OPINION

Betrayers

By Odimegwu Onwumere

Odimegwu

Breaching a supposing trust is an act that many people in the modern times are involved in without bathing the eyelid and they call it being sharp. 

Those who are involved in this behavior see such act as a way of life and do not care about the breakdown of the heart of their fellow human being they are inflicting this ruinous habit upon. This crude behavior is making love to wax cold among people. The confidence that produces morality has been sent on an errand, replaced with emotional conflict within human relationship, because majority of the people have chosen the way of money instead of the way of maintaining a relationship.

Persons have often times been betrayed by those that they held in high esteem. Relationships between friends, wives and husbands, parents and children have always been battered on the altar of betrayal. What makes betrayal one most horrendous aspect of human crudities is that two people are not involved in betrayal at a time. It is a presumed and nursed idea of one party against the other. And betrayers do not know that they are traitors to the human race.

Friends, colleagues, parents, husbands, wives, cousins, aunts, uncles, relations, just name them, who are among the world few that can see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts, when  majority don't see and don't feel, are today in the oath chambers drinking the brood of betraying their loved ones.  Hardly are they thinking towards the direction of an age-long saying that kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. They make their loved ones not to see an opportunity not until it had ceased to be one. They refuse to see both what has been done and also what remains to be done. They are not proud of the people and place in which they live; hence they strike with abuse of trust. They do not live to seeing those who trust them be proud of them. They preach well, but act towards doom.

Those who want to betray those who hold them in high esteem start with humble dispositions and will tell their supposed victims that life should not be classified, but that one must look forward and also backward so that the future would be well connected. You see them making a difference in people’s lives – an orchestrated act to build the individual or people’s trust – and protect even the downtrodden in the society regardless their status, and prosperity.

With all that which are internally bent on hoodwinking the unsuspecting persons, they talk about humankind so much, but a closer look at them will attest to the fact that they do not love and care about human beings, in the real sense of loving. They hardly retrospect to what was written that a man who has assumed a public trust should consider himself a public property.

The emotional crash on the person betrayed is the worse effect of the betrayal of trust, especially when there had been piled up of trust, hope and followership. While the traitor feels happy and relaxed, the betrayed is tormented with emotional distress and always questions the integrity of people around. Not only to the person that betrayed, but there is likely to be this fear of not trusting anybody in the world again, but it all depends on one’s maturity of mind to assimilate.

Many people do not want fairness even when the word on their lips is ‘justice’. They do not come clean before those who trust them and would always refuse to accept responsibility of those they have betrayed. They do not care about the future, especially when those they betrayed are financially below them.

For instance, the crudely rich people in the society, when they want to betray those who are financially below them, they dispose a very fine approach of human relation, but there are more to that. They always play politics – the Nigerian parlance – in everything. They fail to propagate a John F. Kennedy’s quote, which says that to state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust.

Betrayers always play the contrary of the Kennedy’s admonishment. You trust them, they betray you, but the former is the best way to find out if you can trust people. They hate to hear a Ralph Waldo Emerson, saying, Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Even when providence makes them rich, they are still envious of the poor. They manage their wealth properly and mismanage people properly, so that they would remain on top. Bravo! Their sugarcoated mouth, not divine gift, embedded in them infects the innocent people to come to them, even at the verge of risking their lives, for the betrayer. Betrayers would prefer to hold the pittance they pay you at the work place and even loot the loot you surrendered in their hands. They are treacherous and very envious and appreciate whatever you are doing for them without them paying you with the reward you deserved.

Betrayers will make you to cherish every of their gestures, but will not pick your calls or reply to your text messages, when they have made up their mind to betray you. They will no longer want your relationship and will not tell you why they don’t want your corporation again, because they have achieved what they wanted.

When they have not really gotten what they wanted, they will make you to keep hope alive. They will approach every means to tell you why they deemed you the best person they have ever met in the world. Then, you will see every stepladder around them to climb, but they will not allow you to climb. They will only make you to keep hope alive and tell you that tomorrow will always be better, even when today with them is not good.

You will always be highly impressed with a hypothetical betrayer’s relationship with you until he or she struck. Betrayers will make your joy knew no bound. You will dine and wine with them without any growth. They will prefer to donate things before the camera, whereas you have been begging for the same thing clandestinely. When you complain, they will tell you: We have not yet arrived to our destination; we will soon get there. Keep up the good work.

This hope, always given by betrayers, continues to enlivening their supposed victims. You are yet to believe that all that glitters are not gold. They do not understand what it takes to execute behaviours in making sure that your relationship works with them, let alone, doing a brain work, just to see that you were not the betrayer. You will be baffled that instead you will be growing in their midst, you will always wear a sorrowful face.

When you want to harness how you perceived their behavior towards you and their lack of appreciation proper of you and your poverty state for years in their hand, you will read this body language of theirs characterizing you as an enemy, seeing you as one who deserves to be working, but should not grow monetarily or otherwise. Betrayers will talk to you the way they like because they do not have emotions, and you will not expect such statement coming from someone you held dearly and cherished so much.

But Trust is one word many do not accept as an indispensable ingredient to relationship, they accept betrayal.  They kill trust which defines mankind, because without it, there is hardly any interface among people in the world. Betrayers hate relationship; they have this spirit that with money, they can build intimacy at will.

What perhaps, the world people do not realize is that money does not strengthen trust and bond. Trust is the only thing that makes people or relationship to thrive, not position or money. When will (modern) people begin to appreciate trust the way it was? Rather, they take trust for granted because it was not paid for. Let people stop betraying trust. A badly damaged trust can grossly affect a generation.  Let every individual put back to track honesty, because many people have imbibed roguish lifestyle by breaking trust and characterize such as politics. Hooey!