The Man In The Mirror

A glance into our various lives, a peep into what we are normally faced with in our everyday life; the challenges, the horrors, the problems, the turbulence, the inconsistency of good happenings, consistent heart breaks, injustice and corruption fill the air. Disorderliness and selfishness is now the order of the day. At this point, this writer has no other choice than to admit the fact that our world today is in a level of dismal-pisma (only God knows what that means).

            Brothers now rising up against each other, parents sacrificing the joys of their children in order to attain a particular position or it might even be to get a juicy government contract. Hmmn... all we do now is sigh, because we are growing tired by the hour, our resilience is becoming weaker, our fathers’ words of encouragement has started to loose  its effect on us. Now, I wonder for how long will we wait, this dark tunnel journey is taking too much time that we have started losing hope if we will get to the end of it, talk less of beholding the light.

            Horrible and unpleasant news now serve as our alarms which wake us up every morning. It is either the war in Mali, or a Church or School getting bombed in the northern parts of our country, terrorists invading and disrupting the peace of the nation, our leaders looting our treasury doesn’t even sound like news nowadays because we are already used to all of  the big figures they spend.

            Our global image is nothing to write home about. We are even treated as criminals on the global scene. What happened to us, the self acclaimed giants of Africa. A giant who could not even match the achievements of a dwarf. Oh! what a shame.

            In the past years, we all have our ways of consoling ourselves. The church used to be an avenue of consolation. The church, a place where one will hear the mind and the undiluted word of God, but, it is a pity tody as it seems that the church herself has started losing its taste. The joy of getting God’s heart every time we gather in church is no longer there, all we do now is replace that joy with a session of jamboree where all we do is just to sing, shout and dance away our sorrows. The church this day has now been turned to an alcoholic drink which only makes one to forget his/her sorrow for a short period of time.

            Now, where is the place of refuge? where shall we hide ourselves from this rottenness? or is it who shall save us from these problems? Plenty of questions with no answers in sight. The political leaders have failed us times without number, the church has started losing her taste, yet we scream everyday we need a revolution, we need a change.

            Where will this change come from, who will spearhead the revolution. Who will go for us, who are those that will stand in gap for their country, their continent and their generation. Revolution is a topic that various people most especially political and economic experts had talked about. Many models had been presented, many seminars, but with all of these things we still have no solution in sight yet. What a pity!

            After all of these thoughts, I figured out what we need to do, how we need to go about our quest for revolution. We need a change, am I stating the obvious? yes! a change, a long lasting one. Below is a chorus part of a song that was performed in the movie: A Joyful Noise:

I am starting with the man in the mirror,

I am asking him to change his ways,

and no message could have been any clearer,

if you wanna make the world a better place,

then take a look at yourself and then make a change.

            The lines of that song struck a chord in me. There and then I thought about it, the change we have all been clamoring for, the revolution we all wanted is here. There is only one person that needs to be changed, just one person.

            Why don't we make that move to change that person, the man in the mirror. Let the change begin from your room, take a look at your mirror, change the man in it. That change must start with you.

            Change that orientation that you have in you. Change your motive of doing things, change your heart of steel that doesn't care about the feelings of others, change that mentality of looting government treasury once you get there, start caring about people, swallow your pride, esteem other people around you. These and a whole lot of changes are to be carried out in the life of that person in the mirror - you.

            Remember the likes of Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Gadhafi, Hitler, Abdul-mutallab, Gen. Sanni Abacha; they were at some point as young as we are now, if only they had made that paramount change, the world definitely would have been one of the best places to be.

            This much needed and anticipated change is to start with us. We really need to place ourselves before the mirrors of life, goodwill, plain heart, pure spirit, love, care, service, selflessness etc. What are our ratings from these various mirrors...are we that perfect or we are just unconscious of the log of wood in our eyes while we busy ourselves with the speck of dust in the eyes of others.

            Before you continue the clamor for change from others, before you start going about ranting about what an evil world we live in, why not take a time out to look into your mirror. Instill a better change in that figure’s life first. The change is here, you are the one hindering it - Change the man in your mirror for the better and this world will be a better place for each and every one of us.