Bitter Truth (A poem)
I'll say it, even if it hurts
'Cause if I slay it, it'll hurt most.
The innocent it'll slaught'
With injuries and deep cuts.
TRUTH! Always described as bitter.
Which serves as the greatest arbiter
When justice stutter n' fairness surrenders.
And thus leaves the plaintiff in a state of wonder
When he rescues the defendant with clarity
And then the plaintiff shall hunger for TRUTH to treat him with mercy as charity
But TRUTH will starve him to death in friendliness to posterity.
My short retreat.
The drive.
When I joined read.cash, I felt the urge to impart in my audience with consistency and not convenience. I tried, but drive was not enough reach the kind of Audience that I envisaged. Everything felt cozy at first but after a while, my urge to write started to drop and I began to feel like someone who took first position from behind. I did not stop despite the incentive to stop; which was lack of incentive from read.cash to continue: I had little or no tips for writing.
The break.
I drove with read.cash for a long time but they were literally taking me to nowhere. Then, I took a short break and then, a long one but nothing different happened.
Infact, the more I took a break, the less the incentives. I was confused but at the same time I was curious. I wanted to know why but there was no medium to expressly obtain such information. The rewards from read.cash was not the drive but that reward helped to sustain the drive. It was like a car, the spare parts are needed in order to ensure its continuity.
Then..., The retreat.
I fled for a long period away from read.cash not because I lack the ability to do their bidden, but because I lack the resources. Time is money 💰, the same way money is time. I devoted time and money (in the form of data) to a process that I expected returns, because I sacrificed an alternative.
The retreat, while it lasted, carved my attention to some possibilities that I may not have taken cognizance of: My inability to stay active on the website. That could be the top secret. Could it? Let me find out!
Is the devil black?
There is a general notion that the devil is black. This is seen in various paintings of the devil. The representation of the devil as a black entity appears to have a connotation with the "blacks" as a race. The black community is always perceived by the majority of their white counterparts as an inferior race that has nothing good to offer to mankind and therefore deserve nothing good. These white extremists address the blacks with such derogatory word as "black monkey." To them, the colour"black" is a curse and the race bearing it is typically mephistophelean and therefore should be lynched and suspended in the deepest part of hell. The black race has equally been brainwashed to believe that they're inferior to their white counterparts and as such perceive the whites as gods. The black sometimes loosely refer to any skin colour that is not black as fair. They describe someone whose colour is not black as "the fair guy." This literally informs the reason why the white man choose to refer to anything unjust as "unfair." The word "unfair" is also synonymous with "dirty" or "foul." This clearly suggests that the black race is unjust, dirty and foul. It is a known fact that the black man treats any white man that migrates into Africa with so much reverence but the big question is: "does the white man have equal regard for the black man?" The most common answer to this is "no." The black race is highly discriminated! I learned that there are certain international football clubs that do not buy African players. Why? Is it that Africans are not good in the field of play? No, it's certainly not. It's sheer apartheid.
Is the black race part of the problem? Yes, they are. Blacks accepted inferiority and are generally intimidated by their God-given colour. They bleach their skin just to belong. They have no regard for their own culture but they rever that which the white men has given to them. The black race has been brainwashed, disillusioned and utterly disoriented. The devil's black colour is significant with racism and it is widely accepted by the black race.Some black men are mentally poor and therefore gullibly defines the supposed superiority of the white men as a reality. For a typical black man, the white counterpart is naturally more intelligent, blessed and civilized.
Though civilization started with the black race, their neo-colonial disposition has kept them in the dark. Their history has been twisted to keep them in perpetual colonial slavery. The don't know their true story and therefore appreciate less their self image.
The solution to the black man's problem lies with him__his ability to discover that he has a problem and his willingness to adjust his mentality. The black race need to ask relevant questions about who they truly are and reject every colonial conjectures that are poised to deceive them. Self-discovery is a first step towards liberation and self appreciation and until the blacks discover the true story about their existence, they will never be truly and entirely free.
@TheRandomRewarder
Shrinkflation: The secret inflation.
What is shrinkflation?
*Let use a case scenario to describe the term:*
Have you ever noticed a reduction in the quantity of a product which you always buy without a corresponding increase in price? It's a clever way in which producers change,by way of increase, the per unit price of their products without explicitly hiking price in way that will deter the customers.
Example: I've been buying a brand of 80leaves exercise book known as "croc exercise book" for some time now because I noticed that even as the price of other 80leaves exercise books have increased in the market, the price of "croc exercise book" has remained unchanged. But little did I know that the number of leaves has been reduced from 80leaves to 70leaves until the day I was promoted to count them. I was deeply amazed and heartbroken. Worse still, the producers still print boldly "80leaves" on the "croc exercise book" which makes it difficult for their unsuspecting customers to take cognizance.
The consequences of shrinkflation?
