Playing ‘corner – corner’ is not a real life. It is a life of people who are not sure of themselves. It is like profit and loss; it is a gambling life; life devoid of meaning, it is not a straight life. It is a life of duplicity where one bargains for life. He sees the road, but he begins to take the crooked road to reach there. Is he afraid of taking the risk to go straight? Taking corner-corner is riskier than going straight. Going straight shows your determination and your truthfulness. Playing corner-corner to get what one wants is what reduces one’s self-worth. It is because you want to get things that you cut corners. You want to play tricks to get what you want. You don’t want stress. You don’t want to make sacrifices to get your legitimate needs so you go corner-corner.
Those who get what they want through that way do not really know the gifts they have from God. They deny themselves many things by not making proper use of their gifts. Self-assurance is a gift. If you have that gift, why do you have to get what you want through corner-corner? By manipulating, you get what you want. Is that life? Many Christians of today don’t come out straight with their demands. They dance around what they want before the authorities. When the authorities want to verify their demands, they will say “that is not what I mean”. While the authorities keep waiting for “what they mean” it dies a natural death because they refused to come out the straightway.
They play corner-corner. It is because they have thought that permission will not be given to them and they begin to play corner-corner to do the wrong thing. How can you be happy when you get what you want through corner-corner? Is it not like bending the truth to get what you want? Does it not make you “One-kain-person,” a manipulator? How can you be happy if a person says that, “you are not a straight-forward person?” Would you like it? A person who plays corner-corner is a “Wayo person”. It is not a splendid way of living or doing things. If you want to meet the person-in-charge, then go to him/her.
If you play corner-corner to reduce your fear of going to the right person,your chances of solving your problem is slim. If you want to go to the authority to solve your problem, go ahead. Don’t be paralyzed by fear. It is the fear you have created in yourself that makes you play with your problems. There is no option. Authorities are there for the common good. You want to get a new baptismal card, you are afraid of the questions the authority might ask you so you go where you will get it in your own way; you do a lot of subtraction and twist the truth to get what you want. You dance around the truth to get your own sweetened truth and present it to someone you have studied very well that will act on your request. Anything you get through corner-corner has a debased value.
Today our tendency is to create our own option of when to solve our problems especially the emerging needs. If you are seriously sick, you cannot bypass a medical doctor who has been there for years healing people for someone who have just graduated. It is a wrong option. Wisdom tells us that a wealth of experience is not acquired in one year. Also today, we live in a world of reference. By reference, I mean that if one doctor can’t solve this, refer to the other doctor. It is not a crime to say, ‘I don’t have an answer for this.’ Humility comes in here. We don’t allow ourselves to be manipulated.We can neither bargain with our life, nor with truth otherwise the truth can be swept away. Playing corner-corner helps to wash away truth and reduces the worth of what we are seeking for.
We get the original thing by getting it straight not through corner-corner which reduces our self-worth and our dignity. If it is an enquiry about marriage, you hide it and play corner-corner; the marriage may not be valid. Using a fake certificate to get a job is corner-corner or avoiding someone who knows your record of crime and go to someone who does not know is also corner-corner. Corner-corner people are those who operate without ethics or laws. They break laws to get what they want at the cost of truth. There is something lacking in one who plays corner-corner. They lack finesse and are always in hidden places discussing with people of lower ranks to sharpen their devious ways of the manipulative skills. Playing corner-corner is an art or a game of pushing oneself to a height one is not yet ripe to occupy. This type of life is a double life, a double self and a contradiction of what the real life should be. Those who play corner-corner life are not happy people.
They are addicted to this game like those who play pool. A typical example of a corner-corner person is Judas Iscariot who betrayed his master Jesus Christ in a corner-corner way. Imagine! What gain can one get in playing this crafty act? If we all had played corner-corner we wouldn’t have been what we are now. It is because we allow ethics to rule our lives and we become a people of value. Shun a life of corner-corner and embrace the truthful and straightforward life. Very Rev. Msgr. Livinus Ukah is a Catholic Priest, Author of many books and a social Justice and Peace Advocate
