THE RAW NAKED TRUTH SERIES
SOFT LIFE
When what you need is not available, something else is not actually a solution.
Fri.May.23.2025 - Ubochi Afor
A Soft Life is a great idea and it is in fact possible but not when your whole life is laser focused on it and therefore blind to all the things that life wants you to do in order to earn a Soft Life, it becomes a vice.
There is a constant battle between fiefdom and freedom, encased in the simple fact that freedoms come at a cost. often our people loose out in the battle because we have a total misconception of what it means to have a soft life and do not do the work that vacations require.
In my attempt to mentor young Africans I am exposed to the lengths many go to acquire a "soft life" that just isn't possible. From girls who aspire to a Daddy with Sugar, forgetting the need to offer some value because No man funds your life without an extraction of value, even your birth father and this statement isn't a moral position but an analysis that you must at all times know what you are willing to give for what you wish to get. This must be a conscious choice.
For our boys that Yahoo-Yahoo, it seems a glorious and liberating experience but what do you give up, in more gainful opportunities when your whole life is designed to defraud? What skills do you loose when you run an election on lies and how do they affect your ability to govern? What discomforts to a focus on a soft life create when you actually try to sit on the foam?
Absent of the moral implications of the decisions our boys and girls take in a bid to soften the landing in a continent and nations that are perilous to youthful optimism, there is a new to look at the very palpable loss of human freedom that comes when you cede your best cards for the easiest hands on the deck.
The fact remains that life is not about G-Wagons and Duplexes but how do I explain it to my young ones when their only exposure to wealth is in movies that justify any measures for wealth and encase the story of success only in the return of a boy who has traveled abroad, without adding context, our society glorifies a political victory without adding positive contributions, We praise a conversion from Paupar to "Nwunye Odogwu" (Big man's wife) without any discussions on the values a woman needs to enjoy such a position.
But then again, even our producers want a soft life, our writers conform their stories for sales, our Preachers model their sermons for populations. In total, our models are not model at all but an oversimplification of success that makes it a material end that ends all suffering. A show in falsehoods at best and a modeling of doom in designer garbs at worse.
In the end, We all live with minimal interest in the "work" and some serious conviction that pay is all we need, to have "A Soft Life". The result is a life that is visibly luxurious, dressed in fancy laces that were not properly sewn but rushed for modeling and which now pinch our beautiful frame, as we walk down life's catwalk in a dress made with Pins not needles.
THE COST OF LIVING
The only thing free in life is birth, because it costs others, that is why parents must be appreciated. All other things are negotiated settlements that you negotiate with nature and humanity. In that negotiation, if you do not know the cost of living you will think it a win to "take" things that aren't yours and you may even "ask" for things you don't deserve with entitlement.
Life has a cost and envy over other people's birth right negates a proper view of the assets of poverty. In analyzing your value and properly accessing what you have to trade you must look at your total condition with ever more care and when you do, you will always find that with enough "work", you are a "find". The opposite is true in the Africa of today, the rich Africa wants to run abroad, the poor ones are not far behind, each blames something other than themselves for Africa being the way it is, and none of them recognize the damage of their absence, amid the loss of their contribution. And none will land softly because the foams in other lands are reserved by those who own the land, for themselves and their own children. This is not racism, it is reality.
The very design of the world encases in all of us, tremendous value that cannot be found in an empty search for Soft Life. This value however, is not always a surface virtue, it is very often a buried gem that requires digging and a softlife focus, will not allow you to pay such costs to find yourself.
Life is always an exchange of value but when in a bid to get things easy you begin to embellish and remodel the externals of your life (Material Presentation) without refining the internals of your essence (Substantive Development), no good can come of it because you now do not have "real" coins to trade.
In your search for a soft Life you often trade material assets for substantive success.
This is The raw Naked truth and in Africa, they do not teach it in our movies.
Yes, you can get a rich man with embellished presentations, but can you keep a marriage? Even in a playful scenario, past the cash transactions, can you get any real value out of him by simply laying on a bed? Even in "slaying", you'd need sexual skills, good eating habits, sensible conversation, nurture and care, attention to interests and the best refinements of a woman's touch and if you had all of these, you wouldn't need to look for a rich man, wealthy ones will "find" you.
