Threading a Dangerous Cliff

Our subject matter is very straight-forward.  It is the problem of dangerous immoral behavior with specific reference to pre-marital and illicit sex.  What really is pre-marital sex?  It is the art of engaging in sexual activity before marriage.  It is an agreed issue that the world over, young people in their millions are becoming sexually active today than ever before.  It is almost becoming an accepted norm in society that there is no wrong in being sexually active before marriage.  That is the deceit that society in the name of human rights and freedom presents to us.

            There is actually no regulation or law that prohibits premarital sex.  That is a fact.  There is however a law in many countries that teenagers or children should be spared sexual activities by adults especially if they are below 18.  That is called by a mild name of child-abuse.  But we have in many unreported cases of teenagers who engage in sex before 18 with no serious outcry by those charged with the responsibility of overseeing these young people.  A recent case is the scandal rocking the premiership of Italy where Mr. Bulisconni is faced with the case of having sex with an “un-aged prostitute”.  Does the law recognize un-aged prostitution?  Why is no one talking about the case of this below 18 year-old prostitute and the attention appears to be more on the Prime Minister?  Whatever it is, it appear the Italian society accepts the fact that the girl in question even though under-aged is free to be a prostitute but its an offence to sleep with her especially if you are a prime minister… a huge paradox here.

            Statistics revealed over the years that in most developing countries, unwanted pregnancies occur more among teenagers than in any other age category.  We have a large percentage of teenage girls being put in the family way by equally teenage boys.  These are very disturbing issues.

            Our institutions of higher education are more like dens of unrestricted sexual activities.  The art has been so perfected that with condom use, young men and women can have themselves without the fear of pregnancy and STIs.  It is even so shameful that these youths have thrown caution to the wind as the acts are performed in some cases at wild parties and street corners. That is how sex has been devalued today.  The age-long moral values that societies in Africa and the world over were known for are now almost forgotten.

            Girls and young men who lay claim to virginity today are classified as not being trendy or out of date.  It is very easy to hear young men today insisting they would not marry a virgin girl because they had no “experience”.  Where have all these led us?  Our world is at a precipice.  We are on edge and it is very obvious.

Pre-marital sex devalues a person

            The sex act is ideally meant to be an activity for the married alone.  It is the uniting force that consummates a legitimately married couple and it is meant to be engaged in without guilt and shame on the part of the two who have committed themselves to each other for a lifetime.  It is the bond that should be kept only between the two.

            When a person, therefore, practices what was originally meant for the marriage bed outside of it, the practitioners are not just abusing nature but devaluing themselves.  The average person who engages in sex before marriage is almost likely to be unfaithful to his or her spouse when married.  The anti-social and anti-moral idea of having to be with multiple partners over time will be difficult to replace with being faithful to one partner.  A situation is created where the entire life of such a person becomes distorted because sex has such a power to destroy a man or woman so fast when misused.  There are young people today who see sex as ordinary as picking a fruit off the shelf and eating.

Pre-marital sex destroys the big picture of life & relationships

            We humans are relational beings.  We want to be loved and want to love others.  The idea of a true relationship between a male and female is for them to cross pollinate ideas, intellectual capacities, complement each other and synergize for productivity either in academic matters, work place activities and general life issues.  When two people of the opposite sex are not married and are friendly on the platonic levels without intimate sexual activity, they produce more results in whatever they are engaged in than otherwise.  Once they know themselves sexually, they lose respect for themselves and begin to focus more on the romantic connection than their big picture purpose.  They begin to look out for faults, and doubt each other in ordinary associations with other persons of opposite sex because of jealousy.  Before long, the once fledging relationship that was adding great value deteriorates into a fight for the ownership of the intimate parts of each other’s lives. Such is the danger of unmarried sex.

The Danger of STDs & HIV/AIDS

            Many people today appear to have forgotten that the best bet against STDs and HIV/AIDS is not condom use but total abstinence.  With all the condom use campaign, the cases of STDs and HIV/AIDS are still on the increase amongst the people group with multiple sex partners. 

