It is very disastrous for one to take comfort in living in his closet with windows closed but only seeing people through the magnifying glasses. He opens his door to those he likes. Seeing people makes him feel as if they are coming to invade his personal inventory or because of his negative concept of life and a withdrawal syndrome in him. He feels suspicious of people. He makes people feel as if his place is noted for notoriety, a hiding place for people of bad behaviours. A person of this type locked to himself, needs to be pitied because he lives in isolation. He is like a person locked with his ideological thinking and has no open mind to others. Everything is “me”, Life is full of asking questions and mixing with people to ventilate our feelings and filter some of the feelings that make us numb and unable to interact with people of different opinions and share our ideas and grow because we are not alone in this world. We are born to live with others and develop the world.
When we open the doors of our life and be with others, we do wonders in the world. If we do not ask questions, how can we get answers and how can we grow to help others grow? If we cannot ask questions about ourselves and mix with others, how can we get out of our closets and the prison we put ourselves? We must ask questions, about our environment, about people who live in that environment. If we don’t do so, we may be like robots and life will be dull and unfulfilled. We must mix with people and let people know us. We must also know who we are and see what we know of ourselves that would uplift us. But if we do not know what is in us, we do not attract people. We should not be on the defense but we must continually re-evaluate ourselves in order to fit in this world where we can contribute with others to change the world and not isolating ourselves. We should know that things have changed, that we are living in a super sensitive world, under constant observation and that people know us more than we know ourselves. Our behaviours reveal a lot about us.
In the society today, we cannot escape from people’s comments, whatever you are; a big man in the society or you are living in your closet, you are in the public eyes. Mad people make stories today. Remember that we have more negative reporting today than positive reporting. Negative reporting makes news. We cannot waste our life time by living in our own isolated world doing our own thing at the expense of others. We live in a world of high expectations. We must interpret the signs of our time. The reason why people are stranded in life is because they have carved out their own territory and are comfortable in it. Unfortunately, they have without knowing it, stigmatized themselves by not taking a positive step to be a new man. This may be a psychological illness, not brushed up in time for life. Many people have hangovers but many have overcome theirs, while others are still complaining why “they are what they are now”. There is no bad circumstance that cannot be changed if we make a bold step to overcome it. We cannot justify ourselves by saying “that is the way I am” even if the world hates us. We can change the way we are that is not comfortable with us, but society should also help us change the circumstances of our lives. When people say “how are you” we must not give polite answer, we must reveal to them that there is something in us that needs to be corrected. The tone of our voice would reveal to a good man we encounter that there is something wrong and pursue it to help us. The society must ask “why are you bad?” That will be the beginning of solving our problem.
We can only become our real self if we refuse to be numb to issues of our life. If our neighbours know that we are all united in sorrow and pain, we will be able to help others find ways to solving their problems. Cuba has been in a political closet but president Obama negotiated a visit with them and this visit to Cuba, yielded good results. Since then, things are moving well. And that is life. The world cannot continue to isolate itself with one ideology that cripples people, but can open itself to each other. The pope also visited Cuba because of its isolation from the rest of the world. The road is opened because we are living in a world of concerns and not living in our closets any more. It is uneconomic, unspiritual, unsocial to live in our own closet and miss what it means to be a part of others.
• Very Rev. Monsignor Livinus Ukah is a Catholic Priest, Author of many books and a Social Justice and Peace Advocate.
