Shibuya crossing always reminds Ntendeni that the world is too overpopulated to allow one person to mess up her life.
Remember the world has 7 Billion people. Don’t let one person make your life hell.
How many times have you allowed someone, one person, to ruin your life? How many times has your life revolved around one person and you let them control you, run you, abuse you, and mould you into an object that is convenient 24/7 only to satisfy their selfish desires?
Maybe it might be happening at this point in your life. You might be allowing a mortal body to define your life. You might be forgetting that as alone as you entered this earth, so will you leave.
I grew up studying the lives of women from my home rural areas of Venda and being startled at how they forsook their lives to start living just for their children and their men, especially their men.
Take woman X for example. She meets a man in your youth and stops living for herself. She drops out of school because she believes the fairy tale that says that education does not matter when you are in love. She has been sold the idea that money, self-worth, ambition and personal success cannot coexist in harmony with love. She somehow believes that forsaking her own dreams and happiness will make her a better wife or mother; or a better person.
She gives her entire life to this man or worse, boy, who abuses her, discourages her dreams, blocks her ambitions, tells her how, when and what to eat, wear, feel, speak and think. Woman X allows her life to be run by this man.
She mistakes her insecurity for love and that blinds her from remembering that the world is bigger than this man and that she can live without him. She also forgets that he might wake up dead tomorrow or he might die now. What will be of her then?
Does that sound familiar? Could that be you? Are you woman X? It might not be a man but are you throwing your life away to live a fantasy that only pleases someone else’s selfish ambitions?
I live according to the 7 Billion principle. I put myself first and refuse to please other people. I put my happiness, passion and health first and I remind myself that whoever does not want to see me happy is not worth being in my life in the first place. When I make my decisions, I always ask myself, “What if the person I am trying to please wakes up dead tomorrow? What will be of me?”
Shibuya crossing always reminds me of my 7 Billion principle. The world has so many people. Don’t let one person make your life hell. If you know a person that hates you, don’t let that destroy you. There are 7 Billion more who can love you. If someone says No to you, there are 7 Billion more who are holding their Yeses.
Always remember that not one person in the world must control your life. There are 7 Billion other options in case your first option does not work. Yes, you might not know them or meet them but let that awareness comfort you into knowing that the world is not over for you. Do not waste your time on people who hurt you. There are 7 Billion other people with whom you can share your life.
AFRONESE 