch, they will know it was you and they will silence you forever. They always know who the snitches are because they are in close friendships with the local police, and they always ensure the police receive their cut at the end of every heist.

A few years back we lost a friend to mob justice. According to my sources, the heist they were to pull on a certain M-Pesa lady was carefully planned and perfect. Some weeks before the heist, this buddy of mine had decided to stop living in the world of crime. He had declared to everyone that he was turning his life around, and he was even looking at colleges he could apply to. The problem was that, while he was in the gang, he had risen in ranks. He knew too much about the going ins of the gang activities. Even if the local police were in tune with the gang and they were being paid off well, the gang could not risk a reformed member, going about free with all the secrets and information. So they approached him with a plan of his last and send off package in form of the M-Pesa heist. It was obviously a setup. The mob raided this guy in such an unholy manner that he did not even make it to the hospital. 

It is easy for anyone who comes from the wrong side of the tracks because the odds are already against them. One can be lucky if they got the correct people in their lives to emulate, but if a kid from the ghetto has a weak mind, they will be pulled into crime so easily. Getting into crime always starts easy, with simple heists with no violence or consequence, but when you go in too deep, getting out is a hustle. 

This is for the remembrance of the souls we lost in crime. For the victims of crime, so long brothers and sisters. Society failed you because we refused to snitch and you were taken from us in a violent manner. For those, we lost to mob justice and police brutality, I don’t have words for you. But maybe we should do better as a society, for the children that will grow to become criminals. We should set a good example for them and show them that a person is more than the ghetto they grew up in. Children must be shown that dreams can be actualized if we work on ourselves and distance ourselves from the easy gains of crime. 

Loyalty is a life style

 

I have had the privilege or rather the misfortune of living in an era where loyalty is a foreign concept to everyone. Growing up, I would look at the kind of friends my mother had, and I just knew that when I was grown, I will have the same. Those women were fiercely loyal to each other and I always wanted that for myself. I never heard a negative word against any of the ladies, and mom was always confident that if she was not around and we needed any adult guidance, her friends will sort us out.

Loyalty is a two-way relationship, and yes, I did say that loyalty is a relationship. In loyalty there is respect and that is a definite give and take.

Why is it so hard for the generation of today to be loyal? Is it that those before us did not set a good example for us? Is it that we have become so materialistic that we put all else above loyalty? Is there hope yet?

Is loyalty taught? I take loyalty to be just like love and respect. It comes from deep within us. A loyal person will always be loyal. Regardless is the situation and circumstance. A disloyal person will never muster enough strength to be loyal unless it benefits them to act loyally for a moment until the circumstance change. A disloyal person will always be selfish and no school on earth will ever succeed in teaching them how to be loyal.

Maybe loyalty is taught. What we see as kids becomes autopilot to us as grown-ups. I would compare loyalty to the question of race and love. A child knows no color of skin but only that we are all human and hence the same. It is until society starts to put labels on people that the child will realize that the others are different from them. The same goes for loyalty, if the people around the child are backstabbers and liars, chances are high that the child will grow to be like them. Maybe the generation before us failed us with their disloyal ways.

Society has become materialistic and the most terrifying manner. Anyone with no material things does not deserve loyalty in society today. It has become such a crisis that people would rather give all their money to an already wealthy person, than help a poor man feed his family.

Before a man embarks on a romantic journey, he must first secure his finances just so he can have a fair opportunity in the field. Ladies are more loyal to their married sugar daddies than to their boyfriends, and young men are more loyal to their cougars. It is all about who brings more to the table. A broke person, in these current times, does not deserve loyalty. 

The issue of loyalty is so twisted and confusing that we don’t know how being loyal looks like. There is a thin line between loyalty and flattery. We don’t know where one ends and the other begins.

I came about this quote recently, that said, "with so many things coming back in style, I can't wait until loyalty and morals  become a trend again." I look forward to the time when loyalty will trend again, and if we expect the next generation to be loyal, we must then go back to the basics and learn so that we will in turn teach our children what loyalty is. We must show them by our actions and ensure they don't confuse loyalty with material advantages.

Guys Girl

 

When you are a girl whose friends are mostly male, then you have a drama-free life. Male friends are great and real. Once a girl has experienced the good side of male friends, it's very hard for her to go back. 

Choices have consequences, and every girl with male friends knows that at some point she will not be as close to her friends as before. These relations always have a timeline. As time go by, the distance between her and the male friends will grow. Here her friends have started dating other girls who are obviously not comfortable with their men being BFFs with another lady. When the guys have established relationships, our girl will hang out with them a handful of times before she stops hanging out with them entirely. 

The unwritten rule about having male BFFs is that in the hindsight, it's hard to bring yourself to date them. Of course, you love your friend and will do anything for them, but dating them is where the line is drawn. You cannot risk dating your friend. The stakes are too high. There is always a chance that relationships will not work. People break up all the time and never speak again if the relationship ended badly. This is the reason why friends don't date. You will date your friend, break up and lose him both as your lover and BFF. This is the pessimistic view, and even if I was to outline an optimistic view of the matter, after breaking up your friendship, even if you decide to maintain it, will never be the same again.

A girl who is friends with many males finds it hard to find love. Other guys find it difficult to approach a lady who is always surrounded by other males. Many people will interpret her relationship with her friends differently and negatively, so the dating scene will be an extreme sport for her. 

In conclusion, does a girl need to change her friends to experience some semblance of normal? Maybe she does, and she might find some happiness in life. Or maybe she will find her one great guy friend who will be her ride or die. Or she will keep evolving and gathering new guy friends in every stage of her life, and experience new adventures as she goes along. 

Nothing is set on stone as it pertains to friendships and love. All is fair. 

By Orpah.

Perspective

 He is arrogant,

She is spineless

He is busy

She is meek

He is jealous

She is envious

He is mean

She is bitter

He cheats

She back-stabs

He is stingy

She is proud

His family comes first

Her kids come first

He holds it in

She spurts to the world

Its  a marriage

It is scary