I engaged the services of a plumber recently. On the morning of the day that he was scheduled to work for me, I called to remind him as early as 7 am, and he assured me that I would see him after the school run.
I later learned that he has three teenagers in a Federal Government College. And he drives them to school every morning, except when out of town.
I also learned that his son plays football very well, and at one point, it seemed his academics suffered because of that.
According to him, a boy who used to take 9th-12th position out of 600 students began to perform woefully to the extent that he failed a key subject for promotion.
He told me that it was a difficult decision, but he and his wife decided that it was a teachable strategy for the boy to repeat the class he failed.
He also told me that he dedicates an hour daily to praying for his children. And that he often prays to God to bless them with wisdom.
He believes that what has brought him this far in life is his uncanny ability to read people well – just by observation. He also believes that it’s what has kept him out of costly mistakes during his impressionable years.
He reflected on the ‘blessing’ that is his wife. And he told me that although she does not make friends easily, her walk with God has impacted their household a lot.
I was with a florist some days back. His hands were muddy when his phone began to ring. I asked whether I could get it for him, and he nodded in response.
What I saw on the screen as the caller was ‘my lovely wife.’ Then, when he answered the phone, he said, ‘Mummy.’ One of the earliest things I noted about him is that when he closed from work, he would go to his wife’s shop, from where they (with their children) would go home together.
I believe that I had just observed an intentional marriage from unexpected quarters. Despite their limited resources and exposure, they are giving the best of themselves to their marital realities, something that even with so much money and the ‘good life,’ many are still losing their grip on.
Without knowing it, these men have reminded me that the best thing that can happen to a child is a home where mummy and daddy are on the same page, values-wise.
Merely living under the same roof does not achieve this. But having that oneness of spirit as a couple. What’s amazing is that a lot of the spaces that one is constantly observing blissful marital realities are not always those with a pot of money.
They are often the simple spaces!
The husband of someone I know was almost losing his mind over her alcoholism. The money is there, and there’s a domestic help for every conceivable chore in that house, such that she hardly has to leave her room for whatever she needs. Yet, she spends a better part of her day drinking herself to a stupor.
Isn’t it ironic that the things that are meant to make our lives ‘enjoyable’ are also the very things that end up complicating our lives and even stealing our joy in the process, due to a lack of balance?
There was an incident that threw the neighbourhood of a highbrow area in Lagos into confusion, some years back.
The suicide victim was seen as an upwardly mobile young man, with a beautiful family and a palatial home. So, what could have made a man (who seemed to have it all) take his own life?
A few people who were privy to his issues claimed that his business had taken a turn (debts here and there) for the worse, and his wife had refused to come down from her high horse of ‘living large.’
When he suggested that they change the children’s school and move to a cheaper location, she refused and pointedly told him that it’s over her dead body that he would make her a laughing stock.
All these (plus whatever else that’s only known to the deceased) led to some friction in their home, to the extent that husband and wife were barely talking at the time he took his own life.
It’s easy to deride certain people for being happy because they are not ambitious, and nothing worries them. Perhaps, what you should ask yourself is, what is stealing your own joy since you are supposedly better than they are?
What we need to relearn is finding joy in the simple things, regardless of our material worth. When whatever we own becomes the essence of our being, we end up taking our blessings for granted.
Credit: Chukwuneta Oby