AMBITION, CONTENTMENT & MATERIALISM

I was going to do a three-part miniseries with the titles(ambition, contentment, materialism), and post on separate dates, but that seemed too much like a corporate thing; like I'm writing a newspaper column. So I decided to incorporate all three in one little, lovely blog post -- as this is a personal blog & I don't want to lose that personal feel to whatever missive I come up with. Besides, I can revisit this page and expand on it at a later date. Hope you people enjoy this one.

As a scientist, you gotta have a little bone of atheism in you in order to be able to follow (and believe) Darwin's theory of evolutionism. Geologists will have us believe (with good explanations, mind you) that the entire solar system was formed about 6billion years ago when a spinning, disc-shaped hot cloud of interstellar gases (and dust) in our part of the galaxy (the Milky way) developed a very hot epicenter which resulted in a series of thermonuclear reactions that provided the proto-Sun's energy through hydrogen fusion. Further turbulence of the solar nebula led to the condensation of these gases, and invariably led to the birth of the planets; as it were.

What evolutionism fails to effectively account for is the origin of those gas clouds.
Outside of school, most everyone believe there's a God somewhere/everywhere in charge of everything. Religion provides us with an alternate explanation of a being decreeing stuff to  'BE'. On the surface, the demographic of Nigerian citizens are essentially Christians and Muslims. Christianity/Islam comes with rules/regulations that serve as guidelines for people of those faith(s).

To contextualize the post, I'm gonna fictionalize an instance: "In one of the technical drawing classes that a sweet bastrd of a young man (Captaincue) took in senior secondary, the class was to design a spanner. When he got his drawing sheet back, he scored a 6/10 because there were a couple of double-lines on his work. He wasn't particularly chuffed-- as he'd put in a lot of work in that stuff. So while wallowing in his unhappiness, a mate told him he ought to be thankful. That some people got as little as 2 out of 10." End of story.

By his (my) reckoning, 60% of the score wasn't enough. 80% was the aim for him. That resolve, that aspiration, that intent,  is what I define as ambition. 

Recognizing the fact that he would've scored higher had he (re)sharpened his pencils AND eventually accepting that '6/10 isn't that bad!'. That equanimity, that tranquility -- that's contentment.

Knowing there are double-lines on his work and sneaking into the teacher's office to correct all errors in order to score higher however; that greed, that animalistic hunger, that steely-eyed determination to get more; often at the detriment of religions' core values -- that's materialism.

What will you be content with? How lofty are your ambitions/goals. What're you willing to do to make those goals of yours come to fruition? How unscrupulous can you get? How ruthless can you be? How godly can you be? How low are you willing to go? Are you going to look at those that got 2/10 and say Alhamdulilai or you're gonna look at those that scored 10/10 and punch your desk?
When does being content with happenstance become a steady decline into the cesspit of mediocrity?
When does untamed materialistic tendencies escalate into a narcissistic spate of blatant disregard for basic human decency? Why does this even matter...?!!

Well, I think everything we achieve is somewhat dependent on what your definition of those three words are. Just do your thing. Surely, God will judge us all on judgement day.
I think.
They say.

(Cue: lots of the former, agreeable amount of the middle & a healthy dosage of the latter)

---CAPTAINCUE (...is a freelance writer taking on gigs for unridiculous money. Send me a direct message on Twitter @Captaincue or send me a mail with your writing needs at kaptaincue@gmail.com)