My mind flashed back to the stream of young men and women on the beach desperately, trying to unscrambled the eggs of their reality – in the crush, were lounging lazily and drunk with romantic feelings under the ball of mistletoe, bright trimmed with evergreen ribbons as ornaments. Violent coloured drinks laced with assorted substances drenched in ethanol. Most of them were moist with perspiration after gulping with distaste the drinks, hit no great shakes!
The starry heavens, merged with a majestic sea of beaches of Elegushi, the colourful coral reefs were teeming with life. Its like bathing in stars, and like children daubing sky blue circles with their fingers, mixing enthusiasm with age and almost losing one’s sense of idealism. The old saying you’re only young once, is true, but you can be immature for a life.
This valentine thing for this dignified but awkward crowd have become something of an enigma, an erlking (Erlking by definition is a spirit or personified natural power) that works mischief. In European folklore where the very Idea of valentine stemmed from, Erlking is a sinister elf like valentine, who lingers in the woods while valentine is lurked securedly in the youths minds for too long, and both, as one kills them by a single touch. Love, valentine, erlking – symbols of nature’s power but also transcends nature with their magical controls. In the euphoria of valentine, the sinister elf settles in. Thus, a situation my grandmother of blessed memory would refer to as, ìyà njẹ̀ ẹṣin, ẹ́lo mọ ijó’jó, the horse is suffering, you are saying it is a good dancer, ensues.
This 14th February celebration of love and affection, cards, flowers and or chocolates with messages and theme of love is associated with a tradition of courtly love bringing partners closer together, and its celebration, awkward though, has become an arcane, hollow ritual, poorly understood and wrongly celebrated in this clime.
This bubbling evening, the visitors who came thronging the lagoon to celebrate Valentine could see the luminescence of fish, and marvel at Lagos’s ecological status and aquatic splendour. Truly, Lagos is truly, a state of aquatic splendour. The trails of fish light up in the now darkening pool of waters like turquoise shooting stars. Bordering the beach is a stretch of unspoiled coastline.
The golden sheen of the receding sun in the Lagos horizon, the palms-fringed beaches and exuberant vegetation, the sea that stood vigil over the harbour and the surrounding glassy sands, oyster shells, all held little attention for me, I have my sights set on this generation of
free-spending people in their hundreds; the young, the not-so-young, some married, some mere boyfriends/girlfriends, practically surrounded by the sea, its headland or “prow” juts out defiantly into the Atlantic.
Love’s a desperate and twisting business. Its capable of turning a worm into a fine fellow – and it can bring a decent man down to the dregs. This expresses volumes of what the future portends for society, for the future of its youths. The more I get older and the more I see of people in these modes, the sorrier I get for everyone. A state that doesn’t last for very long, a natural part of Life.
This popcorn crowd – so full of life and so full of themselves. I remembered I was close to twenty eight before I tasted my first stick of cigarette (Galleon) from father’s pack, even then, secretly. Well! It was a story of “ikún j’ọ̀gẹ̀dẹ̀ ikún yọ̀, ikún ò mi pé oun tó npá ni ni”, smoking one’s life, health and vitality away. But this ones, boys and girls, drunk in the ocean of love and infatuation, blew the fumes high up to the sky and everywhere. I tried talking to one or two, I discovered that they had a closed mind, so to speak. And nothing dies quicker than a new idea in a closed mind.
A wrongly positioned mind is like a microscope that magnifies trifling things but can’t receive great ones. You’ll always be thrilled and think about what you are exposed to the most. And given the violence, lust, and greed portrayed by the media, it’s not surprising that crime, Mafia like cultism and cult following, immorality and social vices are on the rise, making governments around the world looking like they are incompetent and incapable.
In real life, you can’t just say, “I’m going to read this magazine, watch this programme, listen to this music, but it won’t affect me.” Social science now confirms what, the holy scriptures said all along – it does affect you! Where you go, what you read, ( or don’t read), what you watch, and the dreams you entertain, all, shape your mind. Read my lips, all – shape – your – mind, in a way nothing else does.
You see, we all need ‘good’ role models. But when you devote your life on wanting to be someone else other than what potentials and proclivities, capability and capacity in you, you’ll likely become like somebody else. This children have to remember that their heroes, friends and peers or acquaintances wrestle with blind spots and character flaws. Ọmọdé kì í mọ osún lọ̀, kó dún gbongbo yẹ̀kẹ̀tẹ̀, the Yorubas would say, its not easy getting to perfection.
Another person’s purpose, gifting, journey, and timeframe will be different from yours. For example, a friend starts a business and makes money, but when you quit your job and follow in his footsteps you go broke. You may be inspired and motivated by others successes, yes. Be hopeful of who and what you are, and not inordinately ambitious, without that you are nothing and have nothing to look forward to in your addiction and envy but a hole in the ground.
