This elephant of a human being bumps into you almost sending you to the ground flat on your back. It hurts and you’ve every right to feel enraged. You expect at least what might sound an apology however feeble and heartless it might be. No, that doesn’t happen; not in the ties we are in. In fact what actually happens is that the guy turns back and glares at you as if you were the one who heavily bumped into him! You’re aching from head to foot and he glares at you! You struggle to your feet every cell in you overworking as if a thousand hands were preventing you from standing upright. You feel like rolling up your sleeves. Of course that would have amounted to the craziest (In some ways near-fatal!) thing to do! Now if you think any blow however hard it might be from you would make on any impact on this person may be you should have stayed on the ground a couple of minutes more at which time he’d probably leave and save you from a second episode of humiliation.
But of course that what event which could drive you into losing your control. It’s only human! The problem is such incidents aren’t infrequent. So you’ve every right to be pissed off!
Of course public display of anger or rage isn’t a very smart thing to do. I mean these days in multiple locations and scenarios there are many instances which could practically tamper with the connection between the brain and the rest of the anatomy. I mean the hands and feet could start flying in the wrong directions without getting any orders from upstairs. Sudden rage seldom knocks from braking down the door and surging in. But that wouldn’t justify irrational actions. Things could be humiliating in more ways than one. You losing your head and the guy who wronged you standing there unresponsive and almost enjoying it wouldn’t go down well with all those onlookers. In fact the immediate narratives cooked there and then would make you the protagonist of the story. There and then stories are created about you and how you must have gone over the bridge. Mind you, not a single person there knows your real identity.
“He must be the guy who they say lost wife and went crazy.”
“What happened; did she pass away or did she leave him?”
“She left him and went to a guy they say was his best friend for decades.”
I once have read that when you feel rage and uncontrollable anger go and punch a bag until your hands almost fall off. Well I couldn’t tell you if that works or not; For one thing I never tried it and no intention of doing so anytime the future. Not that I don’t find myself those anger and, when things get worse, in rage scenarios. But for one thing it is difficult a punching bag these days and you have to fill with all kinds of stuff. No sir, that isn’t for me. But several years back I had this friend who tried it. Him having quite a spacious residence with reasonable open space he had the opportunity to hang a self-stuffed bag. What’s funny about this friend of mine, currently somewhere in the world is that, was that he tries to jump all the way nearest planet over the simplest thing most wouldn’t have given a second thought. He used to almost come to blows a few times; had it not been for interference of well-meaning human beings it’d be hard to imagine what would have happened to him ‘once upon a time!’ pacified by others close by. So he thought punching some bag would be the perfect remedy. Now we are talking about a guy who never sent punches against anyone, at least there is none those close to him know about. Well one day he was enraged over something and decided to make good work of the bag in the back of the house. For several minutes he punched the bag and when he called it a day his arms were already aching. It took his arms almost two weeks to ‘heal.’
Look, when you feel wrongs have been done your actions are seldom driven by logic and reasoning and that leads to the most irrational reactions. No wonder at times you are so angry the only action that comes to mind is running to the nearest watering hole and down repeated shots of the real hard stuff. (A friend tells me if there was some competition for real hard stuff he would have a few local brews he can nominate. “I don’t know why people go for those expensive imports. I tell you there are local brews which by the fourth sip you’re already on some planet looking down at this miserable world.”
Sometimes you could be pushed into thinking about payback (“Payback,’- that politically correct term for revenge! Say your other half of a couple of decades leaves you suddenly and without any explanation. You two went to bed last night laughing and the word laughing with you. But when you wake up in the morning she isn’t there! The initial reaction before your eyes are fully charged would probably be that she must have gone to wash up. But then… “What the hell!” Her clothes, her handbag and almost every item by her side of the bed aren’t there. It must be some emergency. You call the housemaid and ask her where your ‘other half’ has gone.
“”She didn’t tell me; she just rushed out carrying a suitcase.” Carrying what! You sideway the maid with a not-so-nice hand gesture and call your wife’s cell; no answer. You try three four times and she isn’t answering. That must be the most trying moment of your life since as a teen the elder brother of a girl you were interested in was hunting for you boasting he’d put twenty three of your teeth on your palms! Then as you were creating and then killing assumption after assumption in your head her call comes.
“You had me worried! What happened?”
“I’m not coming back. I want a divorce.”
The rest, as they say, would be history. Dear readers, this fragment of a story is an edited version of a sad story that actually happened to a couple we knew. You just can imagine how angry the fellow left out in the freezing cold would feel! Anyways there are many instances these days which you mulling all kinds of the wrong responses and there could be nothing smarter than doing whatever possible to calm the raging waters of anger.
