NOW JUDAS HIS BETRAYER WAS ALSO STANDING WITH THEM

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Credit: Marisane/Wikimedia Commons

Judas Iscariot made himself infamous for betraying his friend, our Lord Jesus Christ.

I wonder who wants that sort of fame attached to his name? Remember, Judas committed suicide for his evil plot; it doesn’t mean that instant punishment always comes to those who make it a habit to betray TRUST that has been given to them.

The idea of this blog came about when someone gave me some trust that I really appreciated. He allowed me free rein, unrestricted access, to his resources, without any price. On deeper reflection, I realized that trust comes at no price but the benefits, like air and water, are immense.

Until it is betrayed.

Air used to be free, until that adjective, “clean” was attached to it. Water was healthy until the adjective “polluted” was attached to it. Nature is a trust given to humans until we betrayed that trust. Then, the availability or the enjoyment of air and water came with a price.

You cannot have clean air without paying for it. You can no longer have healthy water without paying a price for it. If trust has been entrusted to you, you do not realize how free it is until you betray that trust.

I decided that those resources entrusted to me were better free than at a price. So, I sat down and asked myself: “What would or could I do that might make my friend unhappy?” I made a list of them, prioritizing them and the one of highest priority was: “Never to betray his trust. I will only stick to our agreement as to the use of the given resources and never go beyond that, no matter how tempting other course of action might seem.”

I felt a happier and more satisfied person coming to a determination to take that decision.

Although it was the least cost route to take economically, on the other hand, it was the moral and right course to take.

In an age of “everything-goes” when many people trample freely on morality and ethics, it was some comfort to discover that the moral way was the best way.

“Now, Judas his betrayer was also standing with them.” Imagine how those lines must have brought pain to the heart of Jesus Christ. I could imagine costing my friend some expense if I betrayed him. Who would then have to pay the bill? None but me. He’d have to restrict the use of that resource and then, it would no longer be free. It was not going to come at zero price and unrestricted. The resource would become scarce and attached.

I was resolved not to be standing like Judas.

I was going to keep that trust.

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ANNA LOVES HENRY, HENRY LOVES ANNA.DESTINATION NEXT: THE ALTAR, RIGHT? LIFE IS NOT AS SIMPLE AS THAT.

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On a hot sunny day, the sky suddenly turns dark, very dark, as if storm clouds were approaching. What would you conclude? It’s going to rain. Often, we are disappointed when the rain doesn’t come. I have a friend who when he goes to his shop in the morning and finds water at the front of his shop goes instantly for a copy of his bible, because bad people are after his business all over again. “They have started doing incantations against my life,” he would argue. Fortunately for him, he still makes money at his business.

Often and on, when two things happen together, people believe and wrongly too, that the one causes the other.

Take love and marriage for example. When I was young and innocent, and stupid, I used to think that if two people love themselves, then the next step would be the altar. Does love cause marriages? Only the innocent would agree heartily to that. So many other factors cause marriages: money, self-interest, public acclaim or what we call fame, traditional family relationship and so on and so forth.

When one hangs his booths with the correlation is causation camp, he tends to believe in all sorts of superstition and is weighed down with fear, guilt and nervousness. A friend from Agbor told me that children should not be allowed to eat eggs when they are young because it teaches them to be thieves. Why? “Time and again, our elders have found that children, especially those from well to do homes, who are brought up on eggs, tend to take to stealing. It doesn’t happen once, not twice, but many times,” he retorted.

I did not have any data right then to throw his claims away, but I thought he was trying to say my parents should stop me from having eggs when we take tea and bread for breakfast? And then, I was still young. Just in JSS2. There was no way I could unstick him from his belief.

Because I had a bad dream this night and lost my work the next morning, it does not mean the witches who are after my life have begun gaining the upper hand? Nope. I always remember this advice: do not dwell on the bad events of your life, think of what you can make out of your bad experiences.

On the other hand, when two things go together, one can cause the other. Love sometimes causes marriage. Or when you have a good product with the right price, you are surely going to sell more than your competitors.

The caveat is: looking for correlation in everything and sticking to a fictitious, superstitious belief that when we find a correlation, then we have a key, a formula, for some problem that is looking for a solution.

Life is not as simple as that.

Like I used to remind myself: even the devil doesn’t put all his eggs in one basket.

content here.

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WHY SHOULD I PAY SO MUCH TO REACTIVATE A PHONE WHEN SIM CARDS ARE SO CHEAP?

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I was pondering this question when I lost the password to my mailbox. I had cheaper options, like opening a new box, getting a new SIM card for two hundred etc.
I decided to pay one thousand naira (N1, 000.00) to reactivate the sim card and also reactivate the phone. My mailbox was tied to the phone line.

It was all about trade-offs. We all bear something painful, like some cost, in order to enjoy a benefit, or some given pleasure.

Every year thousands of teenagers pay good money to sit for JAMB/UTME exams. Why should they? Because the gains of a university education far outweighs the gains of ignorance, of fear and superstition.

Look at it from another point of view. The more we enjoy meals that are rich in calories and sugars, the higher our risk of being obese, or even suffering diabetes. In a secondary fashion, we have to increase our exercise regime and increase our expenditures on exercise equipment and time for exercise.

A fool counts only the benefits and profits of any venture. There is an equal action or force that tends to be a drag on the benefits. We tend to call it costs, and when there are much of them, we have the option of creating a list and prioritizing them.

Take two parties who are haggling. The seller tends to set a high price, while the buyer expects a low price. It takes a balancing act, a-back-and-forth kind of exercise, before both parties agree to make the transaction possible, or not possible.

Every day, we tradeoff one gain for another loss. Why are you reading this blog? Why did you spend good money to be on the internet? That money could have been used for something else.

So I do not feel I was foolish to have paid a thousand naira in order to reactivate my email. Afterall, the mailbox is tied to a blog, an analytics dashboard and a blog monetization application. I might never be able to quantify these online applications, but I think they are worth one thousand naira.

So, I made a profit.

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