Yes, you can game a foreign woman into sending you her life's earnings but you cannot turn that cash into a Meaningful business enterprise because the things you learn on the road to defrauding your "mugu" remains with you, staining your essence with fraudulent reasoning that will end in you cheating yourself by loosing the ability to build anything that is founded on longevity and not schemes.
This is not to say that many fraudsters and whores are not rich or even wealthy, it is clear that many are even Presidents, it is just to say that they are never successful, precisely why Nigeria is as it is.
Read into that any meaning you wish to. this is the raw Naked truth.
Life has a cost and when you do not have the money, you can pay with fake coins, but life will eventually catch on and retrieve its valuables no matter how hard you try and how much you have seemingly "made it".
BACK DOORS ARE NOT FOR OWNERS
If you can't share how you got here, you probably skipped a few steps and leaped off human heads.
Like in homes, owners do not take the back door. The soft life approach turns you into a thief.
To get a man to love you for his money or Marriage, to convince a woman you love her for hers or Sex, to game a contract and never deliver, to get an appointment by only knowing people, to get rich without trying and rule over your peers without a fight are all seemingly attractive escapes when you are suffering in the very unique expressions of poverty, that the African is exposed to but it is like going into a house from the back door. Owners just don't do that.
For many success has been a trade of freedoms you cannot imagine but our young do not know this. They see the entourage and its fleet of cars and armed men, they reflect on the luxuries of spacious homes and chef cooked meals, they pine on the beauty of a 1st class "girl" or the protection of a "premium" man. They do all this without calculating the true costs and therefore never recognize that they are attempting to enter a house from the back door, and those who do "never settle down".
There are basic foundations to wealth and glorious concepts of a soft life do not fit. yes, wealth is a soft life especially when you earn it, but when you don't, you will never "enjoy", a soft life no matter your wealth and That is the Raw Naked truth that our education systems fail to teach.
FOUNDATIONS MAKE THE HOUSE
Have you ever wondered why many rich men's children falter? Or how a poor woman can meet a wealthy man, get her hands on A100,000 in a year and still be broke in 2 years? Or how a young man can game the system, get paid and still be barely getting by in 3 years? Or why a former Governor after just 4 years out of office can barely buy himself a new car?
Foundation.
Wealth like all things must stand on something and the concept of soft life, terribly ignores the many critical things that you pick up along the way, if you go through life the right way.
Our education system, religious communities and even parenting fails to take the time to show our young people the critical importance of the "journey".
Again, here our movies also fail because when you continue to watch story after story of a jump from poverty to joy, where the only evident change is financial and not anything that the character learns or their contributions to the society, you engage life with a materialistic view of progress that negates the importance of hardwork, skill, passion and other gifting virtues that are the foundations of wealth.
When you get wealth with a strong foundation, it is a most enjoyable thing, a soft life if I may say, but that soft life does not come from "soft work". It is grind that mills the best stones and makes your life a gem. Less this, whatever you have is always at risk of collapse. And This is The Raw Naked truth that even parents often fail to teach because their own lives are not sitting on good foundations.
STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY
Fraud sacrifices structural integrity.
I have never cared to defraud, I had no one to learn it from, both of my parents live relatively clean lives. In a clean approach to life, there is much one doesn't seem to have (sometimes) but there is "never" instability.
Integrity is lacking in Africa, as we spiral down the moral staircase looking for an easy way to loot. The challenge is that this sets the "house" (your life) on the wrong foundations, furthermore the rest of the house is not fortified and cannot withstand the winds of life.
Past money, what is a car but where it takes you and whom you are visiting? The net greatness of a luxurious home, is it not in the family and friends that you share it with? The beating heart of a well appointed office, are they not the products that you gift to the world by the work that you do in it?
All of this is lost when the walls of your life are built for soft life.
Soft life when unearned is a lie, that will not let you reason the simple fact that a great office is best when it is the front end of a factory operation, selling to the world the goods that you plant, Build or brand in the actual work that you do.
Soft life hides the fact that the wonderful house you want to enjoy is only useful as a place of rest and refuge, with the swimming pool being most wonderful if you actually swim and the gated community most essential, when you have a family to protect.
