How do you kill your own mother?

Honestly, these days, I wonder what is really going on in the world today; surely the cliché that the world is coming to an end is becoming a reality and a very scary one at that.

How do you kill your own mother? That is absurd, an unimaginable abomination, mothers are loved and treasured especially by their sons, at least that is my experience, they dote on their sons and in return, their sons loved to no end.

It was therefore a great shock when I heard in the news that a son had been arrested by the police as his mother lay dead on the floor with an apparent stab wound.

My first reaction was that of sadness, this is a tragedy that no mother and son should ever experience, what could has possessed a child to allegedly stab his mother, I consider the idea that he might be on drugs or he could have had a mental breakdown, either way, it is still very sad.

It wasn’t long before the story appeared on Facebook and sure enough, in our fashion of being an expert in everything without and any real knowledge on anything, my people had plenty to say, some expressed sadness while some were ridiculous in their comments, the most absurd comment been that Nigerians in diaspora cannot raise their children and even suggestion that any child showing signs of trouble should be sent to Nigeria, as if there is some kind of magic that straighten children in Nigeria.

Is this not the same Nigeria, where the moral decadence is legendary? Please spare me.

Some decided to vent their anger on absent dads. Rightly or wrongly, we all have a lot to answer for, when a relationship breaks down, should it be to the detriment of the children? Father or mother, it takes two, however, there is no evidence that the story would have been different had the father stayed, but like Tesco would say “every little helps”

Until I know the full details of this sad and senseless tragedy, I maintain that something tragically went wrong in that family and it came to a head on that fateful day.

The boy has been charged for the murder of his mother and an inquest opened, hopefully more will be known of the tragedy that befell this family and we can all learn a thing or two from it.

Thank You

Today’s Daily Prompt: Thank You.

When I think about it, there is so much I have to be thankful for, not least because I am alive today, that might be a cliche but really, things could have been worse.

Just a little over a year ago, my youngest son had fallen ill mysteriously, no one could tell us what was wrong, countless blood tests and visits to the hospital revealed nothing, only that he was producing far less white blood cells than he needed to be able to fight any kind of infection, that in itself was scary and dangerous, potentially anything could kill him, even a minor cold, yet he displayed none of the symptoms of Neutropenia .

He grew worse and became lethargic and withdrawn from almost everything and everyone, school had to be put on hold for several months while he receives treatment. How he came out of  is as mysterious as getting ill in the first place, because there was no conclusive diagnosis, his treatment was more of a trial and error, but he got better, for which I am eternally grateful.

For a boy who missed practically the whole of Year 10, his GCSE result was encouraging, I remember asking his head of year if he can retake year 10 and his advice then was it might do more harm than good. Am glad I took his advice.

Today I am saying thank you to God for my family especially for my son’s health and continuous improvement.

Expectations

In every relationships formal, informal or business, we have expectations,  which is quite different from obligations, we expects our friends to uphold good morals, we expects certain values from them , sometimes we expect them to be like us right? The truth of the matter is expectation is the burden of the bearer and the other party may not even be aware of it neither are they obliged to meet our expectations.

At least in business, there is a contractual obligation for each party to meet the terms of the agreement, and neither party can be held to anything outside of the agreement, but in an informal setting like friendship for instance, there are no terms of engagement, this is a relationship freely formed by two or more parties, each with his or her own unique characteristics and sometime agenda. Why then do we hurt so much in relationships particularly in friendship?

for some time, I have pondered upon this particular question,  but wherever I look, only one thing stares me in the face, one word, a word that means so much and has so many facets.

EXPECTATIONS! the dictionary describes expectation as an anticipation of something, a hope for something or even a TRUST, now, that is the catalyst, the word TRUST and this is where the problem starts. Could our trust be misplaced leaving us in expectation of something the other party cannot give?

We are an evolving creature, situations and circumstances around us causes us to change; sometimes these changes are subtle and sometimes it could be drastic, however these changes are personal to us, rarely do we stop to consider how others around us will handle this change or indeed how they are affected by the changes in us, yet, we have expectations of them which may or may not be in line with who they are or indeed who they have become, because just like us, they are changing too.

In order  for our expectations to be fair and appropriate, I believe we need a constant evaluation of who we are, what defines us , what we belief in, what we can realistically live with and  what values we cannot compromise on;  because all of these are ever changing and are influenced to a greater or lesser extent by our experience and our environment.

Then we need to look around us and understand that, though we may have all of these, we cannot realistically expect everyone around us to feel or act the same, because they have their values which may be worlds apart from ours, now, that should never disqualify them from being our friends, but it will guide us towards the level of relationship we can hold with them, there is absolutely no point looking for comfort from a person who is emotionally detached from reality, but they could be a great friend in another area.

Friendship means a lot of different things to different people, therefore, if we can take time to understand what we want out of our relationship with others, we should then be able to discern which of our friends can supply that need, we will then not have misplaced trust or over-optimistic expectation of them, therefore, we hurt less.

As human beings, we operate on attraction, we are attracted to people based on looks, their outward qualities  or the social class they belong to, whilst there is nothing wrong with that and it might be fair to say it is our genetic makeup, we  need time to know our friends  and I mean deep understanding of them as a person and through the passing of time, we grow to love them for who they are and not who we want them to be.

One of the pillars hindering our happiness is our expectations, it is therefore fair to say that if our expectations are measured we spare ourselves an unnecessary burden, we can therefore tick another box in our “I want to be happy” checkboxes.

I used to expend a lot of energy on people’s attitude and that was because I had the wrong expectations of them, I realized that I do not have a good understanding of who they are and what makes them who they are, in some cases, they just cannot be any better or worse that the evidence in front of me, but I was looking for something in them they do not possess, until one day my brother told me that my problem was that I had high expectations of people and that’s why I was always hurt.

That struck  a strong chord in my subconscious mind, for several months I thought about it, and did as much reading as I could on the subject matter and I realized he was right, I also realized I could not change anyone, I could only change me. and I started working on myself, I certainly want to be happy in all ramification, whilst that might not be possible in every way, I definitely do not want to be the driver of my own unhappiness.

You hold the key to your happiness, managing your expectation of people might just be the gateway you need.