In a world where peer pressure feels as if it is crushing down on you at a million kilogrammes per square meter; where values are at an all-time low and immorality at an all-time high. Your life is racing by, and if you are not careful, one day you’ll up and your one short at life will have passed you by. If you want your life to matter, live it in such a way that the world will be glad you did. Change your way, your outlook, your thinking, and your confidence level.
The relaxed atmosphere of a Valentine night backed up with heavy metal music blaring at high decibels, smoking, drinking, sniffing, snuffing made up the convivial and jovial environment. The friendliness of the crowd was limitless and knows no borders, it painted a picture of a distressed nation and affluence and riches, an embarrassment of riches in the sun.
On the girders of the Ikoyi-Lekki Link bridge as I raced towards my waterfront abode, I shove the beach experience aside, and began to marinate on the issue of the nation’s other erlking, its effects and influence on its ‘Generation MySpace’ and the prevalence of a ‘Boomerang Generation’. The present threats that they constitute and contributes to the nation’s and the larger world’s safety, security and wellbeing. A generation that enjoys unprecedented technological, scientific and financial resources, and yet, debatable though, perhaps the first generation to take the world to the brink of social system breakdown.
This children may not be yours or my humble self, but they are someone’s and in need of some form of help. Why, you’ll ask, take this following lines and ponder over them.
Cybercrime: Increasingly the Internet is proving to be a dangerous place to visit. It is a haven for pedophiles, bullies, trolls and hackers. Identity theft is one of the fastest-growing crimes in the world.
The Internet provides another outlet for one of the worst traits of humankind–the capacity to be vicious and cruel. At any given moment, millions of the nation’s youths are online. Whether at home, at school, at a friend’s house, or – if they have Internet access on a handheld device or cellphone – almost anywhere.
If you are a parent and not familiar with the beach experience above and this “generation MySpace;” you are indeed faced with a sobering reality. Your children and wards are probably more comfortable in this new cyberworld nicknamed Yahoo Yahoo, Yahoo+ and the like than you are, and they may even know how to keep you in the dark about their online activities.
People – pressure run their life’s, friends, acquaintances, relatives, schedules, opportunities, other peoples opinions; coupled with the fact that, all the advantages of intellect and education and social class do not inoculate the teeming mass of young people against making bad decisions. And this is absolutely a cause for concern.
Is the situation hopeless? By no means. True, it may seem that when it comes to the Internet, your child is the native and you are the tourist – still you can learn the lay of the land. Without rules, there’s chaos. And men like children, hate chaos. The thing about rules: breaking them implies, knowing when to break them. The world today break ground rules with impunity, but you still have to try.
1) If giving children Internet access in the privacy of their bedroom – is not the final word in safety.
2) The Web has been exploited by all manner of unscrupulous individual. Many Web sites feature explicit s3x, and these are easy for the unwary to stumble upon. Chammath Palihapity, a former VP, User growth, said, while the social media is bringing the world together and expanding the bounds of civilization, “… app is ripping society apart.”
Some have innocently and unintentionally encountered pornography online – in most cases while doing homework. The Web also provides easy access to sites that promote teen gambling and its slightly high addictive nature. Then there are the so-called pro-ana Web sites that glorify the “anorectic lifestyle.” Many pro-ana sites and organizations claim that they do not promote anorexia. Some of these, however, present anorexia as a lifestyle choice rather than as a disorder. Forums on such sites provide information on how to conceal one’s actual body weight and how to hide irregular eating habits from parents.
3) Predators commonly frequent chatrooms hoping to lure a child, could be anybody’s, into an online or even a fall to fake s3xual encounter. A friend posed online as a 15 – year old. “Almost immediately,” she was invited by someone into a private chatroom. She claimed she didn’t know how to get into it, and her helpful new friend ‘walked’ her through the process. Then he wanted to know if she wanted to have [online] s3x. A parent may see a web cam as an easy and inexpensive way for a child to communicate with friends, but a predator see it as an open window to a child’s bedroom and faculty.
4) Instant message conversations can be distracting if your child is supposed to be studying or engaging in another activity that requires concentration. In addition, how can you be sure with whom your son or daughter is communicating! After all, you cannot hear the conversation.
5) Online diaries, blogging gives one the opportunity to write about one’s thoughts, passions, and activities. A blog is open to the public. Some youths carelessly reveal information that can be used to identify their family, school, or home address.
6) Another factor: Blogs can harm reputations, including the blogger’s own. For instance, some employer’s consult an applicant’s blog when considering whether to hire the person. As Solomon recanted, “a honeycomb, the lips of a strange woman keep dripping, and her palate smoother than oil. But the aftereffects from her is as bitter as wormwood.”
A social networking site is like an online party, some very scary people and character can show up. Furthermore, Internet friendship is superficial. On their Web pages, some youth accumulate a number of online contacts whom they have never met face to face, simply to appear popular to others who visit their site. It boils down to judging a person’s social stock value merely by how many other people like him or her. This ‘commodity’ trading style of relating reduces mine and your child to non-human entities and places an inordinate amount of pressure to represent themselves in whatever way will gain them more ‘friends’.
As a parent, which situation would make you more