Soft life when unearned buries your true destination in luxury cars that take you to premium events that you have no business at, and keeps you from the very people and places you actually should be carrying in your cars.
Less the embodiments of the "essence" of life, the notion of a soft life leads to a "lie" of a life that is not integral and cannot stand pressure. It is Soft but missing the life.
Many people get sold by the secondary impressions of our Social Media driven modern age, where people present tailored expressions of often depressing existences to ever growing numbers of Africa's poor masses. This is easy to sell because many of our people have no real-life references to the wealth displays and only know the presentations of prepped smiles that are shown in the final cuts of well planned videos. The pictures and images often hiding the loneliness that comes with non-integral success, where many have sold their souls for material possessions that do nothing to fill life with anything more that what others have "produced".
Gifted wealth, inherited or theft, the new owner of a soft life finds it simply hard to enjoy. Even they often suffer in silence, not in a bid to confuse people but simple because they do not know the deep difference between loneliness and solitude, housing and a home, a fleet of cars and worthwhile destinations for the stress of a drive.
It is important to understand that no matter the grade of leather or the fine trimmings of wood grain, a car remains merely a "vehicle", a means not an end and the most important thing about having a car, is where you get to go in it and who you get to tag along.
A G-Wagon cannot buy you friends and often you lose friends on the road to getting it, if you skip the line. And i mean friends because the truth is that even truly successful people loose "people" on the road to success, but not friends.
A massive house cannot gift you love, yet often on the build up to the house, you had looked the other way at true love. In the end the walls of the house will not be so strong, because they will be missing love.
Buy all the hair you want and make up as you please, you will not attract the ones you want, just the ones who want what you "appear" to be. And while laying with them, the walls of your heart will not be strong because nothing about the person next to you, fills the hearts needs.
Deeds are what make you and often a propensity for soft life pushes you to misdeeds, misleads and does not seed a life that is near anything similar to what you imagined and this is The Raw Naked Truth. In a society that has weaponized hunger, people have become blind to the virtues of integrity but the walls of our lives do not take bribes and cannot stand a fake life.
DEEDS
Deeds make the land yours in reference to property, but also make the life yours.
Just like in Real Estate you cannot claim a land by word of mouth but must show evidence of a Deed of Assignment, Sale etc. In life deeds (actions) are what earn you your place.
I am not against a soft life, just the characterization it takes in our Movies, Music, Education, Parenting, Social Circles and in the hunger induced hallucinations of our young people who truly believe that "money answereth all things" without reading fully the part where it says "things".
Money buys things but things are not what makes life worth it and so if your quest for a soft life only focuses on the material goodies that cushion the human experience, you may well end up well of, all to discover that for all the things that you own, you have seeded all the things that matter more.
for converted earth (material things), you have sold life (A happy Existence).
To secure peace of mind, good friends, a loving wife, well mannered kids, a good society, destiny..., the very most important things in life, you must do things (actions). these require deeds and not finances.
This is not to say that money does not matter, because it does, but it only matters to the length of physical possessions. It cannot buy you a life, your actions do.
Even as a sugar baby, if you cannot satisfy the desires of your patron, you will be unable to maintain his/her patronage. Even as a fraudster you cannot continue to conquer if you do not work hard to maintain your cover. So therefore, if all life is work even fraud and prostitution why not work in the direction of a good life?, a proper Soft Life built on deeds that you select on purpose.
the Raw Naked truth is that our orientations have failed us and in the glowing memorials by "junior boys and girls" (producers/Writers/Performers and Directors) in movies and music of a life that is far from their actual reality, our young fall victim to a rendering of life that is nothing near real.
Much of what is considered as soft life is cartoonish comedy at best and at worst, lipstick on a pig, the beautification of nightmares by "celebrities" who themselves have not found their own lease on life.
It is important to note that most of the celebrities, politicians and fraudsters you aspire to look like, are also victims of the soft life virus, who are rapidly discovering that they own allot of things but not allot of life.
For reasons best known to them, many do not share their horror but rather continue to fake a smile.
