Ompurom,

Every day is an opportunity to strive for the best, and our daily lives should focus on improving the lives of others. I just greeted you in the Bachama (Bwatiye) language of the Southern part of Adamawa State, North-Eastern Nigeria. I am always delighted to come your way on Versus Series, and I am here to represent the male folks today. Let’s proceed straight into business.

There are situations that make a young man take a position; when this happens, various persons involved in the issue start analysing the situation in ways that best suit them. They come up with various postulations, which depend on who they want to take issue with and on the person who will be apportioned blame. Let’s think together about Thought vs Taught

Thought, as described by the dictionary, is “form created in the mind, rather than the forms perceived through the five senses; an instance of thinking.” In child development, psychologists have identified four cognitive stages: the sensorimotor stage from birth to age 2; the preoperational stage from ages 2-7; the concrete operational stage from ages 7-11; and the formal operational stage from ages 11 onward. Cognitive skills include attention, short and long-term memory, logic and reasoning, auditory processing, visual processing and processing speed. This shows that, from birth, every child has an innate ability to think, think right, and think through. Then over the years, he or she can make a position, especially a helpful one.

Taught, in this context, is attributed to the person behind the scenes controlling the man in the eye of the storm. It is presumed that the young man is being taught when there are issues between his parents and he is mediating, but his father, especially, feels offended. Such a person would be tagged as being “taught” by his mother, and another situation is when the young man has his family, and he is taking certain responsibilities as the man of his house, and his family feels deprived of getting him to do their bidding- his wife would be tagged as his new teacher.

What is the drift of this discussion today? We are all products of our thoughts, as the Bible says, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so he is…” Proverbs 23:7. If you think the young man has no thinking faculty, that is how you will keep seeing him; if you think he is being controlled by his mother or wife, that’s the reflection you will always see of him.

Having said that, I want you to know that we keep raising a generation of hatred, bitterness and fake people because of where we have placed them as people who need to be pushed into thinking. Those who dislike those thinking right are largely those who do not want correction.

What do you think about those who are all out to ensure you succeed while trying to correct you?

Think on this!

Cheers!

Olutayo