STDs and HIV/AIDS are life short-changing diseases.  They are prevalent amongst people who indulge in premarital sex when they use “protected” means or not.  Since this people group is the most potentially productive group in society, a nation loses greatly with this group going down with drain when they are infected by life threatening diseases.

For the individual, personal potentials and dreams are cut short and aspirations are destroyed because the body with which the dreams should be anchored upon is too weak to work on any vision.

Do you have a dream for your life?  Do you have a vision of your life tomorrow?  Where is your destination in life?  Do you know why you are here on earth?  It’s time to zip up and get your life in proper perspective.

A Sex-selling Generation

            The most visited sites on the World Wide Web are pornographic sites.  Every internet café in and around city centers have pasted warnings on their walls prohibiting the browsing of porn sites, yet they are the most patronized on the net.  These sites earn more money than most sane people can imagine.

            Music tracks with the most erotic lyrics enjoy more patronage and airtime plays on radio than ones with moral messages for listeners.  Magazines and soft sell tabloids with screaming sex inclined headlines and stories of sex scandals of some celebrity or the other outsell other good materials on the newsstand.

            The statistics are mind-boggling.  There are more teenagers under 16 today who are sexually active than married people who are properly and morally qualified for their conjugal rights.  There are hardly any innocent teenagers these days.

            Our schools are festering nests for lovebirds that cuts across the students and teaching staff.  Students, both male and female are cross pollinating with their teachers like the world is about to declare sex a finished product by the next hour.

            Corporate commercials are not complete without a suggestive sex related idea about the product or service.  Ushers at public events must be skimpily dressed otherwise the event managers may lose patronage for not being classy “the last time”.

            Our world is suddenly all “sexed” up.  Little wonder then that premarital sex is considered normal today and nomenclatures such as “two consenting adults” and “the right to choose” are used to justify this anomaly.  The result is the high rate of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs), the continuous spread of HIV/AIDS and the poor mental aptitude of young men and women who have become addicted to sex thereby deadening their creative power through over-indulgence.

            Unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortions are rampant and in a society like ours where primary health care is not readily available, most cases end miserably as deaths occur in extreme cases while quite a number lose their reproductive abilities resulting in life long regrets.

            The most potent and productive segment of any society is the 16 – 40 age bracket.  The evil of premarital and illicit sex is most prevalent among this group.  Many government and advocacy Non-Governmental Orgnaizations (NGOs), lacking the will to fight the scourge encourage condomisation while extreme religious groups criticize and ostracize  and a whole lot of other people in society just throw their hands in the air in utter despondency as they look for better ways to fight the problem.

            This series of blogs on the bane of pre-marital and illicit sex is an attempt at proffering solution from another perspective.  It is recommended for all classes of people.  The parents will find it a veritable tool for guidance and counseling; the advocacy groups will find it a platform for anchoring their messages and the youths themselves can derive power to overcome the vice that is eating their destinies up.  Do not just read and flip on to the next site, recommend it to your friends and those you care about.  In the next couple of days, I will focus on the subject of youths, sex and purpose.

Develop an Excellent-driven Mentality

In the past, and may be just ten years ago, the good quality of your products and services is the best selling point for your business but today, it is not the only factor.  Yesterday, the great ambiance of your office and how well laid out your floor looks is a marketing point that drives your sells but it is no longer a major factor.  As an individual, people gravitate more to you in the past on the basis of how well dressed you are, how well speak and the charming smile you carry around, today, we look beyond that.

The vogue today is how much value you can add to an organization, person or society and how excellently you can present it.  It is no longer the age of the experts because there are millions of experts today; it is now the age of the "extra-milers."  When the sun is high and I enter a shopping mall where the receptionists smile and offer me a cold cup of water, it is more likely for me to repeat my patronage there than going back to a mall where they have all the good items but have very negative minded and unfriendly attendants.

