UNDER THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FLOWER 

The literary icon Shakespeare once said: "not all that glitters is gold" Humans in our original nature are always prone to be carried away by outward appearances. It is common to every man to admire and to be led by what we see outwardly. More often than none, we tend to forget that it is the within that controls the without. We pay little attention to the content, but concentrate more of our attention on the beautiful container. Even producers of different products know this subtle but costly weakness about humans in general, this is why they could spend more in branding and packaging a product to look more captivating to the human eyes than they would in making the content. This same thing comes to play when starting human to human relationships. Most of us pay little or no attention to the character content of the person we are delving into a relationship with. we pay little or no attention at all on the level of our compatibility with the other fellow we are about to form a relationship with. Most times, what we look out for are the appearances, the facial beauty or handsomeness, the accent, the height, the shape, the figure 8, the level of education, social status, skin colour, tribe, religion  etc. As good as all the above may sound, they are only good at igniting  a relationship - they are only good at endearing you to the other person. But they don't, they can't and they can never sustain a perfect relationships at which ever level (family, friendship, marriage, colleague, neighbour, etc). They may help in luring you towards a person but they will not help in sustaining or maintaining a relationship for too long. If proper care is not taken, they may not only mislead you in making the wrong choice but also destroy you and the relationship at the long run. The sad story of a friend's friend always rings a loud bell in my mind whenever I have the opportunity to write anything along this line of thought. The young man was doing so well in life and God was helping him. Things were moving very fast and fine for him not until he meet a beautiful damsel at a friend's birthday party. She looked so clean, slim, tall, unblemished, fair, gorgeous, beautiful and classy, he could not take his eyes off her all through the birthday party. He took the bold step of approaching her and they got talking. He got to know that she hails from his native village in Tafawa Balewa local government Bauchi state. That was it, there and then, he decided she was the one he would marry. When he made his noble intention known to the public, everyone who knew the girl tried all they could do to talk him out of the idea of marrying her but he refused. When close friends and well wishers could not convince him to abandon the idea of tying the nut with her, they left him to his fate. He went ahead to marry the woman of his dreams. Fast forward to fews years after the marriage, He died! Prior to his abrupt demise, he suffered daily torture, disrespect, dishonour and disease from the love of his life. Immediately they got married, the first thing she did was to successfully separate him from his best friends and all his family members. Nobody could come to visit him anymore. He could not help his younger once with their fees nor assist his aged parent like he use to, not because he lacked the wherewithal to do so but because she would not allow him to do it. She became the lord of his life and the lord of his finances. Nobody knew where they moved to after they packed out of their former house. The last stroke that broke the camels back was that she infected the innocent man with HIV without his knowledge. She had HIV and was on anti-retroviral drugs, but went ahead to infect her husbands without letting him know about it until things went out of hand. He died through infection. Few days before his dead, she only called his family members to inform them the hospital their brother was hospitalized. Before they got to the hospital, she disappeared with all his money, cars and landed properties! The family had to rally round seeking for funds to burry him -  they had to borrow money for his burial! This is a big lesson we must glean from, as young people or as adults let's be very careful while going in and out of relationship. Lets not allow good looks alone mislead us into making poor choices. Let's be very careful the choices we make when it comes to going into relationship, because, the choice we make today will either make or mare us tomorrow! Thanks for reading, God bless you.

James Patrick

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