Highly esteemed Muser, thank you for coming with me for another beautiful moment. Welcome to PILLOW TALK WITH FLOURISH. I am sure that we are ready for another musing. Sit back (or put your head on that cozy pillow) and let us muse.
Whenever you hear the word RANDOM, what does it mean to you? (Somebody just said that random means random na, I heard you). To the amazing persons in Statistics and Mathematics, it has to do with probability. What if an English speaker says “you are so random?” (Definitely not you, dear reader). It means that person is in the habit of saying random things or doing things in a strange manner. In several other fields, that word has fascinatingly different meanings so you may want to check.
However, with us here, RANDOMs simply means representative and undistinguished but selected for a particular reason (my tweaked definition). They have been selected for a reason- for musing, pondering, conversations! I have three thoughts to share in this post. So, Darling, stay with me…
I love many things about children including the way they are born and named. Interestingly, I grew up in a culture that names the newborns on the eight-day of life. My elementary Yoruba classes taught me that it is a part of the culture but I have always wondered why. Looking at some other cultures (even in Nigeria), the mode of naming a child could be at birth or much later. You can imagine all the things in my mind already. Let me show you some.
Are we waiting for the new mother to heal for some more days? Or are we scared that the child may not wait to be named? Are we thinking and collating names for the latest addition to the family? Maybe we need some time to prepare for the guests coming to celebrate with us, right? Or we just need that uniform day when everyone can come to make merry at the same time? Has the Yoruba culture changed over time? (I learnt that there was a time it was day 7 or day 9 depending on the gender) Or could it be some beliefs centered around worship?
(Moving on, that child has grown up and happens to be the birthday celebrant…)
I am sure everyone reading this was born on a particular day (even those born on the 29th of February, smiles). You will agree with me that those days are special. Special in the sense of the celebration, personal reflection, gratitude for growth, and so on. So, in the light of celebrating our friends on their birthdays, I will be sharing a thought with you.
Did you see that celebrant in the scenario up there? Just see this with the eyes of your mind: the celebrant has 750 active contacts on WhatsApp and has an 8 a.m -6 p.m job; friends and family might want to put up a surprise stuff etc. (you know that status updates will disappear after 24 hours, yeah? Good!)
Before the advent of Whatsapp and the status feature, we did more of phone calls and messages. But these days, we do more of putting them up on our status feeds. It is a good one, really. My concern is that somebody like this celebrant may not get to view all the statuses before the disappearance. Is this to say that we should not update our status? Heck, no! We want to celebrate them publicly and identify with them as our personal persons but we should not forget that they may not get to see it.
Due to this, I want to give some useful suggestions that have worked for people. Just before you put them up, copy the message and send it to their number as an SMS or Whatsapp inbox. You might also want to give a call, send a voice note, celebrate them on other media platforms, and make them feel important (because everyone truly is important).
(And to the last thought…)
Oh, my dear, sorry about that. I am praying for you.
Don’t worry, friend. You are in my prayers.
Does that ring a bell in any form? We can safely assume that those lines are familiar. Now to the big question: do we actually remember to do as we have promised? Prayers work. Prayer causes a lot of things to happen. Prayer changes us and turns the situation around. So, whether a friend tells us to remember him/her in prayers or we willingly say that we will keep them in our prayers, it is important that we do so. This is a reminder to keep our word as it is a sign of loyalty to friendship. I know a sure thing that God still answers prayers. Let us pray!
That’s all for tonight. Thank you so much for staying with me.
I hope to receive your comments and contributions. You know how much I value them. You can send me a direct message or leave a response here. (Oh, very soon, we shall be viewing comments from our amazing readers all over. Please, stay tuned).
We will meet again on Friday by God’s grace.
Aurevoir!
(Photo by 3Motional Studio from Pexels)