“How were you invited to the party and your brother was not?” I prodded as we cycled around the Park.
“I don’t know”
“But aren’t you all in the same class?” I tentatively asked during this mother-and-son bonding session. Drawing water out of this well when he does not want to talk is an art I am still learning
“Yes. But *Sean* and *Prince* are in different groups so they do not talk to each other”
Sean is his friend-brother while Prince is the birthday boy. I found it odd that a classmate who knows the bond between both boys would invite one and not the other
“group?”
“Yes. There are different groups in school. Some people are in most groups but there are groups which do not talk to each other. It means that if you are in a group which does not talk to each other, you don’t get invited to their parties”
Hian!!!
Elementary school kids have cliques already.
“why are you always invited to everyone’s party then?”
“Because everyone likes me. He smiled. Mommy if you are tired, we can stop and rest here”
“Nay. I am good” I replied in a sing-song perfect mimic of him
“I do not mean only here. Even in Nigeria, you were everyone’s friend and got invited to their events”
“Because I am neutral”
“Neutral?” what do you mean neutral?” I feigned ignorance
And so it was that what was meant to be a playtime had turned into learning for me. Here was this little son of mine reinforcing **The Law of Requisite Variety** which I only learnt in my adulthood.
This church girl was imbued with a worldview of no greys. It was either black or white. Even with the benefit of my travels and exposure to multifaiths, languages and cultures from the tender age of eight, I still struggled. It took #NLP and my personal development journey to shatter my prism. Did I say shatter? No, I meant tilt. Like slightly repositioning it to an angle where the refraction or reflection is not damaging.
Years of painful untangling now enable me extend grace to others although I still battle to extend the same to me. To realise that when we disagree to agree does not make any of us superior. Our worldview merely reflects our backgrounds, associations, what stage of our life’s journey we are at.
In a highly polarized world where children are moulded into shapes by prejudiced adults whose worldviews are no farther than their noses, it then limits the richness of our cuisine as we move around life. Because we have been taught that if it does not look and feel like us, then it cannot have anything in common with us.
My personal view is to teach children that we have the same blood colour coursing through our veins and so we can see opinions as skin pigmentation, body shapes and height instead of blood colouration.
*not true names*
**The person with the most flexibility controls the system**.
A nice piece. I enjoyed reading the short story and was expecting it to continue before its abrupt ending.
The message is true. The world is what it is today because of the different subjective views and values passed down by the opinions of our forebears. It is natural.
Hello O.A,
Thank you for the feedback. I appreciate you stopping by and letting me know. I try to keep the stories short. Yes, our associations greatly influence our worldviews and because we do not realise that, we deny ourselves the fragrance offered by a flower whose colour we do not like.