The Untold Stories: When SUICIDE Is Good (Contemplating)

The problem with big ideas, the dangers of fame and showbiz & the upside of suicide.

Agarth and the golden sword

At the peak of a great mountain, lived a humble Viking named Agarth, his village was well known for their ability to forge remarkable swords and Agarth was one of the sword makers. In one of the cold days, Agarth decided to be different; to be creative and thereby impress his countrymen by making a new kind of sword.  No one had thought of it before him and he was to revolutionize the world by making GOLDEN SWORDS. Hence, Agarth sold all he had, bought golden material instead of steal and after three days of nonstop work, his idea saw the light of the day. He forged his first golden sword and rushed to king of the village as he thought the king was to collapse in joy after receiving his invention. “Duke take a look at this golden sword, nobody had thought of this before, if our Viking warrior were to use it, the Saxons will have no way of fighting back” said agarth. The duke took the sword, tested it weight and said “this is very well made sword, but im afraid it is too heavy to be held by our warriors. No one will want to buy a golden sword, if it is of no use”.
Agarth with the disappointed look in his face took his sword and went back to his forge. His idea was creative and unique but he had not considered its weaknesses.
Agarth had emptied all his resources to come up with the invention, its rejection meant the end for him.
Agarth, stranded without a home, unable to cope with the cold mountains, had nothing left than to quit life and throw himself into the lake. So on this fateful day, Agarth took himself to the lake and started introspecting.

                    Tom and his blue cat

     NB: Tom and Blue cat are fictive for the sake of security
During Every holiday period there is an inter-quarter football competition that brings together capable Yaoundé 6 young footballers to vie for the championship. The winners of this competition head back home with the sum of 1 million fcfa.
The Etoug-ebe contenders (Oswald and his team) had no budget when they went in for the competition; they later realized that they needed a sponsor for nice jerseys, sport shoes and other competition material. This made them send letters of appeal to every major elite in the quarter but received no favorable reply. When everything seemed lost, a benevolent young business guy named Tom opted to sponsor them. Tom at that point had just created a clothing line and wanted his brand to soar, making this an opportunity for him to help others and equally popularize his brand. Hence, he assisted oswalds team and the team started bearing the name of his clothing line, let’s call it BLUE CAT.
since the group had good coupé décaler dancers, tom started connecting them to events where they were animate and be paid at the end. Finally, he took them to challenge vacance and this decision made his brand to get to the tipping point.
However, Tom was unsatisfied with his popularity limited to only in Etoug-ebe and Yaoundé to some degree, he started nursing feelings of conquering the economic capital Douala.

The paradox of fame

As he reflected, he decided to meet his friend who had succeeded in making his own brand popular at the national level to get some advice on HOW to proceed and WHO to meet. After meeting this friend of his, they came to the conclusion that tom’s friend was to talk to top investors about tom and probably hook them up, such that tom will  pitch his idea.
Two days later, tom was called by this friend that a meeting with the top investors had been scheduled.
Once there, he noticed that not only he (tom) was invited but other business men who were searching for the same thing as he were present. They were served with wine, juice and beer to chill out. Few minutes later the investors made their entry and ordered each and every one of them to switch-off their cell phones, it was time for business.  As the other guys were enjoying the drinks, Tom was honing his pitch.
Just of a sudden everything changed, the plasma TV on the wall became a giant mirror, the table had changed and its contents equally metamorphosed. Tom and everyone in that room got paralized as the investors were speaking and promising the benefits they will get for working with them. On the giant mirror were being displayed the images of popular Cameroonian artists who had reached an agreement with the said investors; they were evidence of how popular you could get in no time by agreeing to the proposed terms. Even the drinks on the table no longer looked like drinks. Tom was frozen at this point, not knowing what to do. All he can recall was that he was so hypnotized that he could do anything there without thinking.
When the time for the taking of vows came, something strange happened in that room. Tom says, he had definitely switched-off  his cellphone, but as things were getting more tense, he received a phone call from his mum. The sound of his cell phone destabilized the whole setting and things came back to normal. As he was leaving the room to answer his mum’s call, he saw how furious those investors were due to his disobedience. When he answered the call, his mum said; “ if you love your life and want to see tomorrow leave that place”. Tom ran for his dear life, narrated the story to his mum, who happens to be a deep church lady and she had pleaded that tom not take the road of fashion because she saw that coming.
Three days later and  for the two weeks that followed, Tom got ill and had terrible dreams during those moments, it was bad to the extend that Tom had to be taken to different churches before he finally got delivered. The worst was yet to come, after sometime while coming back from church, after he had given his testimony, he and his mum had a terrible car accident. Tom didn’t sustain any injury, but his mum was terribly wounded.
Seeing what was happening, Tom called all those to whom he had sold or even given any cloth item to and pleaded on them to burn them all. That is how blue cat got eradicated.
The bad dreams persisted and Tom got so disenchanted with life that he started nursing feelings of suicide.

The Upside of suicide for Agarth and Tom

Agarth

When agarth was done reflecting and was about to jump into the deep lake, he started looking at the fish. Then he felt something strange, an idea came to him. He realized that Vikings usually attract sea sickness while travelling on boats for long periods of time. His idea was to create a potion that will cure the Vikings illness. Hence, he started experimenting, mixing fish and fish and eggs with other stuffs and trying out the portion. After few weeks he visited the duke’s house again and presented to him, his new big idea. Luckily there were Vikings that day that were to travel and the duke gave it to them for trial. This time it was a success and people started coming around the world to buy agarths portion.
This time his creativity and unique thinking served him well. It was when he was so close to death that he developed what made the rest of his life worthwhile.

Tom

Tom didn’t get to take action on his suicide attempt, but he shared his feelings with his pastor. They worked on his disenchantment and during this period, Tom received Christ. This made him see life from a different angle and he spares no efforts in living this new life.  Everyone now calls him Pastor.
But tom told me he hasn’t abandoned his goal to establish a broad clothing line. He has always wanted to own his brand, just that this time he is engrossed with coming up with dresses for pastors.  This has given him peace and much more money than Blue cat.

synopsis

I wrote about the importance of quitting and pointed out why we should quit. (make sure to read if you haven’t yet by clicking on this blue title Why you should quit.) But as we all saw it, that quitting is not the one where you take your life away. It’s the decision you make to stop focusing your time and energy on what isn’t working to conceive new and better ideas. Take Agarth for example, he could have focused on his original idea and pondered on may be using half-gold and half-metal to build a different type of sword. But he never came back to it. Same with tom and blue cat. Show biz has a lot of dirty little secrets, watchout for who you seek to emulate. The people Tom saw on the screen are those that have our minds but they didn’t get there the old way and the legitimate way.
Never lay all your eggs into one basket and never consider your one big idea as the best idea you could ever have. Test your ideas with the realities of the world outside you and always practice critical thinking, it may bring up your one big idea.
Remember to like and comment on what you’ve just read.

Leslie Micheal Ace
www.the1untold.wordpress.com