The bitter lesson

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An idle mind, they say, is the devil's workshop. I mean, this is a popular adage where I’m from, so much so that people always keep active in order not to be willing tools to Satan.

As a child from my part of the world, the moment you are seen sitting or wandering about without being engaged in something productive, you are in trouble. Whether you are doing chores, reading or running errands, you just have to be productive one way or the other as a child, teenager and adult.

Well, growing older, I started to see that what our parents were trying to do at the time was to curb boredom. The thing is, at every point in our lives we’ve come face to face with boredom. You know I have a weird theory that boredom is a gateway to depression, especially in our adult years.

Basically the moment we get unproductive, especially for too long, there comes the feeling of unfulfilment, which can be a likeable trigger to depression. I know I have felt it thus at all times; I try to process my feelings, to identify what I feel in order to get to the root cause and rectify the problem.

Taking a trip down memory lane, there is this experience that shaped greatly how I handle boredom by not giving in to unsafe practices. This experience was my brother’s actually. Remember that saying, 'When you play with fire, you get burnt'? Yeah, that is exactly what happened in our younger years.

It was night fall which means we get to retire for the night but then as children we had so much burning energy that we wanted to run under the dark clouds till its dawn. Our parents were not having it, and we were threatened with a cane to behave.

Having returned home, there was no way we were allowed into our room with our dirty and sandy bodies. At the time the electricity was out, and we made use of bush lamps with open fire. So while my mom prepared our warm bath, boredom crept in as we stood and waited. In that moment, I grabbed a broomstick and lit it up in the open fire of the bush lamp.

As it burnt, I waved it to my younger siblings, and they were fascinated. They immediately indicated interest to join, and I gave them their own broomstick. We lit them up and waved them at each other, giggling and super excited about the moment. Then suddenly amidst our giggles came a loud cry; it was my brother, and he had just burnt himself on the face.

He held on to the burnt spot on his cheek as he cried and screamed loudly for my mother. My mom immediately ran out of the bathroom and grabbed my younger brother. While she tend to him, my younger sister and I stood there horrified.

We quickly threw the lit broomsticks on the floor and thankfully it did not engulf in flames. My mom kept yelling, 'What happened?' and in a shaky voice I explained that he burnt himself.

Everything happened so fast as my mom reached out for her first aid box and administered some ointment on the burn. Soon my brother’s cry subsided but not without learning a bitter lesson. Till date my brother still had the scar and my parents would often tease him that it’s the price to pay and a lesson plus reminder from recklessness