Country Men, Beware: The Users Are Back
They shove us off the roads with their tinted government Land Cruisers, sirens screaming as if they are clearing the way for God himself, only to come limping back later with political begging bowls, asking for votes.
May their Christmas lunch arrive tasteless, for a country run down by scandals cannot be sweetened with lies that our taxes are working. Beware, the users are back.
Meanwhile, a certain political party is at war with its own foot soldiers. The same men and women who once offered their lives like human shields are now being told they are unfit to be leaders.
What exactly did the generals think those foot soldiers wanted in exchange for their sweat and blood, handshakes? When cards are denied in broad daylight, it is not only ambition being denied, it is society unwrapping old wounds.
These individuals must wrestle with rejection while still carrying the unseen scars of service. The nation pretends mental health is not ringing the loudest alarm.
Take Sauda Madada. At the burial of the late Segirinya, she put on a performance that would have made even professional mourners cringe. She was wrath itself, hailed by those who thought she had won the day.
Yet nobody noticed that she had lost something greater: human decency. It is one thing to be loud; it is another to be remembered for turning grief into theatre.
This is the problem with those who perform ugliness to impress masters. They win the applause of the shallow, but never the hearts of the many.
And that is how friendships often run too. We overextend ourselves for people who will never see us as anything more than errand boys. We call them friends, but they are users.
They appear when they need favors, vanish when you need presence, and drain you like old batteries. They know their standing in your life, and so they return with empty bowls, confident you will keep pouring from a cup that is already cracked.
Mental health suffers quietly in this arrangement because exhaustion is not always physical; sometimes it is the weight of carrying relationships that refuse to carry you back.
Before you burn your fingers in someone else’s fire, ask yourself if you can live with the consequences for the rest of your life. Do the people you are doing this for even understand or appreciate your sacrifice?
Does this act make sense in the community you must live in tomorrow? As one writer once reminded us, every man has a price. Better make yours fair before the users write it for you and pay in the currency of regret.
The hardest medicine for mental health is not always therapy, yoga, or meditation. Sometimes it is the courage to say no.
It is the courage to stop giving when giving has turned into servitude. It is the courage to stop defending those who would never defend you. It is the courage to stop carrying those who sharpen their knives on your back.
Protect your peace before you end up like the foot soldiers, discarded after the march, saluted only in slogans, and remembered only in scandals.