One bad thing about shrinkflation is that when a customer discovers this reduction in quantity of the given products; which the producers do in such a manner that it will only take a sensitive customer to notice, he/she will feel so disappointed and deceived that he/she will be forced to completely shift his/her demand which have a negative impact on the said product since it will lead to reduction in the total revenue as well as profit. But the positive side of shrinkflation is that as long as the consumers of the give product do no notice the reduction in the quantity of the said product, which in many cases they don't, the demand for such a product will continue to increase as against that of the close substitutes .
Shrinkflation is also known as "hidden inflation"
Becoming! If I become someone else who will be me? (The paradox of personality choice)
I am always moved by the desire to become! Who do I want to really be? Sometimes I get really confused. Why? I think it's because I want to become a lot of people. I want to be anyone else but myself. I am aware of every other person's strengths, their successes and weaknesses but mine I do not know. I enjoy other people's standards, their vibes and even their dressings but mine is a flop; I do not recognize it. I find it awkward to admire my own achievement; I feel it is an act of pride to do so. And when I see people admire themselves, I perceive them as people who are immodest and arrogant. When I see people celebrate themselves, I get overwhelmed because I think it's other people's responsibility to do so. Why will people be the ones to blow their own trumpets, I would ask? My standards and infact my life, is not mine. I borrow them from celebrities, peer pressure, animals, cartoons and even insects.
I lack self control because my actions are mostly spontaneous. I act not based on reason but emotions. When people admire something about me, I will simply smile sheepishly. I lack the confidence to say "thank you". I always suffer "divided attention" because l want to attend to everything at the same time. I am depressed sometimes because I don't know yet what makes me happy. Who am I? I have not discovered myself yet. My life keeps swaying back and forth like a feather in a gale.
Self discovery is dynamic and complicated because it is a journey that involves looking inwards critically. The reality is that it needs a lot of attention to details about one's life in order to make it manifest.
Why men don't cry? One of the secrets behind their early death.
Have you ever seen a man crying? What did he look like? Weird, right? That's the way that most people react when they see a man shedding tears. Most people, including the men, have been oriented to believe that only weak men cry. So, crying is exclusively a woman's thing. The general notion is that women are weak vessels and that's why they cry when they are hurt. Is this really true? Are women weak vessels? Some other people believe that women are emotional beings and are therefore wired to cry whenever they are scathed. This notion leaves me asking whether men do not have emotions too? Some families even mock their male children when they cry by saying words like: "see how you are crying like a woman." I think these beliefs inform the reasons why most men bottle up a lot. According to Lana Burgess in "eight benefits of crying ( October, 2017): In the united states, women cry an average of 3.5 times per month and men cry an average of 1.9 times per month." This indices clearly show that women cry more than men.
Women, on the other hand, see crying when they are hurt as a normalcy. It is acceptable to the larger society. Infact, some women use it as an advantage to override the men during a period of dispute or as a clever trick to get the men to do what they want. In some clines, women that seldomly cry are adjudged mean and wicked and the others who cry a lot are deemed soft-hearted. Crying or not crying has nothing to do with wickedness.
Crying is a therapeutic way of shedding emotions. If you cry, you will loosen up. Crying heals certain emotional cracks. Crying helps you to relax and release tension. Crying helps to increase your inner peace. Research has found that shedding emotional tears release oxytocin and endorphins; chemicals that make people feel good and may also ease physical and emotional pains. When people cry in response to stress, their tears contain a number of stress hormones and other chemicals and crying is believed by researchers to reduce such chemicals, invariably reducing stress level.
Men who hold things to heart just to prove that they are strong obliviously expose themselves to high risk of mental stress which leads to psychosomatic diseases such as high blood pressure, heart failure, etc. They're always tense and are prone to taking extreme measures to calm their nerves. They are likely to resort to alcoholism, drug misuse, womanizing, smoking, etc, as a means to ease tension which are risk factors to early death. In some cases, they are suicidal.
It's a wrong notion to think that crying is a sign of weakness in men. Men should cry when they are hurt because it helps in their mental easiness.
*Thanks to read.cash for the opportunity* *to work with them.*
@TheRandomRewarder I feel suppressed!
Live to impress, die depressed.
If your life boarders on ordering yourself around or oppressively suppressing your worthwhile feelings and values just impress, then you have succeeded in mounting a fragile horse sauntering a deep and steep mountain of depression, with no grain of sand but a rather frictionless and smooth terrain, and you risk a hard and harsh crash. There are people whose philosophies say that their lives should be like that of a canopy; exposing themselves different forms of danger just to make those, who do not really care about their welfare, comfortable.
