Clean your insides

As a little African boy who grew up in the motherland, my mother instilled me with numerous ideals, beliefs and values. One of those values that pertains to this month's blog is tidying the inner places of the house.  I remember those Saturday mornings when my mom would wake me up while I was deep in sleep.  The birds were chirping, the sun was still rising and the cool breeze from the palm trees blew gently through the open windows.   I always asked to get more sleep but she would always decline and say, "son, we have got a lot to do today". So after praying and a quick breakfast, we embarked on this little adventure of cleaning every corner of the house. I always loved music so I remember listening and bopping to songs on the radio as I helped my mom clean the house. Back in those days, there was no vacuum cleaner so we would use brooms and dust packers. I was always proud when I swept up a big mold of dust and I will always run to my mom and show it to her. She would always say, "you see how dirty the house is? You're doing great. Go put it in the waste basket".  Although the exterior of our house looked pleasing to the eyes, this remained our weekly ritual. But how does this relate to this month's blog? The world we live in today is superficial. It is a world that celebrates and encourages irrelevancies and things with no depth. Young men focus on making fast money, riding flashy cars and buying name brand clothings and getting girls. On the other hand, young women focus on getting artificial implants, twerking, and on other irrelevancies.   We focus on our outsides while our insides wither away. Hence, the prevalence of well put together people who wander around.  They look appealing to the eye however, lacking substance. The focus on superficial things could be the human instinct trying to adapt or conform to the current trends in society. However, this adaptation does not aid in improving the character or intellect of anyone. Relationships become affected because people are focused on these unimportant things. So the question remains, should we just take the shortcut to getting by in the world by conforming to the superficial trends that surround us? Or do we put in work to clean our insides, be individuals of substance inspiring ourselves, the people around us and the generations to come?

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