I may commit many follies in life but I never intend to marry for love...

"I May Commit many follies in life," Disraeli said, "but I never intend to marry for love." And he didn't. He stayed single until he was thirty-five, and then he proposed to a rich widow, a widow fifteen years his senior; a widow whose hair was white with the passing of fifty winters. Love? Oh, no. She knew he didn't love her. She knew he was marrying her for her money! So she made just one request: she asked him to wait a year to give her the opportunity to study his character. And at the end of that time, she married him.

Sounds pretty prosaic, pretty commercial, doesn't it? Yet paradoxically enough, Disraeli's marriage was one of the most glowing successes in all the battered and bespattered annals of matrimony.

The rich widow that Disraeli chose was neither young, nor beautiful, nor brilliant. Far from it. Her conversation bubbled with a laugh provoking display of literary and historical blunders. For example, she "Never knew which came first, the Greeks or the Romans." Her taste in clothes was bizarre; and her taste in house furnishings was fantastic. But she was a genius, a positive genius at the most important thing in marriage: the art of handling men. She didn't attempt to set up her intellect against Disraeli's. When he came home bored and exhausted after an afternoon of matching repartee with witty duchesses, Mary Anne's frivolous patter permitted him to relax. Home, to his increasing delight, was a place where he could ease into his mental slippers and bask in the warmth of Mary Anne's adoration. These hours he spent at home with his ageing wife were the happiest of his life. She was his helpmate, his confidante, his advisor. Every night he hurried home from the House of Commons to tell her the day's news. And—this is important—whatever he undertook, Mary Anne simply did not believe he could fail.

For thirty years, Mary Anne lived for Disraeli, and for him alone. Even her wealth she valued only because it made his life easier. In return, she was his heroine. He became an Earl after she died; but, even while he was still a commoner, he persuaded Queen Victoria to elevate Mary Anne to the peerage. And so, in 1868, she was made Viscountess Beaconsfield.

No matter how silly or scatterbrained she might appear in public, he never criticized her; he never uttered a word of reproach; and if anyone dared to ridicule her, he sprang to her defense with ferocious loyalty. Mary Anne wasn't perfect, yet for three decades she never tired of talking" about her husband, praising him, admiring him. Result? "We have been married thirty years," Disraeli said, "and I have never been bored by her." (Yet some people thought because Mary Anne didn't know history, she must be stupid!)

For his part, Disraeli never made it any secret that Mary Anne was the most important thing in his life. Result? "Thanks to his kindness," Mary Anne used to tell their friends, "My life has been simply one long scene of happiness." Between them, they had a little joke. "You know," Disraeli would say, "I only married you for your money anyhow." And Mary Anne, smiling, would reply, "Yes, but if you had it to do over again, you'd marry me for love, wouldn't you?" And he admitted it was true. No, Mary Anne wasn't perfect. But she knew the the secret of keeping her man.

Come back soon and God bless you.

One of the most amazing inventions of all time is TIME.

It’s Sunday morning and I am lying on the bed waiting for church time to get dressed and go worship my God. Then my eyes stayed on the clock on my bedroom wall. Little by little at the sound of every second, a minute of the 24 hours allocated to me today by God quietly disappeared. And yet still staring at the busy clock and reminiscing, 15 more minutes disappeared into the thin air. The cliché “how time flies!” at that moment began to make sense having heard it over a million times and being a user. I quickly jumped off my bed and switched on my computer and even that took another 5 minutes or so. Wow! Time is making more sense to me now and thoughts began to cloud my mind.

This is not a lecture and I am not an “all day for work Jack” but I have to say this. There are 1,440 minutes in a day and what is disappointing to me is that I have just lost about 30 of those minutes just lazing around after sleeping for 6 hours (360 minutes) already. If you put it together, I have nearly lost my first 440 minutes. And yes I still have 1000 more minutes to do something tangible and make a reasonable donation to others and my family but if I don't watch it, they will all be gone and that is how Methuselah grew old and that is how many people took their dreams to the grave. My mind for a minute wandered on minutes I have lost ignorantly and how many minutes are getting lost around the world as I write this piece. Those minutes if used wisely will make a great impact on the world.

Let me ask quickly, what are you doing right now as you read through this post and what have you planned to do thereafter? Are they going to add to your life in the long run or subtract from it? When you look back 10 years from now, will you be proud of your actions today? Take time to reflect my friend. I have done a lot of that already myself.

So teach us to number our days, that we may acquire a wise heart (Psalm 90:12 Darby Bible Translation)

USE THE NEXT SECOND NOT MINUTE

If you want your life to count don't put your attention on the MINUTES or even the HOURS but on the SECONDS. Your clock or watch is programmed in a way that puts emphasis more on the hours, less on the minutes and lesser on the seconds. Have you noticed that more of our watches and clocks do not have the second’s arrow anymore? Take a look at yours. In an attempt to make the watch more beautiful manufacturers are taking away the most important quality of time. Little wonder people are trying to catch up these days. We are deceived into counting our lives by the hours and the minutes when what matters most are the seconds. Every wise person knows that if we can manage little, WE HAVE CONTROLLED BIG. Take note I didn't use “we will control big”. The truth is that if we can manage the small, the big falls into place without much ado. We are struggling with time because we disrespect small and intend to control big. That’s stupid.

As I stare at the clock on my wall and hear the sound it makes at the strike of every second (sometimes it can be annoying), I am reminded that life is lived by the seconds. Can you account for yours?

Make every second of your everyday count and what is more important is to make someone's life better with it. I hope this few minutes I put into writing this piece means something to someone. Begin to pursue your dreams and DO what you should do NOW and do something else later.

My wife just made her minute count by making me a cup of tea. Thank you babe.

God bless you all.

PS: I have changed the name of my blog to www.colynsagboju.blogspot.com. If you can, please change your bookmarks. Thank you.