Your Better Self with Akanna: Bringing Down the House!

Couple just finished building their house and making it into a very lovely home. It had taken many years of blood, sweat and tears, but here they were with a nice cozy home to show for it. Their latest addition was a fireplace for the winter time. They had carefully installed it themselves, following all the instructions that came with it as well as those on the many videos online.

So, they built their fire too, and fed it with gel fuel. Every night, they would light the fire and sit on the couch, in front of the fireplace, with a warm smile on each of their faces as they leaned against each other, side by side, and enjoyed the warmth from the fire.

Fire loved watching Couple too. Fire enjoyed the smiles on their faces as they watched him.  Fire enjoyed that couple took care of him every night, visiting his home- the fireplace – and feeding him with some gel fuel and then sitting to watch him bask in his fiery glory as they wore a very warm smile of admiration on their faces for him.

One day, while Couple was watching Fire, Fire felt so much love for Couple – and had a very strong sense of the feeling being a mutual one – that Fire decided to step out of his home, the fireplace, to come give Couple a nice warm hug and be closer to Couple too.  Fire had also noticed that Couple had left a spill of food – its gel fuel – on the floor, just in front of the fireplace, so this must have meant that Couple wanted Fire to come out and get it whenever Fire felt hungry again.  How nice of Couple.  Fire would first eat up its food and go say a big thank you to Couple on the couch, with a very nice and warm hug – even warmer than the warmth Couple currently enjoyed from Fire.

So out came Fire, and immediately lost control of his movement.  Fire surrounded couple immediately, following the trail of the carpet around them.  Fire was shocked to see the look of horror on Couple’s faces.  “I thought they loved me”, he said to himself.  The warm smiles had completely disappeared from their faces.

Couple tried their best to run away from Fire but Fire kept on pursuing them.  All he wanted was a hug from his favourite Couple.  Eventually, Couple managed to run out of the house, all the way outside where they found all their neighbours gathered.  By now, Fire was all over the house, searching frantically for Couple.

Neighbours brought buckets of water, buckets of sand, and buckets of detergent mixed with water.  They threw as much as they could, of the contents of those buckets, at Couple’s house.  Some looked on in sheer horror, while some took advantage of the chaos and pilfered what they could from in and around Couple’s home.

Eventually, a large red truck arrived carrying lots of water with it.  It had a very huge hose from which jets of water were shot into Couple’s home.  Fire was deeply afraid of Water and quickly started retreating, going back to his home, the fireplace.  He was eventually chased all the way back there by Water.  However, by then, the beautiful house Couple had built had become a shadow of itself.  It literally looked like a shadow – dark and mostly on the ground.  All they had built, all the hard work Couple had put in, all those years, to build up such a beautiful house and turn it into a warm and comfortable home, had come crumbling down all in one night.  Sad.

Fire was back in his home, but even he couldn’t recognize his surroundings.  He was back where he used to give warmth to Couple, in that safe context of the fireplace, out of which he could only cause destruction as he had finally come to realize.

And that was the lesson for the night – Fire’s lesson and Couple’s lesson too.  When things are within their right contexts, they operate well, they operate safely, they operate for the good of others around them too.

Fire in a fireplace provides warmth to its surroundings.  Fire out of fireplace destroys its surroundings.  Sex within the context of marriage provides a lovely bond between couples and a healthy family to boost society.  Sex outside of marriage creates suspicion, confusing bonds and sometimes psychologically unhealthy children that end up taking out their anger on society.

The tongue is like fire too.  It can either build up or tear down.  Used in the right context to say informative, helpful and uplifting words, it can build up people who then build up society as a result of feeling good about themselves.  Used in the wrong context to spew out hateful comments, it can tear people down, who in turn tear down society.

“Every wise woman builds her house, but the foolish one tears it down with her own hands”, so says the Bible.  We have the power of control over compelling appetites like food, sex and money; either of which, when abused, can tear down all we’ve worked for all our lives, leaving us at the mercy of neighbours, who may choose to help us or to take advantage of us until our big saviour comes to the rescue.

Let’s not overfeed them.  Let’s leave them within their contexts of safe operation and not leave some food outside of that context for them.  We can start this journey of control by taming our tongues, saying what we ought to say only when we ought to say it and biting our tongue when we know for sure that there’s just no need to spew out nonsense at certain times.

We all stumble in many ways, but if anyone never says anything faulty, he is a perfect man because whoever is able to control his tongue is able to control his whole body.  That’s from the Bible too!