Human beings do things to one another. While some things are hands-on like the orthopaedic surgeon screwing broken bones together, others are more subjective, like someone walking into the room and they are lifting up everybody’s mood. Unfortunately, this capacity to influence people can be used negatively thus making life miserable for their victims.
Nature does bring a few negative things too but nature’s blows do not appear to leave the kind of bitter scars that human bites do. People recall being drenched in the rain as fun memories as opposed to them recounting a betrayal by a once trusted friend.
What can people do for you? The positives
- Conceive and give birth to you then hang around after the placenta has been cut to bring you up in a loving and supportive environment.
- Educate you – Initially in the home, then at school and informally by society.
- Protect you – People look out for each other generally and the Police are called in when serious threats to safety occur.
- Show love, friendship and affection towards you – This encourages your development.
- Cook for you, clothe and house you.
- Nurse you through illness.
- Create a beautiful space for you to exist in either at work or at play.
- Give gifts of great value, remember your birthdays, cry out for justice when you are maltreated and help you out when you are stranded.
- People entertain you with music dance and art
What can people do to you? The negatives
- They could give birth to you and run off.
- They could show you poor behaviour in your formative years so that you grow up messed up and incapable of contributing anything to society.
- Mis-education due to poor schools and parents (Teasha don’t teach mi nonsense no ni). People could project their fears and prejudices upon you leading to arrested development.
- People can kill you – The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced that 437,000 people died in 2012 as a result of intentional homicide. This figure excludes those killed by accidents or ‘Jazz’ (a Nigerian cause of mortality).
- People can give you diseases – while people might be stingy with their money, they generally exhibit great liberality when disseminating viruses and bacteria. People have been known to visit, eat all the food, listen to the entire CD collection and infect their charming host with tuberculosis and if you are really unlucky they might share your bed and gift you with Gonorrhoea (some people never walk alone).
- Discourage you, gossip about you, or take your name to one ‘baba’ (an herbalist) who ties your destiny to Baobab tree (Nigerian phenomenon).
- Steal from you through various means ranging from armed robbery attacks, financial fraud in the guise of a romantic relationship to the now ubiquitous ‘419’.
- People could be good friends with you while you are paying the tab but drop you like a wet blanket in winter once you become broke
The people who dish out negatives
Psychopaths and hardened criminals will always do cruel things to their fellow human beings but thankfully, they are in the minority. For most negative people, it is possible to change. First, they need to understand themselves (realise they have the personality of rotten flesh) and seek to develop some empathy and understanding.
The people who ooze out negativity can be full of excuses as to why they cannot change – rough childhood and so on. Some even claim they hurt people unconsciously and cannot help themselves (na so!).
These people want good things to come their way, like the thief who gets angry when he is given the wrong change in a restaurant. They don’t mind doing others wrong but will take a great exception at being wronged. The thief hate dishonesty, the rude guy wants to be addressed with respect, the bully does not want to be bullied by a higher power and the list goes on. It is sweet to ‘import’ good behaviours while they ‘export’ nastiness to everyone in the belief that what you export does not matter. Perhaps their economics teacher failed to warn them that you get paid for exports. What goes around comes around.
Case studies
When we break good news to people we usually want them to be happy for us and congratulate us on our good fortunate. Well, we need to do unto others what we expect others to do to us.
A guy shocked his friends by announcing that he was romantically linked to a beautiful billionaire’s daughter. He was greeted with silence by his shocked friends. One suddenly held his head in his hands as if he had just been given three weeks to live and exclaimed “Beauty and the beast o!” The other friends laughed and took turned in calling him a gold digger. Another joked about ‘Snow White and her Blackened Dwarf’. The guy went on to get married to his rich and pretty bride and his friends all grumbled at not being invited to the ceremony.
I recall a story I was told about armed robbers who held up a luxurious bus and had all the passengers empty their bags and pockets. One by one, they took valuables off passengers till they got to a man who looked richer than what he gave them. Closer searching revealed money stuffed in his shoes and socks. The armed robber exclaimed, “it is dishonest people like you spoiling this country. Simple instruction una no fit obey”.
Conclusion
Everyone who has an expectation that people should live up to a certain degree of integrity when dealing with them should in turn relate to people likewise. If you want people to remember you in their prayers, don’t jazz them and if you expect people to smile and say hello when they see you, set the ball rolling by letting everyone meet you with a smile on your face.
