Our values either religious, political, social, or emotional values simply have a great impact on our daily lives and activities. What we value determines what give our time, attention, and resources.
During my undergraduate studies in my final year, I had three roommates who were all in the same department. We all had a great time living together as roommates and eventually friends over time.
However, during this time the reign of the blackberry phone was on top of the roof and whoever is capable of owning one was seen as someone to reckon with. Personally, I didn’t fancy it that much at the beginning, but coming to my final year I developed so much likeness for Blackberry Z10 because of its outstanding features at that time. Subsequently, I was somehow able to get one.
Moreover, when I began using my new BB10, I felt so happy because it had so many outstanding and awesome features and on top of that it was super fast at least compared to other blackberry phones. I was so engrossed with it that aside from my daily lecture schedules the only thing I thought about was my new blackberry 10 phone. I thought life was so awesome with it because it became my greatest companion. Thank God those days in my school University of Maiduguri (Unimaid) electricity was almost 24hrs stable and I had no worries about charging my phone at all so it was just all about a good time with my new companion.
However, while having a good time with my new companion I had subconsciously left out some important people and thus my roommates. Unfortunately I never even realized this until something happened.
One fateful day, my friend and a fellow BB10 owner came to me and showed me his updated BB10 Operating System (OS) which now had some new and impressive features. He then went ahead to convince me to also get mine updated and I obliged to it because I also wanted to have those freaking features on my phone.
This upgrade was going to cost me some money and supposedly take 24hrs to complete the process and so I didn’t mind since I was just going to be separated from my phone for just one day. He took me to the guy doing the upgrade and I paid the money and was scheduled to get my phone the next day.
Fast forward to the next day after 24 hours without my precious BB10 which my mind had been all focused on during these 24 hours without it. I was happy the time was finally here for me to get back my companion. Although, on reaching the guy’s place, unfortunately, I got the bad news that the phone that I brought in perfect condition 24hrs ago had crashed in the process of installing the updates. I was disappointed and angry that I nearly fought with the guy if not for the intervention of his roommate.
I left their room very disappointed and on reaching my room I felt like my whole world was crashing around me. I laid down on my bed with my mind focused on my phone and all I should have been missing on the social media and the amazing features on my device. The guy asked me to come back for it the next day and I went again the next day with so much optimism but it was still the same stories and that was how days passed and eventually more than a week. I couldn’t even imagine I could stay without that phone for a whole week, but there was it happening before my very own eyes.
At this point, it was like a blindfold was removed from my eyes and I began to see and reason. One of my roommates noticed I was quite moody and rarely with my phone lately and he asked “Israel where is your phone” I was mute and he asked again “Israel where is your phone” and then I responded, “My phone crashed”. He was like wow and then busted into laughter and went ahead saying thank God we now have our roommate back. The rest of my roommates joined him in laughing at me and chanting “our roommate is back”. This may sound funny, but I realized something that day, I had neglected my entire roommates just because of a smartphone. Oh damn, I couldn’t imagine how stupid I was being so unfair to them and reclusive because of a common gadget that I could lose within a twinkle of an eye. Now the smartphone has crashed but my roommates were still there for me. That day I discovered, how easy it is for us to attach more value to the wrong things and less value to what matters. I felt so much remorse and I realized that people around us should matter to us much more than whatever resources or material things we have.
I’m sharing this because I just want us to learn from my mistake and not thread the same way in the course of our journey of life. There are so many things we hold with high esteem in our lives today that doesn’t matter or have intrinsic value for us in the long run. Let’s check our lives and see what are the valuable things we may have neglected in the past. Remember, your values determine your priorities either cautiously or subconsciously so let’s try and attach value to the right things especially our folks as we always have limited time to spend with them. I hope you understand, so stay blessed as you continue to attach value to what matters in life.
Written by Israel Ahmadu
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Email: israelahmadu@gmail.com