Congressman Without Portfolio

Dear loving people,

I don’t want to sound like a preacher this morning but the Bible says in Proverbs 10:8 “The one who is truly wise accepts commands, but the one who talks foolishly will be thrown down headfirst.” It follows that foolish, idle or empty talk contains no remembrance of God, nor is it aimed at His approval. Thus, precious time is lost that should be spent engaging in good deeds for the Hereafter.

Moving around major towns in Cameroon in the early mornings and evenings, you come across women selling fried puff-rolls with beans. It’s a delicacy and lots of people especially young people enjoy it. Most of the selling takes place in huts. These huts of recent have become crowd-pullers equally serving as meeting points for idle youths who converge there after sales are over to chat about all and nothing, gossip, play cards and even fight at times. It’s evolved with time such that they have given the huts a name ‘Parliament’ and themselves becoming ‘congressmen’

So in a neighborhood in Yaounde lived a lonely old man. In the evenings, the local boys (‘congressmen’) would assemble at a hut close to his house to chat, argue, and play. These activities were accompanied with loud cries. The old man was done with it, so one evening he invited the boys into his house. He told them how much he likes listening to loud children voices, and promised to give each of them a thousand francs CFA if they promise to come the next day to make some noise. The boys came, chatted and played even more cheerfully and loudly. The old man paid them and promised to pay again the next time.

But the next evening instead of a thousand francs CFA, the boys got 500 francs CFA. He continued reducing the amount each new day such that two weeks later, the old man paid them only 100 francs CFA and explained that he’s running out of money. On the last day of the following week, the old man asked them “dear children, would you agree to come again tomorrow and just play for nothing? Extremely disappointed, the boys said that they won’t come anymore. Is it worth losing so much energy for free? That’s how the old man, got rid of the noise that had been bugging him for a very long time.

Come to think of it, imagine the waste engaging in idle talk? Think of the energy diverted, the headache, injuries sustained sometimes and much more the fact that you abandon your goals. Imagine how close you would get to your dreams if your invested such energy working on your goals. Proverbs 14:23 states clearly “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.”

Walter Bagehot says that such “a Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.” And actually, “it is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man” to put it in Benjamin Franklin’s words.

Don’t be a congressman without portfolio, concentrate on your plans and your dreams will take care of themselves.