IF MONEY IS WORTHLESS, WHY DIE FOR IT?

The idea of this essay comes from a book  this writer  saw a Korean man read while we were sitting beside  each other in a Jumbo airplane,  travelling  from America to China in 2013. I am sitting in this very large airplane beside this smallish Korean national who has a book in his hands. The front page of the book is written in the manner a chicken does with its legs as it scratches the ground to find food. The letters on the covers and inside the book are incomprehensible, meaning you cannot make a head or tail of the damned thing. I can recognize just one sentence written in English in bold letters at the very bottom of the front cover. It says: “WHAT MONEY CAN’T BUY.”  All the  pages in the book are filled with chicken scratches.

 I say to the Korean, a total stranger sitting beside me:  May I take a look at your book for a few moments? The Korean ignores me because we aren’t speaking the same language.  Unable to contain my curiosity much longer, I waited a little longer until the Korean rested his head on the head rest and then placed the book in back jacket of the seat in front of him. I reached for the book and pulled it out from a seat ‘s  jacket, where  it lay on top of other equally scratched up magazines in front of the Korean man.  The Korean ignores me, says nothing,  knowing too well we are on a 18-hour flight from America to China, and there is no way on God’s earth  I could steal the book nor understand  the contents. I am asking for what does not make sense, asking for a thing that doesn’t add meaning to existence. 

I take an eager look inside the book, and immediately become frustrated. My frustration comes from  knowing  nothng, and from  realizing  how little I know of life,  how little I know about money. My mind goes back to the essay I wrote a few months ago entitled WHO OWNS THIS MONEY? Then, I decide to engage this Korean in an uneasy discussion, Please tell me some of the stuffs money cannot buy.  He shakes his head from side to side and nodded up and down with a smile to indicate he doesn’t understand or speak English. We were total strangers born in different parts of God’s earth.

 I want to ask this Korean: “WHAT CAN’T MONEY BUY FOR ME OR YOU?” To me, the question is urgent and pressing. I need an answer right then, however trivial and feeble. It then hit me: Money can buy absolutely nothing. You may just say: Money can’t buy anything that is  substantial. A thing is substantial if it is important, significant, consequential, or considerable. I can hear some readers heckle: (A) Money can buy food, clothes, vehicles, houses, or shelters; (B) Money can buy weapons of war with which we obtain greater wealth from people in possession of oil, metals, and things that convert easily to money.

This essay is purposed to underscore a problem that is destroying and  eating away the very fabric of life in my country.. We need to underline, highlight, emphasize, accentuate, and stress the fact that Nigeria and Nigerians are dying from  a problem  that is killing both the  old and young, from our leaders in the three branches of the Nigerian governance  to the child hawking  akara balls on the streets. The problem is  progressing rapidly and assuming  an epidemic significance.
The problem is earth-shattering, worse than an invasion and eventual conquest by armies  of foreign nations.

The problem is Nigerians’ untoward attitude that is unpleasant, problematic, and improper. How do we begin to explain why three young  Nigerians should be languishing for a total of 235 years after they were extradited from South Africa to Mississippi, USA,   for allegedly participating in international scam. These Nigerians received unbelievably stiff jail sentences.  Oladimeji  Seun  Ayelotan, 30, was handed 95 years in prison. Rasaq Aderoju Raheem, 31, was given 115 years in prison, and Femi Alexander Mewase, 45, was handed 25 years in prison.

The sentences  were handed out after a three-week trial in early 2017, where a U S federal jury found each defendant guilty of several offenses including mail fraud, wire fraud, identity theft, credit card fraud and theft of government property. Additional charges were conspiracies to commit bank fraud and money laundering.  

Can money authenticate or  repair these young Nigerian men’s inauthentic  lives or replace years wasted away in a dungeon? Will money  ( ego in Igbo; kwudi in Hausa; owo in Yoruba) validate, confirm, or substantiate our wasted existence? Surely, it cannot bring back the lives of babies murdered at Ozubulu Catholic Church by seekers of money?  Alas, the  babies did not even know  what the bullets shattering  their bodies were all about. Little did they realize that the guns and bullets were not toys Daddy buys from K-Mart.

Can money buy, delay, or rush time? Can it disfigure the universe so I can leave New York one night and be at Lagos, Nigerian a day earlier? Can money make it possible for a favorite uncle who died in 1975 to come visit today and witness my metamorphosis, transformation, or transmutation of his village?   What exactly can money buy for you or me that nothing else can buy? Nothing! Zero! Zilch! Nought! Nonentity!

