Reputation and what do others think about you?

  We’ve all heard the word ‘reputation’  .Maybe your parents flung it at you.
 "How can you want to marry a Hausa boy? Don’t you know I’m a pastor? Do you want to ruin my reputation and that of this family?"
"Please when you get to school, remember the family you are coming from. Do not engage in anything that will ruin the reputation of this family."
"How can you come out with a third class? You have just ruined my reputation, you useless boy. My friends’ children all made first class and second class uppers."
"Where are you going to dressed like that, do you want to ruin my reputation? What would our neighbours say if they saw you outside?"
"How can you take the last position in class every time? Why is my own child different? Don’t you see how well the Onabanjo’s son did and he is in your class?"
"You cannot be a musician in this house. It is over my dead body. You want people to say my son is useless

and a lay about with nothing to do? You want to drag this family’s name in the mud abi? You must become a lawyer. So, I can stand before my friends and tell them that my son is a lawyer and is doing very well.  You don’t want people to respect me."
 "You can’t be pregnant in my house. You have destroyed my reputation. The neighbours will whisper and call me the mother of a wayward girl who got pregnant at seventeen. I can’t bear the shame. You must leave this house for the village."

 Well, that’s but a few. You add the ones you have heard to the list. What then is your reputation? Simply put, it is what others say and think about you. It’s an integral part of the human life to be social, to want to be accepted by others and with it comes a need to do what would make others accept you. It is not only parents that are guilty of this. Their kids are too. Parents pass this prison of caring what others think in the form of reputation down to their kids. If your every decision from your choice of school, to birthday parties to attend and what to wear to the birthday parties is what you hear your parents talk about every time when you were a kid, it slowly becomes a part of you. When you get older, you would pick the job everyone would approve of and not bring shame to your parents. You marry the spouse from the right tribe , religious belief , oh sorry, denomination your parents attend down to the social status you are from because of the reputation of your parents and also , your reputation which it will grow to become.
 
 Every decision you make in your life ends up being based on "what will people say?" "What would they think about me?" You don’t realize it but you are in prison.
Like I said it is now part of our daily lives. We pick the right clothes that would make people accept us and praise us for our choice even though deep down, it’s not to our liking but we pick it out because it’s the accepted style and others will accept us in it.

  Our parents aren’t the only ones that help us form this prison of thought. The Media plays a super role. Pick up a glossy magazine today and you will see the accepted physique in there. They don’t have to say it loudly. Pictures say a thousand words. "If you are not thin or slim you are not just it." Then you see young girls turning anorexic to fit in, not just that but other forms of eating disorders because they want to fit into the picture of what they see. They also tell us; " you have to wear red on Valentine’s Day." "You have to buy chocolates and red roses on Valentine’s Day for your spouse." This has been taken to be the accepted form and if you do anything outside this, it’s not accepted. "You have to buy gifts for your lover on Valentine’s Day." "You must have a decorated Christmas tree in your house for Christmas to be Christmas."
Watch the way your neighbours look at you when you don’t put up Christmas decorations during the Yuletide season. So you see they are powerful too.

It goes on and on. In a way if we didn’t think about what people would think about us and how it would affect our reputations,  people would do crazy stuff, like walk around naked and other things. But the question is; Is basing our decisions on what people would think good for us? 

  Continuation: Reputation 2

Thank you for reading my thoughts in 2013. What are yours?