People who live their lives only to impress others are as fake as flawed cakes; laced with much more flour than other vital sauce. They are always working hard to be noticed but when they end unnoticed, they become hard on themselves and harsh on others. Their lives are highly artificial and their happiness are grossly superficial. Because they are clingy minions to other people's opinions, what people always have to say about them is what make or break them. They do not have opinions of their own because they don't own their opinions__they always draw from others. These people have very low self-esteem and tend to be very proud, loud and clouded by arrogance and defiance as a way to shroud their low self-worth; what I loosely refer to as "pseudo or false self-esteem". They are rather too self-conscious and dangerous perfectionists.
If you reflectively find yourself to belong to this category, then you must have had an upbringing where your self confidence was not encouraged, instead you were constantly shouted down and consequently, you have been naturally nurtured into knowing and believing that you have to live your life only to satisfy other people's standards. Your temperament can also be a contributor to this anomaly, but the beautiful thing is that you can nurture your unwanted nature to re-adapt to your desired nature. Moreso, someone once said: "don't let your background rub your back on the ground". If you discover that your upbringing is the bulk of your problem,then you can change your upbringing by bringing up yourself differently. And don't expect it to be easy because change is an August visitor that does not easily come by, you have to keep making an invitation.
People who are adapted to this outrageous lifestyle are willing victims of disappointment, emotional traumas and psychosomatic complications. So, if you continue to live just to impress others but yourself, then, you are ready and willing to live and die depressed!
Lead Image from unplash.com
Trust: An air or smoke in relationships?
What is trust?
Trust is the firm confidence that a person has in another person not to betray them or sell their secrets to a third party. To trust someone simply means to confide in them. Trust is the act of entrusting one's vulnerability onto another. Trust is solely hinged on confidence.
*In the context of this discourse, we compare the value of air to smoke, seeking to measure which one outweigh the other in relation to the subject of relationship.*
What is relationship?
When we talk about relationship, we refer to the multiplicity of mutual social interaction or communication between one party and the other. It could be in business, marriage, romance or even casual friends
Notions about the concept of trust.
A faction of the world population think of trust as a mirage; an impracticable piece of idea that should only be left to be imagined. This group of people are those whose trust have been betrayed once or on several occasions and as a result become absolutely recluse or defensive at the slightest provocation. Because of their experiences with betrayal which has caused them a negative mental shift, they perceive trust as a smoke; a thing of little or no value in relationships which should be done away with. They look at those who believe in trust as shadow-chasers who have little or no experience about life. Because of the way their mind has been programmed, they tend to punish those who trust them and their trust for people is always built on facade. They don't sustain relationships because they always act as though they were forced into it. Ironically, these set of people irrespective of their setting want to be trusted. Hypothetically, these people make up the larger population of the society.
The other faction of the world population are those who perceive trust as an indispensable integral part of every surviving relationship. They are the population of people who sincerely trust others and openly seek to be trusted. They are those that may not have or may have experienced on form of betrayal or the other but decided to remain steadfast, knowing that every facet of relationship need trust in order to survive. Just like oxygenated air, they see trust as something they must breathe in a relationship in order for the relationship to thrive. These crop of a people are smart enough to know who trust, when to trust, who to dispel and when to hide.
Do you want to be trusted?
Do you trust anybody?
The first time; the test time.(Expressing passion on read.cash).
It behooves me to make known to my potential friends and fans that I am a first -timer on read.cash and as a matter of fact I am greeted by a tinder of fear mixed with sensational passion for impartation. I'm not dumbfounded by this unfounded feeling of fear because this is not my first time of doing something for the first time. Much of my intrigues emanates from the fact that I have found a platform so fascinating it sends dancing chills down my spine. It's a beautiful new time, a fanciful dew cline. I am undoubtedly very apt to adapt adeptly to this fountain of self-expression; read.cash. I'm fully aware that my first time is equally a test time but I will not be deterred by the deep-seated fear that continually jeer at me because I'm cheered all the way by a crisp confidence steering me.
Creativity add ingredients to ordinary doings, making them look and appear apparently extraordinary. I believe in creativity as a precedent to hard work as well as a successor! I love writing, I love imagination, I love reading- this trio transcend me from the physical realm to a world of limitless creativity. I want to officially welcome myself, Mr. Chikwadoharmless to this platform of friendship and communication. I am super excited! I'm sorry if you find it weird that I welcome myself but it is routine for me to comfortably do for myself what I can effortlessly do for others. What do you think? Is really outrageous for someone to wake in the morning and tell his/herself "good morning"? Well... If you think so, I don't! I look forward to riding slowly but steadily with everyone. Someone once said: " I went out looking for friends and friends were nowhere; I went out being a friend and friends were everywhere." I therefore extend a hand and as well a heart of friendship to everyone on read.cash with a desire to love and be loved. Together we will go miles and miles without getting fatigued in the process. "Your network is your net-worth." I believe in building a circle of people who are committed to the same things in which I am committed. I know that relationship is very vital because no man ever succeeded in isolation. Great thanks to read.cash for granting this rare opportunity!
@CHIKWADOHARMLESS