I suspect that this has allot to do with the fact that people fear poverty so much that they do not fully calculate their lives enough to see that they are paying way too much, for a life that is not life at all.
A plastic doll makes no sense when you can have a dog. But let's place a bet on which is in most Nigerian homes, I bet on Dolls.
This is not to say that there are no Nigerians or Africans whose lives are truly glorious, there are countless, I for one have nothing to complain about but those of us whose lives are truly sweet maintain those lives with work and we paid for them in most cases with a lot of struggle, deeding the title to soft lives with a hard knock struggle.
I call it LABOUR not SUFFERING. Suffering is a truly hard life and that is what most poor people do and therefore I can understand why many desire a soft life so hard. It is however important to understand that Labour is what truly successful people do because life is a "Bed of Roses", if and only if, someone makes the bed by picking out the thorns (deeds). Rich or poor, a conscious understanding of the bills of a Soft Life, will enable you to labour with pride on the road to a life that makes sense beyond perfumes and coloured t.v.
If you make the bed, it is yours, if some one else makes it for you through inheritance, "bottom power", or fraud, it remains their bed, you merely just lie in it. In the case of inheritance it can be easily taken away from you by time, enemies and waste since you do not know the foundations of sustaining it. In the case of bottom power, slavery just became your day job and to be free, you will need to lose what you built on your back by standing on your own 2 feet and in the case of fraud, whether for money or power, when you now finally get the seat you desire, you will turn your own people into a science experiment in bad governance because you didn't not "journey" and therefore do not know the road.
Yes, you do not know the road, Read meaning into that, am okay with that.
There is a certain president in Africa who stole an election but now cannot steal solutions to his people's problems, do you know the one? Is that the type of soft life you want? What makes you think that his' is a soft life? In the morning he likely goes to the mirror to say "mirror, mirror on the wall, how did I get it all so wrong". If I were the mirror my simple response - "you stole, what in life was meant to be earned, back doors are not the owners side".
Of course he will not give it back and in the presidential convoy he will continue to sit on the owners side, of course he has the appointments of a soft life but I bet you that you cannot imagine the tensions of his life. I can assure you that his joys are few and far between even if the bullet proof glass cannot let you see it. If you have Bola Ahmed Tinubu's number, call him and ask him, if his' is truly a Soft Life.
HEARTS
The human heart is the storage place of happiness. Our joys and full expressions as people do not live in our bottom side, or ring fingers or wrists, as such the comforts of the sitting sofa, the glorious glare of the Diamond ring and that sweet timepiece on your wrist, even if rendered by Patek Philippe is only a positive contributions when registered by the heart as a value.
Our fathers sat comfortably on hard wood chairs, their fathers "graced" the bare floor and they probably still had better lives than us.
Comfort, which is what a soft life is all about is less about possessions as it is sufficiency and often sufficiency is already around while we search for "more", selling off all of our values in the process.
For the child of the African Ghetto, which is by far worse than the American Ghetto in material inconveniences and more common than whatever poverty exists in China, lack is reflected in every opening of the eye, breathing of the nose and sometimes when you open the door to your poor thatched or Zinc hut, you find your essential items missing. Items of near no value which mean the world to you, taken by those in the very same conditions as you, without any regard.
Many times the African is trying to stand in their hawking stand when bulldozers arrive from an inconsiderate government, to mow down their source of income without any iota of consideration for how or whom they paid to be there and worse still what they will do next, now that legitimate means have been callously eliminated.
The harsh conditions of the artificial heightening of the heat of the African sun makes it almost impossible to see how blessed we are, how blessed you are, to be you, to be here, born a child of the best Continent in the world.
Often we fail to calculate our role in the matter when we leave blessed rural lands to cursed city life out of jealous desires for a soft life.
In a bid to access the glorious comedy that is Nollywood movies we enter a life far more and quite entirely hard, as if to seem designed to consume the entirety of our being with wanton suffering.
Home is where the heart is. If we zoom back in to study our lives, and focus on the things that our hearts most desire and what must be done to get it the right way, all of us will find residing in us, the tools to pull ourselves out of our depressing conditions, in ways that do not require a mortgage of our hearts.
The options that lead to fiefdom, normally seem easiest and the options that lead to freedom, these often require sacrifices.