The longer we think about the value of money, the more we are convinced that money is more of a curse than a blessing. Look around you and observe the level of poverty, hatred, waste, death, envy and misery that we can justly attribute to money or as originating from money. The men I grew up with are all dead victims of money. They’d splash stolen money in unimaginable ways you thought they would not die.

Money does lots of meaningless things.  If you mention food, clothes, vehicles, vacation time and wartime as things money can buy, then I would ask you:  Aren’t these things luxuries that do not add anything to life other than your  journey  from your mother’s womb;  to the dining table,  to the toilet and finally to the grave in a borrowed attire? Where is the list of things money can buy that are not ephemeral, meaning short-lived, transient, passing, fleeting, brief, momentary,  rather than  lasting ?  Read to the end of this essay to find out.

Money is meaningless.  A thing is not meaningless  if it is  carrying great weight, is momentous, or  having an important effect. The question of what money can and cannot buy is a persistent one in the light of the disservice that money is doing to the human race in general and to Nigeria in particular, bearing in mind the dishonor people who have or lack money are doing to themselves. We are compelled to wager that money is an insubstantial, insignificant, worthless  piece of paper.

We conclude  that:

Money cannot buy God, or  life, (the state of not dying from disease, old age, or accident).

Money cannot buy peace, love, respect, justice, being law abiding, or decency.

Money cannot buy commonsense, fairness, fair dealing, equality, or freedom from mental enslavement.

Money cannot buy weapons  to prevent human annihilation by the wicked.

Money cannot buy hope, salvation from fear, or freedom from old age and  eventual death.

Money cannot buy me; I don’t know about you.

Money cannot buy anything we can be satisfied with without needing more.

By Dr. James C. Agazie; jamesagazie@gmail.com; jamesagazies.blogspot.com

COPYRIGHTED 3/25/ 2013. DIRECT COMMENTS TO THIS WRITER

LIFE IS A BIG NOTHING

Enyim (my dear friend, fellow Nigerian), you’re nothing. Are you nothing or are you nothing  for nothing? You  are both nothing  and nothing for nothing  if you ‘re waiting for your house to fall apart, go to the wrack and ruin,  collapse, break up, disintegrate, go to inferno because you haven’t stolen your millions as many Nigerian politicians have done before you, 

The purpose of this essay is to talk about nothing. Nothing.  Nothing.  And nothing. That’s what life is all about.  Nothing. What is the purpose of our life?  What is the value? Why are my fellow travelers and I doing these cruel things on earth? Isn’t it true that  we live briefly on earth, acquire  a few possessions, marry someone we think we love, produce some children, die at a certain age, and be buried somewhere in the earth?

 If you have lived long enough on this earth, you would find ample pieces of evidence to convince yourself and others that uwa nkaa (Igbo for this earthly life) is nothing. Cruelty implies that our earth  is  brutal, merciless, pitiless, vindictive, nasty, malicious, spiteful, or simply mean?

Do you need downright ugly pieces of baloney to convince you that life (lie) is nothing?  Here they are. Some men creep into the Catholic church in Ozubulu, Anambra, and mowed down 50 lives because there’s  a festering  feud between two families. Buhari  spends nights in cozy beds  in a lighted London hospital while Emeka, Adedeji, and Haruna are being eaten alive by mosquitoes in a tenement near city open gutters. Let’s sing at the top of our lungs this writer ‘s song about nothing:

Life is empty and meaningless.   And it’s empty and meaningless. 

 That it’s empty and meaningless is nothing new

 Hoping that it will mean something someday is illusory nothing  

You can multiple anything with zero and you get  the same zero  

 Nothing is nothing is nothing; and  there’s nothing.

 You’re nothing; I’m nothing and we’re nothing  

 You may take it to your bank and cash it, and you get Nothing

The purpose of the instant essay  is to dwell  on that which  has  always been there but is unknown to millions of people.  This life is nothing and means nothing. Life is nothing,  meaning  life does not amount to anything. It is zero, zilch, naught, nonentity. You and I are nobody.

 In Macbeth , Scene V, line 19, William Shakespeare  laments:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

George Bernard Shaw’s quote on True Joy of Life, says:

“This is the true joy in life — being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

You, dear fellow Nigerians, are you nothing or are you nothing  for nothing? You  are both nothing  and nothing for nothing  if you ‘re waiting for your house to fall apart, go to the wrack and ruin,  collapse, break up, disintegrate, go to inferno because you haven’t stolen your millions as many Nigerian politicians have done before you,  

By Dr. James C. Agazie, jamesagazie@gmail.com; jamesagazies.blogspot.com