An umbrella escort in the rain to your car outside the bank, a good-bye smile from a very cheerful staff of the company and the environment that makes you so relaxed that you feel like sleeping around the complex.  These are the extra services laden with courtesies and value that keeps people gravitating towards you no matter what your trade is!  Do you have what it takes to survive the great competition in the world today?

Give extra-mile service and add value to the lives of people and you will constantly be at the receiving end success.  Break the rules of not doing over-much, go outside the box and be extra-ordinary... that is when extra-ordinary success and results surface in your life, work and business.  Are you ready to pay the price required for the place at the top?  Those who climb to the top have no short cuts.  They must take the stairways and not the elevator.  Don't sidestep the process... that process comprises of giving extra mile service.

Enjoy your day!

LET YOUR HEART AND YOUR HEAD AGREE

In this world, I have noticed and observed with keen interest that it is the issue that produces the most excitement that can give you the most trouble.

There is no area of life that this allusion is truer than in matters of intimate relationships, romance and marriages.  You find someone, you fall head over heel in love with him or her; two of you enjoy the best of times and the excitement overrules all sense of sane and logical judgment and bam! You snap into reality with shattered hearts, dreams and aspirations.

What is it in that partner that blinded you to all the issues to discover later that now makes it practically impossible for you to even want to set your eyes on that person not to talk about even engaging in any kind of a chat with him or her? 

But the two people were in love!  Are they now in hate?!  Sounds funny but its not because virtually everyone reading this has suffered one form of heartbreak or the other.

LET'S FACE IT!

We are the cause of our many troubles.  As human beings, we have been wired with the right body mechanisms to decipher between fake and true.  But the other trouble is that we as individuals are not true to ourselves.  In our bid to sidestep the right process, we run into trouble as well.

Why on earth should anyone ever date a lady or a guy before finding out who they are?  We are so enamored with the beautiful face, nice hair-cut, the right curves in all the vital areas, his tall self and broad smile and her busty self.  These are good features that naturally sends strong shivers down the spine of anybody with blood running in the veins but they are never enough reasons to take a plunge.  Knowing the person behind the mask is critical.

We are great actors when it comes to intimate matters.  We want to really impress the other person especially if we are taken by their outlook.  The results are always disastrous because while the guy is trying to impress the lady, the reverse is happening also.

When the two unfortunately ends up exploring their physical bodies and there is nothing more to impress each other with, the real persons inside comes to the fore and all of a sudden the scales of love falls off our eyes and we are now saddled with the real person who we can't stand and trouble sets in!

After one bad experience, you expect the wounded persons to learn and in that state, without assessing the damages from the previous relationship, they send out need signals around and another masked fellow appears only for the same circle of experience to be repeated until that person becomes an emotional wretch, numb to feelings of love because of repeated heartbreaks.  God Have Mercy!

Your heart feels love but your head thinks through the object of that love.  Your heart desires the company but your head probes for landmines.  Let your heart and your head work in agreement and your emotional life will be better served with that balance.

STOP ANALYSING, START ACTING

Someone once said, "over-analysis causes paralysis".  We live in a world today that pumps a million information to your mind.  You are surrounded by knowledge and a lot of options.  There appears to you at virtually all times more than one way to get things done.  All the options appear right.  The trouble is not with the many options but with your inertia - you are not action-oriented.

Nothing happens in life unless you act on it.  Nothing gets done until someone does it.  Talk, they say, is cheap.

You have turned in another year either by the Gregorian calendar of January to December or by your birthday anniversary.  When are you going to get underway with that project you have been contemplating over for the past 5 to 10 years?  Ideas, when left unattended to over time lose steam and fade away.  Those ideas did not come to you by accident - you were meant to act on them but you are wasting so much time in over-analysis.

What makes people stay away from action most of the time?  Here a few of the action prevention demons:

1.  Fear of failure:  Many people are afraid they may fail in their quest to get the task done and so never start.  You must realize that failure is the stepping stone to success.  You will never find a successful person who had never failed.  All success stories are built on the foundation of past failures.  Take care of that fear factor today.

