By Fred Eche-ofun Egba
I have often wondered why young men and young women seem to be in hurry to get married as if been single is a crime and getting married is the ultimate in life. There is one thing we need to understand here; life is in phases and every phase of life is given to us for adventure. It is therefore pertinent for us to maximize our time at every level of life that we find ourselves. That is why I said that single-hood is not a disease nor is it a curse as some people believe. I believe the phase of single-hood is the period where we mould our character for the next phase-our marital life. It is during this time that we develop our values and moral principle and build up our philosophy for life. It is the season of discovery, where we get to really know who we are. It is when we seen visions of the future and begin to pursue it and put strategy in place as to how to realize our dreams.
The truth is
this: there are certain things that if you don't get round doing them at the
phase when you are single, don't think it would be easier on you when you got
married. You wake up, lets say, as a single person 10am every morning; don't
expect that you will change over the night when you get married. You have
already cultivated that habit and it is a lot easier to cultivate a habit than
to break it. Of course nobody will tolerate someone who wakes up at such a
time. Maybe yours is to leave litters in your wake everywhere and you couldn't see that the
place is untidy until someone told you. That alone could create a problem for
you in that marriage you want to rush into.
So there is a
need to watch your life when you are single. There is a purpose for it. It is the period you sit and
think. You decide your marital future at this stage. Some people don't even
take time to prepare themselves for their future. They just live their lives
gambling, whatever it is that come goes. So they gather a lot of garbage along
the way and don't care to filter them. They go into that relationship with all
the garbage and come out in catastrophe. You have got to settle down and
programme yourself for your tomorrow, if it must be anything you must enjoy.
Somebody said to me the other day she wants to get married to a God fearing man and he should be caring and she gave a list of other qualities she wanted in a man. I asked her if she had some good qualities herself and how has she worked herself to prepare for married life. Obviously, from the way she responded I knew she was taken aback by the question. You want your man/woman to be good while you are not, that is an irony. How does that fit? You see, you cannot have the worse character and not pay attention to it now and you think everything would be alright when you get married, that is if you find someone who would accept you with your kind of character. Someone complained that he doesn't know why his girls break up with him easily. I told him to run a check on his person and correct what the problem was. He found out he was a penny-pinching and self centered individual. That was the problem, you cannot love without giving. He did correct that anomaly and some other discoveries he made about himself, and today he is in a happy fruitful relationship. The question is: how are you treating your single-hood? Do you see it as a disease that you need to deal with by getting married? Or do you see it as a phase of preparations for a better future. Make sure you maximize your single-hood. It is not a crime to be single.
Somebody said to me the other day she wants to get married to a God fearing man and he should be caring and she gave a list of other qualities she wanted in a man. I asked her if she had some good qualities herself and how has she worked herself to prepare for married life. Obviously, from the way she responded I knew she was taken aback by the question. You want your man/woman to be good while you are not, that is an irony. How does that fit? You see, you cannot have the worse character and not pay attention to it now and you think everything would be alright when you get married, that is if you find someone who would accept you with your kind of character. Someone complained that he doesn't know why his girls break up with him easily. I told him to run a check on his person and correct what the problem was. He found out he was a penny-pinching and self centered individual. That was the problem, you cannot love without giving. He did correct that anomaly and some other discoveries he made about himself, and today he is in a happy fruitful relationship. The question is: how are you treating your single-hood? Do you see it as a disease that you need to deal with by getting married? Or do you see it as a phase of preparations for a better future. Make sure you maximize your single-hood. It is not a crime to be single.
