I chuckle as I write this. I can’t think of anything else when the word screen shows up as today’s prompt.
Why would the word screen rouse a chuckle out of me?
Well it reminded me of my short, sizzling courtship with my husband nearly sixteen years ago and when we first met.
I remember the first thought that I had when I looked at his glasses.
They were as big as a Boeing 727 jet with wide screen and behind the wide screen were very beautiful eyes.
I wondered why he was wearing contact lens and wearing such big screen in the name of glasses at the same time.
It turned out that they are not contact, but my husband has hazel eyes.
For a fully black man, that is not common. It was mostly albinos that I knew that had light eyes in Africa, but as time went on, I got to learn of Africans with blue eyes.
I think it was those lovely hazel eyes of his that got me and yes, for the love of me, he got rid of the Boeing 727 and we settled for a lovely pair of Tom Ford frames.
Any life’s happiness that’s tied to the acquisition of material wealth as it’s major source, is in for a long haul of misery and disappointment.
The truth is that, in as much as the material goods and money around us can give that initial buzz of euphoric happiness, they fail to satisfy in the long run and the buzz wanes very fast, that the person in this cycle is in for the rough haul of the constant pursuit of the next buzz.
This is actually what leads to addiction. The perpetual search for the next high and kick.
Addiction comes in different forms, some more destructive than others, but the underlying factor that poses the problem is the addicted persons inability to find harmony within themselves, so they search for it through external factors.
If your happiness is dependent on others, then you are in for a roller-coaster of emotional instability.
It means that you are submitting your happiness to the ups and downs of someone else’s state of mind which can be rife with turbulence.
The true happiness that you seek to experience can only ever be found inside you and other people or things are just complements.
Dig deeper until you get to that root that transcends the state of happiness to the state of joy.
Joy is deeper. Where happiness is like a stream that might dry up when the sun gets very hot, joy runs like the deep ocean that flows from an unfailing source and that is The Lord.
This is what it is and I have come to accept that. When I was younger, it was a bit difficult to really describe who I was or am and what I am all about.
I can get quite wrapped up in my books and in make-believe Worlds that open up for me in the pages and I find beautiful contentment from that.
Being around lots of people gives me pleasure and I would be the life of the party. Mingling, laughing, dancing and all the merry-making, yet in the background of all this, is some still brook that runs deep inside me. A reserved person looking from the outside.
This different personalities that inhabited one soul, confused me a bit in the younger years of still trying to find myself. I thought that I had to fit into a mold.
That I had to be x or y, black or white, this or that. That I had to be either an extrovert or introvert and every other label that people put out there to pen everyone else.
My mother would say that I was the most quiet child she has when we were growing up, with an acute sense of responsibility, yet at the same time, she would equally say that I am one person that would arrive and would be welcomed as many. ‘When she comes in, we say you people are welcome.’ A one woman riot squad.
In the early days, I never quite understood these things and struggled to fit into one caption or the other.
Now, I am older and wiser, I embrace the me who is a bundle of eclectic this and that and I have ceased with the defining.
I accept and love the me who rages like a wild-fire yet burns in peaceful flames.
The cool sophisticated lady with the blend of a gypsy, wild child.
I admire the me who loves colours in splashes of vivid brightness and the calmness of cool pastels. Who has a myriad taste, yet particular. A me who reads like an open book, yet with curling smokes of mystery.
This is me who loves noise and quiet, who embraces life with zest and calmness. A bundle of contradicting this and that.
Today’sSOC’s prompt asking us to write about this and that had me looking around for a few minutes then I realized that I am an epitome of lots of this and that.
I don’t know what your are thinking, but this is what I am talking about 😉
The Vervet monkey, a native of Africa does have blue balls. You can click on this Wikipedia link for more details.
I have mixed feelings about caged animals. One part of me feels sorry for them and that they should be in the wild where they belong, then the hungry part of me that wants to know so much is glad to see them in the zoo where I get to know about them. A difficult feeling to reconcile.
On Thursday’s, I share pictures about ‘Echos of my Neighbourhood.
I would like to invite you to participate. The challenge is quite simple.
Every Thursday, share a photo of bits and pieces of wherever you are at any point in time. It could be houses, backgrounds of your neighbourhood, activities and so forth and you can tag it Echos of my Neighbourhood, add my link to your post so that I will get the ping from your post.
Every other Thursday, I will publish a post with the links of all those who participated the previous week.
This is just a fun way of getting to see more of the World around us through your eyes, since we cannot all be at those places, we can at least see them through you.
Hanging umbrellas at the village
In the blanket of the night
I love the pretty night lights of my evening walk.
The lights at Ibn Battuta
More evening lights
Viewing traffic from an overhead walk way.
Sugar crafted kitchen staff
Catching the Vile one. Sugar craft
Slaying the beast. Sugar craft
We got to taste the cake
Colourful sugar craft
Coffee parlour
Coffee contraptions
Brewing the potent brew.
Catching up on the gist at the train station
Another coffee parlour
Waiting for my cuppa
Bastakiya coffee house
From the pictures above, last few days found me perambulating quite a bit. These were taken in the course of last week.
From attending the food festival and sugar craft show, to going to Bastakiya, the coffee museum and imbibing in coffee so potent that it could knock off your socks and you will float in the air with the buoyancy that it delivered.
I learnt a lot about coffee and took hundreds of photos.
It was thick heavy brew, served in small cups. I couldn’t finish mine because, it seriously gave me bright eyes and I think my hair stood on ends from the buzz that I got.
Money is one touchy subject that a lot of people love to hate and hate to love. Most people don’t like being told how to manage their money.
The Truth is that we can’t avoid money. It’s been the legal tender through the ages, in so many forms that has evolved over time and is behind a whole lot of misery and content in our lives.
Money is a servant and just a means of arriving at a goal. It should never be placed in the position of a master, because he can become a slave driver, a greedy grubber and a controlling entity once given the opportunity.
With the introduction of credit in the society, it has forged a controlling circle over people’s lives, where people are living consistently above their affordable means by the euphoric idea of buy now and pay later.
By the end of the month, most people’s accounts are in deficit because all the payments has gone in and they hardly have two coins left to rub together, thus the vicious cycle of chasing after the elusive monetary wealth continues.
Until, we conscientiously and actively learn to curb the expense and keep to the absolute needs as against the wants, we will remain in a limbo.
There are so many ways of practicing thrift asides from cutting coupons and it might surprise us how much better off we would be, if we care to throw away some spending practice that burns holes in our pockets.
A borrower will always remain a servant at the beck and call of the lender. May your money be a good servant and not a grinding master.
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a cooking pot and twisted tales 