Mockers have a way of making very good look very bad. The annoying fact that they are allowed unchallenged forever is eloquent proof silence is not always golden. It’s time we stopped seeing virtue as weakness. Let’s all rise and give haters of goodness their place.
By the way, for those who don’t know, urgent 2k is a sweet name for a bitter experience. In Nigeria (not sure whether it’s a national mannerism) young people who find themselves at rock bottom are forced to reach out frequently to so-called friends for even the littlest financial help. This writer doesn’t see why urgent 2k is being ridiculed. Citizens in a country bogged down with choking corruption, hardship, politics, poverty and unemployment must look for windows of survival.
Rather than make them butts of humiliation, urgent 2k askers should be applauded for two reasons. The boldness to seek help doesn’t come easy. And two, the decision to not take to crime instead. Except for those who think it is a lifelong means of livelihood and, therefore, would rather do no other work, urgent 2k is not so bad that the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater.
Furthermore, the idea of scapegoating a particular gender must stop forthwith. There are no stats on who between boys and girls request urgent 2k more and even if, so what? May you please step forward and cast the first stone if you have neither ever needed nor sought let alone obtained urgent 2k. Which brings this discourse to a critical juncture.
What is urgent 2k? Is it just a route plied by the poor? Specifically, do the rich also practise urgent 2k? What really is the problem with and the lesson inherent in urgent 2k?
Urgent 2k is that quick money or help you seek from someone you consider family or friend or partner. It could be a hundred Naira, it could be five hundred, or a thousand or a few or more. However, urgent 2k can also be big bucks; urgent 2k can be billions. I can bet that Dangote and Femi Otedola and Mike Adenuga and Orji Uzor Kalu and Ubotex and other billionaires call themselves when they need urgent 2k.
To be sure, there’s not one person who has not had, who does not have or who may never have need of urgent 2k. Black or white and big or small and rich or poor are all candidates of urgent 2k. It must happen at some point of your life. Urgent 2k may vary in volume and weight but urgent 2k is urgent 2k.
Both the rich and the poor deploy urgent 2k as a remedial strategy. That is one. Two, the major problem of urgent 2k is that the poor being too desperate always fish for help in the wrong pond. They trust stupid, satanic helpers who immediately start gloating publicly about oxygen or life they purportedly provided in secret.
The lesson here is that seekers of urgent 2k must know who and where they ask. Even if hunger is about to kill you, never beg the village gossip or clown for food or anything for that matter. Except you are mature enough to not allow it affect you, never ask a talkative or someone suffering inferiority complex for urgent 2k. There’s nothing as comedownish as having to seek the tiniest help and it ends up in the public space.
It does something profoundly incurable to the human psyche. It tarnishes your image. It reduces how even you see yourself, going forward. Many people have fallen into terminal depression because their dignity could not recover from the shame of an urgent 2k public ridicule.
99.99% of such people are poor, and among the very poor. The rich would hardly bring their private back rubs to the market. Except in extreme cases, you won’t hear the rich poke derogatory fun at themselves over help offered or received. In fact, any rich person who kisses and tells -sorry, who helps and tells- is just a pretender to the throne of wealth: such a one is poorer than richer.
What do you do in the circumstance, though? Shake it off, my dear; shake it off. If helpers betray you by announcing to the left what their right hand did, do not -I repeat, do not internalise the incident(s). Just coax yourself with the explanation that you made a mistake of trusting a grown idiot.
Oh la laaa. You need to hear what I used to tell myself every time someone I trusted fell short. Unfortunately, now I am too fortunate to trust even trust. You must have proved yourself beyond all reasonable and unreasonable doubts to belong.
Let’s raise the bar some more. There exists a particular version of urgent 2k that everybody has had, or currently has or shall always need. The president, the governor, the mighty on the one hand and on the other, slaves, maids complete with the-not-so-mighty apart from intermittently seeking and receiving human urgent 2k also enjoy divine urgent 2k. God offers us mind-blowing urgent 2k, 25 hours daily.
Remember the accident you almost had. Or the sudden promotion you now enjoy. Or the last-minute rescue you got, miraculously. That was God’s urgent 2k.
What about those perennial plotters of evil, what about those purveyors of hate? What about those who have gathered for umpteenth years waiting for bad news about you, waiting for your downfall? You are still standing because safety is God’s urgent 2k to you. Add to this list: oxygen, healing, health, provision and even the miracle of sleeping and waking up daily.
Behold the gargantuanness of God’s urgent 2k. Yet, the Big Man who sits high up there neither tells nor brags about such unmerited lovingkindness. But why, dear man, why? Why do we so shamelessly ridicule those we help when we ourselves are helped 24/7?
Why do we mock our sisters or daughters or friends as urgent 2k babes not good enough for marriage? Where did we even get that from? Why do we derive joy from shaming our brothers or sons or pallies as good-for-nothing urgent 2k beggars all because the sun has yet shone on them? Have you forgotten that no condition is permanent?
Listen, the truth is that every living thing requires urgent 2k; either from God or from man, or both. So, there’s no shame and there should never be any shame in reaching out for urgent 2k if it comes to that. As a matter of fact, a person who has nobody to call up for urgent 2k, whenever the need arises, is as good as dead. And, a person helped and shamed should realise that they had long outgrown current class and circle.
As we round off, who is your urgent 2k go-to-person? I have mine, do you have yours? Someone or several people who in addition to falling over backwards for you always would never share that information with a third party. Sssh, what’s the meaning of several? Please, look up the word and be guided because you cannot and should not have a crowd of urgent 2k confidants.
God bless Nigeria!