LETTER TO MY FUTURE DAUGHTER PT. 1

PARENTAL PREFERENCE

Dear Future Daughter,

Hush now, I received your mail, I was glad I finally got to hear from you. You asked some salient questions begging for answers, your heart is troubled and you really wished you had someone real you could confide in, you need help, serious help, not medical or spiritual help. I fear for your migraine if this letter fails to tug you from the intellectual nous you've embarked on. You already have the help you are looking for, but you chose to look at the person rendering the help than the help itself. Your own bias is not helping, it is prejudicial to your reasoning. In conjunction with your  emotions, it has blinded you. I hope you get to read this, before you do something stupid. Be careful with the people you seek advice from, there are people who you shouldn't listen to, people whose opinion you shouldn't evaluate. You do yourself more harm by relying on their counsel. Learn to deal with private matters privately. It's normal for people not to like you, there will always be people who are envious of you or just can't stand you, you will be shooting yourself in the foot taking advice from such persons. Apply wisdom in whatever you do, do not always act in the spur of the moment. You risk breaking your mind. You have to learn to cope with life.

Click here to read LETTER TO MY FUTURE DAUGHTER PT. 2 (BEING IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP)

There are some decisions that should be made expediently, marriage is not one of them. Sometimes love begins a marriage, but it needs more than that to sustain it. Marriage is no child's play, there are factors that needs be considered before one say "I do". Marriage does not just end at who one gets married to, it goes on to where one gets married to/from. It is our custom that parental consent cannot be dispensed with especially the consent of the girls parent. But a man of full age may contract a marriage without the consent of his parents or guardians.

Child, you need all the help you can get, including help from your parents. Parents are one of the most hypocritical set of people, but they posses a very strong bargaining power when it comes to choice of partners for their progenies. They remain the best detectives when it comes to exheuming details about an intended brides background, from three to four generations ago, parents can exheum anything, any record. From social to  health, from spiritual to moral conduct. These are the things you don't joke with when contemplating marriage. They are the least set of people you would want to take advice from because they stand in a vintage position, but be careful. Do not be guided by the beliefs of the older generation, it will be an intellectual dishonesty, for you to lead a conservative life. Though stale, parental words comes from experience and sincere heart, nothing beats experience and a parent sincerity of the heart cannot be questioned unless you have reasons to doubt it. You should have been more cautious, it is your own folly to have dated a man this long and still didn't know he depends on external certification before he takes personal decisions. You could have sieved out where the relationship is heading to from the surrounding circumstances ab initio and set the necessary machinery in motion to destroy every obstacle. It’s hard to process but it’s what it is. Not every young man can face his family, especially his mom. It takes bravery. (Did I hear you say marriage is not for boys!) Given this background, the man who wants to marry you must be convinced of what he’s doing. He must appreciate your worth, or he’ll leave you in a lurch. (Did you just say he's marrying you, and not your mother, your grandmother, or your great grandmother?) He is marrying you and marrying your family, your people as well, and vice versa. Now you have spent donkey years with him, believing he is the one, yet, just his parents stands between you and the isle. They have faulted you, because of the tribe you came from, because of your family background. They believe you are not good for their son. They say your great grandmother used to be this, used to be that, they say you are her  Daughter and that is how we are in our family. Such obtuse reasoning.

Your intended husband must not be dependent on external certification of his decision if he wants this to work or he’ll send you into an emotional spiral. The man who wants to marry you has to accept your reality and so must you: nobody has any right to treat any other person as an Osu, they seriously need to educate their mind. Some characters are not genetically transferred, they are learnt.

Click here to read LETTER TO MY FUTURE DAUGHTER PT. 2 (BEING IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP)

You also have to accept that he can’t change his parents. Not at his age. They can’t even understand change. Their dogmatic views has blinded them. You have to work with the knowledge you have of him to advance your wedding plans. He needs wisdom as much as they do, likewise you.

Do not live in denial of reality. Embrace the wonderful side of your life. Accept as facts the parts you can’t change. They have their views on whom their son should marry and who he can’t marry. Parents are often that way. Some of those views are obviously wrong but they come from a good place. They love their son. He can’t change those views of his parents through head-on confrontation. Even if he win it’s pyrrhic victory. He needs to apply wisdom. And even if he succumbs to the will of his parents, you still need to honour him; they're his parents. There’s a blessing attached to honouring one’s parents. Lay claim to that blessing.  Generational misunderstandings have always been. His and his parents won’t be the last. I can bet that when YOUR son also wants to marry you’ll have definitive opinions. It’s like that in every generation.

You can’t use willpower for everything. Human will has limitation. It has an end, hits a brick wall. There’s only so far you can push your will, only how far you can use willpower. You risk breaking your mind. You have to learn to cope with life. This migraine is way beyond the issue of marriage. Life by nature is stressful. Move on.

I hope this meets you well.

Love,

Your Daddy,
Aluzu Ebikebuna Augustine