THE TRAGEDY OF ILLUSORY REALITY

Compliments of the Season from your favorite absconder from the creative duty of writing. I wrote on this blog just once last year, I actually managed to match my personal record of laziness set the previous year. This is not a record I am proud of, and this year, I have determined to pummel procrastination into submission and write as much as I can. So help me God. And for those of you who dropped some friends last year, I hope you have not started picking up some new ones already this year, just to come and disturb us at the end of the year with news that you will be dropping them again.

With the usual apologies, resolutions, and subs out of the way, let me get to the reason why I am here very early this year (aside pummeling procrastination) – I think reality is being replaced with illusion, so I need to find out if I am the odd one out still living here while others have migrated to an alternate world where white is black, and red is green. The reality, where we take everything on Social Media as the perfect depiction of people’s lives and we therefore judge our own lives as not being up to par based on that, has become such an epidemic. I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, but this is actually a deeper epidemic at the same level as substance abuse as well as pseudo-literacy, especially when you combine all together as it is common nowadays.

Every day, people upload dance videos on Snapchat and Instagram, and we are assuming they are always happy. These are all lies, no one person is always happy, and no one person, who is truthful to themselves, is always sad. People will most likely share the pictures of their vacation, but not the picture of the hard work which went into making the money to go on the vacation, probably they even took a loan to go on the trip. Your friends are more likely to share their pictures in a plane, but not in a NAPEP. You see, people’s DPs are their representatives, and their statuses are their alter egos, those are not their “real faces”, most of the savage lions on social media are real life lambs - everything is make-believe. That this illusory reality drives some people to having mood swings, becoming depressed, and push some to even end it all with suicide is extremely alarming and dishearteningly worrying.

Self-styled Influencers and Life-Coaches are the Platos and Aristotles of today sharing nuggets about all topics, half of which they do not have basic knowledge of, and most people take those half-baked information as gospel truth and start using them as gauges for their personal lives –

YOLO – Anyone ever told you you will live twice before? Even Bhuddists don’t believe you will come back as you.

Sleep is for the weak – OK. Be forming hard, by the time you have a nervous breakdown, it is a pity you will be a mental wreck and you might not even be able to differentiate between weak and strong.

Live today, tomorrow is not assured – Hmmmmnnnnn. Tomorrow will become assured, and you will have to live with the consequences of the horrible decisions and the stupid actions of today, and what do you do?

True love exists, and you don’t have to chase after it, it will find you wherever you are – Oooshey Love Doctor of the House of Romance. The one who compiled the encyclopedia of love.

Hey people, the hard truth is that we all cannot achieve the exact same things in life. Everyone is not going to be super rich, and we are not all going to be super-successful. By sheer serendipity, some are born far ahead of others, and they will always remain ahead bar some catastrophes of epic proportion. Not all children will be brilliant, not all marriages will celebrate diamond jubilees, not everyone will be healthy, these are just the realities of life. However, it does not mean we cannot achieve happiness or personal progress, we as individuals, and the variables within our individual control should be the yardsticks we use to measure our personal progresses which should determine our state of happiness.

You know your story, you know your dreams; you know where you started from, you know where you are going. Let’s continue to set realistic personal goals and dedicate all our means to achieving them. Let’s periodically take stock, carry out objective appraisals, and tweak when necessary, that’s progress. The misguided belief that we are the dregs of the Earth and that everyone else is flexing and happy based on what they post on social media or is nothing but an illusion. 

In a simple way, between the colour White and colour Black, there are countless shades of Grey, you could just be the dark grey at the moment, and frankly, everyone is just another shade of grey, just keep adding more of white, and you are on course to becoming your favourite shade of grey.

Thank You!

God Bless Us All!!

See You Next Time!!!

Twitter: @SirRash

Facebook: Rasheed SirRash Adewusi
Instagram: @theaspiringsage