LONESOME

 Hello there! 

How have you been? I hope you're well and if you aren't, I pray God fixes what ails you. 

Welcome to today's gist. 

I recently read Kristi Ann Hunter's 'An Elegant Facade', I heartily recommend by the way. The book, set in the 1800s, focused on the life of Georgina Hawthorne. For most of her life, she'd suffered from dyslexia and to keep her situation a secret, she conspired with her maid to help her pretend to be able to read and write. She laid very elaborate plans: pretending to wake up by 10 am everyday while in actual fact she woke at 7 to be able to have her maid answer correspondence (I love this word) on her behalf. She had other very ridiculous plans but by far the most elaborate and insane one was to make sure she married a very wealthy and titled man(it's Old England) so that if her 'secret' ever got exposed, she'd have the protection of her husband's position and money. Now she had a very close family, they loved her to distraction, but she was afraid to tell them about her condition so she suffered in silence for so many years. Well, as the book progressed, she came to a realization that in a bid to "protect" herself and her secret, she alienated her family, the sacrifice for being able to gain the protection of her supposed husband was that she couldn't be herself even with her family, always behaving like a terrible person to keep the from coming too close. 

And as I read the book, I wondered "what's the use of success if you have to sacrifice everything in your life to get it?" And it's the encouragement I come to you with today; it's very alright to want to protect yourself from hurt and harm, it's alright to have a vision board, literal or figurative, for your life. But it's even more important that in protecting yourself and in putting your plans to actions, you are careful not to destroy the relationships you have with those who truly care about you. You see those goals, achieving them is great and all, but that's not where your true fulfilment lies. What's the point in success when you can't share the journey to and the attainment of success with anyone? 

God didn't create us to be loners, our very nature calls to the establishment of relationships with people around us. There's no reason to bend ourselves out of our natural order just to achieve the goals we've set, especially when we can still achieve the goals while nurturing beautiful relationships with those around us. 

So, let's do a thing shall we? Look at the people who've at a point being dear to you and whose relationship you've had to sacrifice needlessly, no go call who dey move mad oo, and reach out to them, attempt to regain the camaraderie you once had. And tell me how it goes, I'd love to know. 

May we never have to lose the people we love to attain the things we want. 

See you next week!

Love, 

Achenyo.