I read recently how people in their 40s at LUTH are diagnosed with a stroke at an alarming rate. Sometimes, you see people on the starring, driving and losing concentration and often you see people talking to themselves (Soliloquizing) like a fresh mad person.
From housewives to career women, from Uncles to Fathers, from Teachers to drivers, everywhere is filled with people under the Pressure of life. Depression is taking hold of people.
The economy is not helping matters. When people are slacking in a particular role, the pressure mounts as they are seen as failures.
Have we come to this world to carry these burdens and die with them? What to give, what to buy, what to do, when to marry, when to own a house, how to be among the ‘Obi Cubana’ club and so on are some of the things pushing people to commit and also to their early graves.
How Do We Escape Social Pressures
Are you under pressure presently and you’re about to burst? You can’t seem to hold your emotions and keep them under check? You sleep with it and it makes you fear? The funniest thing is that after you are gone, what you hold on to that is giving you sleepless nights will resolve itself.
Where are some of our parents today? Many of them worried so much about us, but they will be shocked from heaven to know we’re doing fine.
It is not the lack of something that makes people sad, in fact, I have discovered that it is the social expectations or how people perceive themselves before others that is the cause of sorrow.
For instance, not bearing a child may not be a problem to someone who sees life and fulfilment of destiny as not based on having a child, but because he/she is in Africa.
People who are jumping from pillar to post, desperate to get married and have become burdened and sad because they can’t get one, are sad because of social expectations. Lack of a thing in itself is not what leads to depression but the expectation of societal judgements. This is where the problem starts.
If you are more bothered about what society would say over what you have tried your best on and you don’t have the power to change, you have mortgaged your joy and the devil will attack your heart because he can capitalize on your weakness and sorry state of mind.
You are earning 100k per month, with a wife and two kids, yet because you are the firstborn, you feel it wouldn’t be proper not to do 1 year anniversary of your father’s death and kill a cow with chesty milk. You begin to borrow loans in order to please others and to appear ok.
In every family, every child performs different roles to their parents. Even God will not demand from you what he has not given you. Some children will provide more money, others can provide their presence or call regularly, while others can just be fun to be with. One way or the other, someone is providing what he has.
Another example of social pressure is the type of schoolchildren must attend. For some of us who attended public school, we still were able to compete or even do better than the children that went to some packaged school. Las las, we still met ourselves at the same interviews.
If you are not capable of living in Lekki, go to Ikorodu. You will still find rivers still there.
When people start grabbing life by force the way a hungry bricklayer grab bread, they will soon squeeze their happiness with it. If you can’t take your mind away from social judgements, you will carry burdens all your life.
My mantra is this: “Don’t stop working and doing what you know how to do best, seek more knowledge and connect with people, but live your life as it comes
Imagine! A man joined a robbery gang because he wanted to do a wedding. Police caught them, tortured them and unfortunately, they destroyed his manhood during the process. Guess what?? The woman left. What’s she going to be waiting for?
A lot of people are raking up pressures in life and in the end, they don’t enjoy life. Others enjoy what they have laboured for. If it doesn’t give you peace of mind, carry the burden on God. Stop carrying what is not yours. Spiritual folks have a way of releasing their negative energy and thoughts through prayers. Folks who are not religious seek temporary measures like partying and drinking, just that it’s not always enough.
You are not the one that died for the sins of humanity.
Moving on and overcoming requires finding something of greater value to you and to your life. It is that commitment to something of greater value that consumes those pressures. You then begin to live like they are not there. People who are engaged in matters of eternal value and significance or in good deeds for humanity will easily overcome pressures too. It is a lack of fulfilment of god-giving tasks that puts more pressure on people. Because if you are not doing god-giving tasks, the devil and the world will give you what they have.
If it’s about the issue of money, there has never been a day or time where our needs will not be met. Think back to what you have at one time been depressed about. How is it today? It is history. How did it happen? Some you can’t explain. Likewise, present or tomorrow’s challenges.
Can the thought come to you? Yes…of course. But don’t take it in. Thinking can be in two ways. Either we think with our stomach or with our head. One is out of emotion and it brings us down, the other is to seek solution and insight. Unfortunately, people are thinking with the stomach. Life is temporal and so are the pressures in it.
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