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So, yesterday I talked about how I went to my village on Christmas Day and ended up spending the night there. It was an enjoyable trip that I took, one that was long overdue and I needed it because I had been away for too damn long.

But then, who can blame me? In this search for more and more money, people will keep leaving home and staying away because most of the time we never make enough for us to comfortably come back home. It’s just the bare minimum that we get, and that’s what gets us from day to day, we can’t help it I’m afraid.

However, apart from the obvious fun I had at my village, there was one thing that was startlingly clear to me. Something I’ve only been thinking about subconsciously in the past. And it’s the fact that change is a constant for everything on earth. Except humans.

We keep talking about how unavoidable change is and how no matter what we do, we’ll always experience it, whether we like it or not. But then, I’ve come to realize that many of us change with the times because we choose to change. We can very much choose not to, we can decide to remain in the old ways and live our lives. Even if it means we’d be left behind by the rest of the world.

Change is a choice, we can either embrace it, or we can fight it. When we fight change, we fail abysmally, but the only measure of success would be that our tiny world would not change a bit, everything and everyone around us would have moved on and we would still be right where we were.

There are those who started 2023 in a particular place, they don’t like where they are but they’re doing ridiculously little to get out of it. So, while everyone around them is moving on to greater things, they’re still unhappy spending December in the same place January met them, and from the look of things, they just might spend the next December there as well.

I know someone who is adamant about doing anything online. He has social media accounts and the like, but when he comes to making money, he draws the line because as far as he’s concerned, so far it’s digital, then it’s not clean. This is actually a young guy, which is very surprising. I just don’t get where and how such a ludicrous idea got planted in his head.

He prances about, calling people who are busy making money with their smartphones lazy because they can barely leave their phone alone. He boasts that he can survive without his phone for days and nothing would happen. Personally, I can’t do that. The only time I’m not on my phone is when I’m asleep. Spending even a day without it would cost me money, so no!

There’s nothing we’ve said to him that he has listened to, so we’ve stopped. He believes that good hardworking people must leave their house every day and go to work so they can collect salaries by the end of the month. Anything short of that is nothing but fraud.

Well, he stuck to his guns and refused to do anything internet-related. And today, he’s no different from where he was at the start of the year. Meanwhile, his younger sister who is a student and also does retail selling on Whatsapp makes enough money that she was able to carry their family well enough this Christmas.

This is someone that looked change right in the eye and said a flat “no”. He simply doesn’t want it. And funny enough, he doesn’t have a job. He has been searching for years now, but he has not been successful. And in today’s world where your social media presence can act as a sort of digital CV for you, he has no idea the quagmire he has placed himself in.

But for now, he’s choosing to never succumb to pressure. He thinks he’s a saint and he’s doing the right thing. Well, that’s probably because he has family members who are providing for him, but even that won’t last forever.

Personally, I don’t care. When people refuse to grow, it’s not your place to try and force them. He has made his choice, so he would live with it. That’s what happens when you become too rigid in your principles. You become so locked in your ways that you refuse to listen to what anyone else will have to say to you. You have to be flexible for you to grow, and always be ready to change with the times because no matter how you look at it, the world belongs to those who embrace change.

So, as we go into the New Year, know that so many changes are about to hit us. We need to be ready for all that. We need to know the changes we will accept, and the ones we will fight, because we surely can’t accept every change that comes our way. Let’s do it so that the next December will meet us in a much better place than this one.

That’s the wish.

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_{Thank you for reading. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below, I would love to know what you’re thinking. Till we meet in the next post.}

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_{N.B: All images used are mine. The thumbnail was designed using Canva.}

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Sadly, due to some unavoidable circumstances, the publication of my explosive thriller Dreamers: The Awakening has been shifted to Friday the 29th of December 2023. My team and I are working round the clock to put in the finishing touches to make sure the book hits digital shelves come Friday! Meanwhile, you can read the excerpt by clicking on the image below.