Many of the most successful Nigerians are examples of what is truly possible in a cesspit. Through pure commitment to self-Rescue they have been able to pull themselves out of the pit while also saving many of us in the process, because at the heart of it, the journey of life is about heart, takes heart and only is truly Soft when the things that we have are heart felt memorials to a life that wasn't soft but has been given birth to a Soft Life.
Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe was not born to wealth but lifted a nation out of fiefdom, Aliko Dangote is a cousin to the Dantata Family but now hold an empire far greater than the Uncle who gave him his seed funding, Flavour N'abani was just a local bar act in Enugu who is now a global sensation even when half of the audience has no idea of the meaning of his songs.
In each case non can say that he did not receive help as such and for sure, seek connections, non can say that they have never committed a crime be it by intent or mistake as such if you have done so in the past you are not condemned, non can say that their lives are perfect in the movie like sense, even I maintain records of social schism and economic errors, however non succeeded by being like the other.
We live in our time, area and world and seeded in all of us are things that if we remit them to the world makes a fair trade, for greatness and this is how you buy a soft life that is truly soft.
Talents, passions and hard work, present to the world a version of you that is desired and gives you the training to sustain success. Note that no matter how you capture people's attention, retaining that attention requires value.
When your work is in direct cognizance and alignment with your interests, the result is a life that is reflective of your being and one which you are at home with. Your joy and happiness will come with every bit of progress on the road to your dreams because your soft life will come from the journey, it will start on the road and it will not be limited to material possession but enchased in a heart at home with the work it takes to get to the point where rest is truly needed and the tools to rest are yours.
This is hard to explain but I will still try. It is better to try living it first and see if I am right but let me still try to explain.
When your desire for comfort is a Rolls-Royce, you find that the purchase of your 1st Honda Civic is a non-event. However when your desire is to build luxury Cars, your desire is encased in a work. Every progress towards that end becomes an incredible reward and of course every downturn might also hurt quite hard but in total the journey becomes a part of your joy and your work becomes your home.
When passion leads, you will not notice discomforts as much because you will be fully occupied as humans are designed to be by the things you do and your heart will remain warned by the flames of an honest passion, regardless of progress.
Working on a wooden bench is much more rewarding than laying idly on a leather sofa because the man on the bench is busy and therefore oblivious to the buttocks' complaints, while the man on the couch is busy worrying about "other" things that do not even make sense when you put together his comforts and compare it to the perilous grind of his peers.
When you are not at home with yourself, everything you acquire pinches, not because they are not valuable but because something in you remains conscious of the insecurity in comforts that are not founded on substance, credits that are not covered by any value, positions taken whose work you do not have the capacity to justify.
The comforts present, yet you battle with yourself far too much to start learning how to swim, as such the pool in the yard becomes a piece of art work, hanging in a dungeon and not the place of rest it was designed to be.
Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe lived a soft life, in the battle for our independence, Aliko Dangote finds a soft life in the liberation of industrial exploitation by foreign imports, Flavour N'abania finds a soft life rendering us hopeless with soulful serenades. The Jets, Fancy hotels and all the luxuries of wealth far more enjoyable when it is secured by your own abilities and the consequence of a journey you made which has given you the tools to be able to maintain your success without secondary dependencies on "mugus, magas or tricks".
It isn't that you cannot get a soft life from others, it is about how much of your life that a short cut, cuts off and how often the game you are playing is playing you. In the end many escape from poverty into the waiting hands of slave masters to include foreign lands, exploitative contracts, terrifyingly sad marriages and positions of power where fear rules your day even when you are the one holding others hostage.
If you sell your liver to be successful, you will still be alive but am not sure that it is a good price to pay for a sofa, no matter how Soft the Latex Foam because your heart will keep yelling at your stupidity.
WHOLE
You can't live without a Liver but also shouldn't sell a Kidney.
For many of my young brothers and sisters, their conditions seem so bad as to justify any and every means of escape.
In the modern era, alot of our people have literally sold an organ to "make it", many more sell their moral fiber, their natural character, their humanity and even their most innate visions all to get some money to live a life that if "fore" seen, they would have known that it is only a mirage and far from a dream, that it is actually a potent nightmare, infested with diseases that now lays next to them, perfumed and dressed in sexy lingerie.
