Who Is Advising You? BY AGBA JALINGO

Mind where you feed your mind from. It is very important. Your mind is the central processing unit of all your actions and a combination of the two, determines your altitude in life. Therefore, whatever advice, counsel or illumination you should get, must come from sources that can edify. A meal in a filthy buka, will earn you illness.

Whether that advice is coming from the pulpit, or synagogue, or mosque or shrine, or social media or from your family member or friend, or loved one, or your spouse or your boss, or even from Agba Jalingo that is writing this, pass it through the crucible. In the end, you are the one that will use the advice and brace the consequences. So you also have a final say on whether to deal or not to deal.

There are a lot of broken people in all clefts of life who have seized social media in particular, to ventilate their brokenness to a broken generation in the name of coaching, mentoring and grooming. And they are actually controlling the levers of the conversation. Whether it is about relationships, marriages, faith, finance, politics, tradition, or elsewhere, there are people who are readily waiting to prey on others. Seeking to tailor some form of indoctrination that marinates their own appetite and feathers their nest.

They are sharing their bruises from their closets, projecting their battered experiences and their jaundiced throw backs as general rules for a generation lacking a moral compass. Their truth must be our truth, else the roof must come down. It is a woe betied generation, oblivious of their calamitous fate. Opposite or communal repels them. They are linear not only in thinking, but also in action. They are a lurking mob.

It is the muscle that lifts weight that builds and toughens up. Train your own mind to retain the capacity to interrogate everything you hear, feel, smell, taste or see. You are not a cassette recorder. You have an active mind. Even gadgets now possess artificial intelligence and can think on their own in real time. Your mind can do better. Just train it. Pass every outer thought through the crucible of your own mind. Advice yourself even after you have received the best advice and sermon; including this one you just read.

That’s what I am trying to say.

Yours sincerely,

Citizen Agba Jalingo is the Publisher of CrossRiverWatch and a rights activist, a Cross Riverian, and writes from Lagos.

NB: Opinions expressed in this article are strictly attributable to the author, Agba Jalingo, and do not represent the opinion of CrossRiverWatch or any other organization the author works for/with.