During an English lesson in secondary school, my teacher decided that we would learn better if engaged in a game. Hence, he requested that we piece together small slips of paper with words written on them to form sayings. The fastest group with the correct saying would have points credited to them and the team with the most number of points would be declared the winner. It was during this lesson that i learnt one of the most paradoxical sayings that i would ever come to know of.
At first, we started with simple sayings such as "Make hay while the sun shines" and "Rain falls on the just and unjust alike". Then we proceeded on to more challenging ones, the most challenging one of all was this particular saying: " God save me from my friends, i'll protect myself against my enemies."
To a class of secondary school students, it made more sense that the scrambled words formed the sentence: " God save me from my enemies, i'll protect myself from my friends". It was no surprise that we all submitted that as our answers. When we were informed that it was incorrect, a hush of silence fell over the class, followed shortly after by fervent protests that our teacher was mistaken or had read his answer wrongly.
The explanation he provided was that, since our friends know more about us and we are likely to trust them more than to our enemies, they have the greatest potentials to harm us, just like in the case of Julius Caesar and Brutus. Although we accepted it, it was not cheerfully, in part because it meant that we were all wrong and mainly because our protected minds could not envision such an insidious possibility. At least i think it was what we thought.
However, with age comes the realisation that not all who profess to love you will not harm you. I do not mean that they will harm you intentionally because more often than not, they don't. Nor is the purpose of this post meant to deride the people who do take advantage of people's trust in them to do hurtful things, as i have found out over these years, is very possible.
Rather, i hope that we all understand the potentials that we have in us to hurt others and be mindful. I look forward to that one day in which the statement will no longer be a truth, nor even a possibility but a thing of the past, to be thrown away and forgotten.
dreamt of @ 3:23 pm
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` Tagboard.
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` wordsWorth.
certain quotes from certain places..
"Blessed is the man who perseveres under trials because when he stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him." James 1:12
"Oh, nothing can happen more than once,
But all things must happen one day
Over hill and dale, over wood and stream,
My dying voice will blow away... " The Neverending story
"Walk by Faith, Not by sight" 2 Corinthians 5:7
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