When you speak on why someone should not sell a liver, it is clear to people, Evidently and simply clear because of the risks, selling a heart is totally out of the mix because ofcourse you will die but when you then speak further to why you should not sell your visions many will tell you to sell, after all "you can't chop vision".
In 2013 while in the most difficult period of my life, I was offered an opportunity to sell one of my business ideas for $1 million, in the same year, I received an offer of $5 million for a 49% stake in LIVEN Capital's ventures. I rejected both offers and financially that was the worst year in the entire history of my life. It is in that same year that I started the journey that has brought me here.
The simple ability to write to you today with such clarity and abundant wisdom is born of the man I became when I refused to sell the parts of the much smaller man I was then. Had I sold, I would have been very successful, very fast, but I cannot imagine that ALUSIUWA would have come of it, nor that my plans will resemble the simple yet ridiculous permutations of Vision Unlimited! (My Action Plan towards Africa's Redevelopment).
Limited by women with financial obsessions that are predicated on a desire for soft life, or mothers who originating from abject poverty cannot afford a son the patience to build a brand or brothers who in zeal to see us lift the family persuade us to our lower hanging fruits and fathers who in their hope to "ensure" our success push us to secure yet less notable paths, we often part with livers to save a lung and breathe better, all to find that the lungs are not a gain when life is no longer making meaning because we left our greater saint to make a few quick cents.
Life is a full buffet but the rice portions come first and if you fill up on them you will run out of space to put the meat.
In literally selling a kidney to make it, or in the mental sense substituting your divine orientation for a better paying education, or in the spiritual sense, in parting with your souls to get help, you fill up on crap to get a Soft life, just to land on the Soft Life and discover that it isn't so soft to sit on a latex cushion, if you have no tush.
To leave your family to get wealth or sacrifice your mother or give your father a heart attack or abandon your friends in cruicial moments or set aside your best version for a more marketable facade, is an often marched road that leads to no where because once you get the money, you start to look for those very things that you ceeded, all to find them lost to memory and your new Soft Life, not really soft, if you want to be honest.
IN SUMMARY
Berry Dakara's Clever Girl Finance, Book Launch in Atlanta, GA, USA
The only handicap in life is death. The loss of an organ including Sight, Arms, Legs etc are deep impediments but are not death.
my young brothers and sister, take it from me, a man who has been consistently happy for 20 years, in Winter, Summer, Harmattan and Rainy season, mainly because i follow my heart and have not sold any organs. I welcome the deeds that my visions require, I entrust my path to integrity, my foundation is God and Good, I do not take any short cuts (back doors) and I know that the cost of a Soft Life is hard work.
What is the point of anything that you get to have, if it doesn't make your life good to have.
trust me, believe in yourself, work hard, trust in God, do the rights things and for the right reasons and even in Africa, where the Roses are dry and only the thorns remain, your life can be a bed of Roses, if you make it.
Africa's greatest limiter, is that in the hopelessness of our conditions, we have submitted and now hopelessly try to cheat life. Life will not be cheated and nothing is hopeless if when it rains it hits you and the Sun has not shut its eyes at the sight of you.
Human potential is set in natural conditions and the natural conditions of Africa is the best in the world, it is the artificial presentations that are periliously hard. Do not focus on that mirage, look at yourself and the great world of nature that God has gifted you, work in faith, with love and following your heart and I can gurantee you - As i have and continue to experience that you will land on a Soft Life.
A Soft Life isn't a mirage, but our definitions confuse, our model confound and our methods impales the very notions of comfort and a happy life that we seek by pilling life with a "bunch of things" we often do not need, while taking up all of the space that the most important gifts of life, need to breathe.
This is the Raw Naked Truth, undress your life of "wants" and make room for "needs", work a work that is yours, give and you shall receive - A SOFT LIFE.
CONCEPT
THE RAW NAKED TRUTH
this is a syndicated Article Released Every Friday and taking an Unbiased Approach to unraveling the implications of the weeks leading events to the Lifes of My People.
Read with an open mind...
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