2.  Sheer Laziness:  For some others, laziness and outright complacency is the bane of their inactive lives.  Laziness is constantly fulled by procrastination - the I-will-do-it-tomorrow syndrome.  Have you realized tomorrow never comes?  Everyday, there is a tomorrow, so your work never get done.

3.  Wrong Company:  When you hang out with the wrong crowd, you will definitely get the wrong chemistry about life.  They help to fuel your doubts about any conceivable thing.  "It will not work", "don't waste your time, this town is not inclined to those kind o ideas", "you are too old", or "you are too young to try that".  There are people who have never seen anything good in what you want to do.  For your life to move forward, you must withdraw from such people.  It is better to be alone and be action-oriented than to have a crowd around you while you do nothing.

If you take one step today, you will receive inner strength and motivation to take the next.  You may experience obstacles but they become part of your learning tools for better and a greater success ahad.  The time to start is NOW!

BE IN THE DRIVING SEAT OF YOUR LIFE

Quite a number of people have this very funny but equally undesirable attitude of not having focus in life.  This is not to insult the sensibility of a lot of well meaning people but for lack of information and sheer ignorance which might not be their fault a times based on many factors, many people are lost in the race of life.

The lifetime you have been given to live out is a gift from God with a responsibility attached to it.  You cannot afford to waste the precious time that accounts for your life.  Every minute spent without accountability will bring you to ultimate failure.

We classify failure from different perspectives.  I consider failure to be a state of not having a vision for your life at all in the first place.  The man or woman without a vision is without direction and therefore cannot be said to be living but merely existing.  Nothing good happens or comes to people who merely exists.  You are not a failure if you have a vision and you make attempts at achieving that dream even though you might be falling short at the moment.  

It is on record that of the whole people on the planet earth (over 6.5 billion people), only 2% are actually decisively pursuing a set of objectives based on clearly defined vision and purpose.  That to me is a disaster of monumental proportion and a great misuse of our installed human capacity for achievement.  Can you now see the reason why very few people are controlling the rest of humanity?  Unfortunately, among the 2% that are purposefully engaged in a defined vision, over 80% of them are operating on the negative lane, sabotaging virtues and taking advantage of the ignorance of the many to milk them drive and giving themselves treats that end in dishonour.  Why should you be among the majority that are without direction?

Why is the Situation So?

Many of us are not in the driving seats of our lives.  We are living off on the driving force of other people. We are not in charge of our lives.  Now, how can we take charge of our own lives?  Of the nearly 7 billion people on earth, each one of us is created for a specific purpose.  We are crafted differently and are supposed to function in specific areas of life.  If you operate outside your configured sphere, you will malfunction and will not be able to live fulfilled.  

There is nothing as interesting as living on your configured and wired state.  Maximum utilization of your gifts, potentials and passion will be at full swing.  You will be more beneficial to your life, others and to humanity.  There are however people who are scared to death about living in such independence.  They fear that they may not be able to generate enough to take care of themselves and their needs if they let go of external help, albeit, the dependence mind-set at work.  

The truth?  Your true potentials can never be realized if you continue to rely on others.  Get your own life and live it to the fullest.  It can be in employment, in your relationships and every aspect of life.  Nobody can generate enough energy to satisfy himself and then give you sufficient fulfilment.  You are configured to be able to generate innate energy for your purpose in life.  This may sound a generalization of the issue of purpose but you must realize that you can apply this principle in your specific area of life.

To help you achieve a drive towards engaging your life towards a specific direction, follow the following tips:

1.    Develop a hunger for knowledge and seek knowledge firstly to develop your passionate areas of potentials and gifts

2.   Begin to apply what you learn from books, seminars and deliberate relationships on that field.

3.  Develop a mind-set of knowing a little about everything so that you can develop a broad-mind.

4.  Relate with people who have made impact in your chosen area to gain inspiration.

5.  Practice, practice and practice while maintaining an eternal learning spirit.  

Do the above for the next six months to one year and see the amount of change that will come over your life.

Keep a constant date with this blog and I am here to serve you by adding value to your life and creating change, the right momentum for personal and corporate development.  Cheers!