The power of a tiny little extra piece of information!
One day in school when I was somewhere around the age of 20, a much older student engaged me in a fight. He was at least 15 years older but somehow managed to be on the same level as us.
The reason for the fight was flimsy, he started the altercation by slapping me. I was not going to let a slimy face guy step over me and run with it. We were at the top corridor of a 2-story hostel throwing punches and kicks. I was a young trained fighter so I was roughing up the brother real good.
Within minutes, thousands of students gathered and started cheering. Given my mood that day, at some point, I was going to throw that brother off the balcony all the way to the ground. As the cheers became louder, I tried ending the fight and walking away, but slimy face would always drag me back by the shirt and try to throw more punches. I was starting to consider throwing him off when lucky some people stepped in and broke the fight. During the truce, slimy face quickly started removing his shirt to prepare for round 2, ding ding.
Follow me on medium.com/@davepartner
Since the fight was happening right in front of my room, I quickly ran into the room to remove my own shirt, and while my chariots right back into the battlefield. But another brother ran into my room with me and started screaming in a low tone
“Dave wait! Dave wait!”
I was like “Wait for what?!”,
I was removing my torn shirt when he completed his sentence
“That guy na known mad man oo!”
What?!
“Dave that guy dey crase, as in his head no complete. He has been undergoing several treatments at the hospital to return his sanity. It seems his mental illness is returning again. Don’t fight him, let’s call the school admin so they can reach out to his people who will come take him to the hospital”.
We put a call through and they came and took him away. 2 weeks later, he was back, cool-headed, and smiling at everyone again. :D
Moral lessons:
1. Don’t let people drag you into their madness. If they are mad, let them run their madness on their own and not rope you in. If you want to help them, call for help. It’s also not safe to treat everyone as if they are mentally ok, you don’t know what’s going on in people’s heads. Sometimes you have to assume that people are mentally imbalanced and avoid them totally.
2. Are you sure the solution you are currently applying to the problem you are facing is the right one? Do you have all the information you need? Have you don’t your research before engaging your current solution? 3. Don’t kill an ant with an ax, you might create a new problem that is much bigger than the original one. Are you about to go overboard with your current solution? Are you implementing a solution that is going to exacerbate the problem?
4. That people are cheering you doesn’t mean you are right or that they don’t know you are making a big mistake. They might just be enjoying the entertainment. People have ruined relationships they should have fixed because of cheers from social media earthlings. That friend advising you to throw your partner under the bus might just be seeing you as a character in a movie, now they want to tweak the plot and see what the climax will look like. They aren’t really interested in your welfare. It is just human nature that if people gather to fight, more people will gather to watch and cheer.
5. Finally, listen. When you are emotionally involved in a heated situation, your logic is tied down. It may take the help of someone outside to give you the right guide out of the situation, listen.
Follow me on medium.com/@davepartner
Clap for and share this post.
