Opinion
Loyalty Isn’t Sold on a Counter
One commodity that is never sold on a counter.You will not find it displayed in shops, stores, supermarkets or SPAR. It has no price tag, yet it is perhaps the most expensive commodity a human being can possess.It is called loyalty.
Loyalty is a brand with a price only those with deep pockets of emotional intelligence can afford.
It is so expensive that even when some people receive a generous dose of it, their emotional poverty makes it difficult for them to reciprocate when the same is demanded of them. It is priceless, yet fragile. Everybody craves it. Everybody enjoys being the recipient of it. But not everybody can afford to give it.
Its absence has broken friendships that took decades to build. It has torn families apart and reduced once-solid political fraternities to shreds. Alliances that survived storms have sometimes collapsed at the first test of loyalty.
Loyalty is sweet when we are the ones licking its sweetness. But strangely, it becomes bitter the moment it is demanded of us.
That is the paradox of loyalty: we love receiving what we are sometimes unwilling to give.
Yesterday, I spent four hours at Transcorp with a prominent political figure. Loyalty was at the centre of our conversation. It was deep, expository and, for me, eye-opening.
I saw something yesterday that cannot be adequately captured by the dictionary definition of betrayal.
I saw its pain.
The pain of giving someone your trust. Investing emotion in them. Standing by them. Making commitments with the confidence that, when the moment of truth arrives, they too will stand.Then, when that moment comes, they disappear.Worse still, they turn around and stab you where you least expected it.
I could see the pain of disloyalty in the face of someone who had invested deeply in another person and never imagined that the person would be the one to hurt him when loyalty mattered most.It reminded me of something we often forget: an agreement is not merely a collection of words. It is a test of character.
Never enter into an agreement when you already know that the courage, firmness and conviction to stand by it when the cost becomes uncomfortable are not there.It is better to say no at the beginning than to say yes and chicken out halfway.
It is better to disappoint someone with an honest refusal than to give them your word and later betray it.Saying yes creates an expectation. It creates trust. It creates an invisible bond between two people.
And when that bond is broken deliberately, the damage goes beyond the agreement itself. Something of the person’s character is diminished.
Say no rather than say yes to betray the yes.
Because a broken promise does not merely break an agreement; sometimes, it breaks the image someone has built of you in their heart.
True loyalty is not blind allegiance. It is the willingness to stand by a person, a cause or a relationship when doing so carries a cost while still retaining the courage to speak the truth when the person is wrong.That is why loyalty demands more than affection.
It demands sacrifice.
It demands character.
It demands emotional maturity.And perhaps most importantly, it demands courage.
Loyalty reveals something about the real identity of a human being. When loyalty disappears, something primitive in us often takes its place.Loyalty humanises us. Disloyalty exposes the animal lurking within the human.
Before you say yes, ask yourself a difficult question:If the day comes when keeping this promise costs me something, will I still have the courage to keep it? If the answer is no, have the courage to say no today.
A reluctant no is better than a dishonest yes. When you say yes without the character to honour it, you don’t just break your word.You diminish yourself and make your word worth less than a straw.
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#MomentwithSam! Sounding always moral!!
Jarlath Uche Opara
jarlathuche@gmail.com