The Legend of the Rich Widow
A year or so back a family sits down to convince their thirty something year old son to tie the knot. The young man worked in an international organizations and the conventional wisdom within the family and relatives was that he made fortunes every month. The figures he’s supposed to earn every month range for a hundred thousand to half a million. By the way I was reading on the social media that there are still local footballers with monthly earnings of far more than four hundred thousand close to half a million! Hmm…Well does that football is that money is? With individual players making who would want to hear that football is cash-strapped. With earnings so high why our clubs aren’t’ going for those Williams and Lamin guys!
Anyways this family sat to convince the young guy but they failed to do so. He declined diplomatically and told them he would be the one to tell them when the time arrives. Their attempts to know if he had a bride waiting for him also failed. He wasn’t the type to give away secrets. A few months later the news came that he had already married! The entire household was in shock. No pictures, no videos nothing but a simple phone call and “I wanted to tell you that I’ve married.” he adds a few more words none of which have to do with his marriage. He promised to visit them in a couple of weeks’ time and that was it! His was one completely confused family which didn’t know what to do. How are they going to break the news to relatives?
“We just wanted to tell you that our son has married.”
“What do you mean married? Why didn’t you invite us to the wedding party?”
“Well, actually there was no wedding party.”
“What the hell are those about? You say your son is married and you tell us there was no wedding party? Is this a joke?”
“Well he called and told us that he was married. That’s all we know.”
I can tell you this scenario would be the worst this family ever faced or will ever face if they lived a couple of hundred years more. A son calling and telling his parents he’s married just like that!
A couple of weeks later he indeed comes to visit them. They started to grill him about the marriage and he cut them short saying they will talk about that another time. Well a couple of months later the news comes through a third person who finally stumbled on what really happens. The guy wasn’t actually ‘married.’ in the real sense of the word. No marriage certificate, no paper of any sort! He just vacated his apartment and moved into the spacious villa of his partner who happened to be a very rich widow into her prime and knocking on sixty. It was a sort of a tsunami for his parents close relatives and even closer friends none of whom knew anything about the whole thing.
It was barely another month when another, unexpected news broke. The partnership goes down south and the lady tells him to leave! As if it was what they call poetic justice or something like that the rumors are she just tells him to leave one morning and leave immediately. Now no one except the two of them knows the real story. But one thing was sure; the guy was in a very sorry state following the demise of what he thought was an unending roller-coaster of luxury and VIP treatment life of the highest order. For weeks he just disappeared from public view with his parents and friends worrying what might have happened to him. He disabled his cell phone and the international organization where he supposedly worked isn’t that place where you just pop into his office and say “Surprise!” When he finally started making the rounds of the city and connecting with parents and friends the signs was he managed to disentangle himself from the memories of that bad, very bad episode in his life. Of course he talked about it and admitted he was in the wrong and should have given the whole affair more thoughts before jumping into some bed which is so vast it looks (and probably feel, whatever that means) like a mini-football field. Ha!
He was open to questions and the obvious question probably everyone wanted to ask him was, “What led to you to go as far as going to this woman who could as well could have been as old as his mother who was in her mid-sixties! One thing about the young man was he didn’t try to hide behind words and never said anything that wasn’t true. He was the kind of guy confident about himself and the type of fellow you can say. “…has class…” when it comes to manners. He admitted he made the wrong decision and that no one talked him into it. He didn’t even know the woman inside out. Their chance of meeting was at a reception his employers threw for a delegation of foreign visitors.
Then one thing leads to another and he finds himself amidst luxury and extravagance; His childhood dream was answered! That was what it was all about; childhood dreams. It was way down during his high school years when this idea of the rich widow issue pops up. Could there be a more direct and shortest way to riches. And that happens after a little more than a decade; this young man comes face to face with the perfect target, a rich widow and he fell for her! Or, rather her riches! He probably thought there was no need for second-guessing. What am I talking about here? Of course, childhood dreams! You never know when the doors that you envisaged in your mid-teens would open wide in his mid-twenties or later.
One thing we know these days is that almost every one of us irrespective of social status, age and what have you dream about is getting rich, really rich! I wonder what the young of today are dreaming about given all the wrong and even damaging narratives and stories we hear day and day out! As no one seems to be listening to no one these days the best we can hope is that the young would come to their senses and keep themselves from being ensnared in the wrong narratives which sound great but are dangerous except getting rich in the shortest of time!
The rich widow sort of story might come in many guises and may the young be saved from looking only at the surface of narratives without taking the time to dig deeper.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 28 JULY 2024