To change the world, change yourself. Merry Christmas world.

There exists so much negativity and hate in the world right now,  all it takes is turning on the news for one to be greeted by it in all it's glory.  That is not even the worse, what irks me is
whether you live in Nigeria or far off China, the perpetrator of said negativity is one and the same. It is you, it is I, it is man.


To skirt over a couple issues ,I'm sure near everyone caught wind of that incident back east where a teenage girl was stripped and flogged because she was caught "doing it" with a boy. Agreed, she is too young to be "coupling" but the judgement meted out to her was inhumane and those men should have known better. Or the terrible recent one where a LASTMA operative was stoned to death in the gutters. I've had my fair share of LASTMA run-ins (mostly unprovoked and unjust) but hardly would I wish death on them. Maybe a reprimand or dismissals but never death.

Man remains at the forefront of 90% of all that negativity that is popular in the world. And ironically, it is still man that goes around singing the world peace song. All the religious wars, racism wars, sexism wars, killings, stealing etc..it is not para-demons that perpetrate these acts, it is Man.We are in dire need of a fix to all this madness. And a fix I may have unknowingly stumbled upon thanks to an Agbero on my way to a function the other day.

Fun fact: Agbero's are famous for their infamy all over Lagos, and every state can boast it's own version of the Agbero. The Agbero has so wide a reach, don't be surprised if they pop up on that long rumored five thousand naira bill.

So on a day out in Lagos, I noticed an Agbero with the answer to all that is wrong with the world right now. He literally had on the answer in the form of a shirt with a cartoon drawing of the globe, and there were guns at extremes and and a bunch of other things I couldn't make out but I gathered it all represented a war torn and pillaged earth, but words in the middle read "Love is the answer" printed on it. And I thought to myself, this Agege gangster might be on to something here. Love truly might be the answer. Granted, he was being everything but loving to the bus conductor he was demanding the usual "white" from (white to all the unsavvy is Agbero speak for 50 bucks), saying in a voice that sounded a lot like how Vin Diesel would sound if he hailed from Agege "Ogbeni, I go buss bottle for your head ti o ba funmi white me" (I'll burst bottle on your head if you do not give me my 50). But I digress, Love IS the answer.

I wrote a while back on how the world would be a much better place if we all sought out to be our brothers keeper, but it occurs to me, how that will be a little difficult to manage, precisely for we the present generation to manage because..
a) we are mostly already tainted
b) our parents as a collective failed us.
Allow me to explain. Imagine a perfect world or something close to it, where you, I, that Agbero, basically everyone, grow up in a world over flowing with love. Someone somewhere reading this might probably be going on the defensive and thinking 'calm down Label, I grew up in a house laden with hugs and kisses', to thee I say, me too. But imagine a class of 50, and after an exam, only 10 students pass and 40 fail. On a percentage scale, that class is a 90% failure. 'Class' being analogy for the world and exam here being genuine love for one another. Ergo, as I said earlier, our parents as a collective failed. Not because they are evil, but because they were doing what they picked up from their parents, and their parents their parents....which is looking out for themselves and theirs.

So back to that perfect world. I get love, you get love, Agbero gets love. I give love, you give love, and so on. Imagine such a world, where hate would be a rarity. Strangers offering help to one another when in need. We'd be growing up holding hands, and those intertwined fingers could circle around the globe. We'd practically be living in a world like the one depicted in that Michael Jackson song/video of the same name.



That world, try as we might, is already lost to you, I and that Agbero. We can only strive for but never fully attain it because like i indicated earlier the instinct to only look out for our own is seeded deep in our genes. But such a loving world can be attained (and I will really need us all to pay attention here). It can be attained by course correcting the collective mistakes of our parents that have doomed us to committing the same blunders of the past gen, and bringing up our children (and they their children) with naught but love.


The world is a hot mess thanks to us, to save it, we'd need to save the kids. To save it, we need to love the kids. That young man spitting fire if he did not get his "white" may not have been a proper ambassador for love,  but one thing rings true... love IS the answer. 

Here is a tiny proposal. We all damn the recession and kick off this Christmas with a bit more love for ourselves and one another than we had or showed yesterday and see what comes of it.
And as a starting love filled tradition, first five commenters get recharge vouchers.

Have a Merry love filled Christmas everyone.