“Life skills are an essential for a meaningful and fulfilling life.”
I am certain you’ve heard from time to time about the importance of life skills like emotional intelligence, critical thinking, analytical skills, time management among others. Considering we are social beings and we co-exist with others, we need the skills to enable us not only co-exist but thrive in the midst of others. That’s the essence of these life skills. On this account I am going to write about basic life skills and not the contemporary life skills you are accustomed to. During my break, this is one thing I got to acknowledge as an essential and I’ll tell you about it.
Basic life skills just as the name suggests, are basic like basic needs. We all need to eat to live and for that to happen there has to be some cooking that happens. Do you know how to cook? For us to dress up neatly, there is need to do laundry. Can you do your laundry? We all need shelter as a form of security and comfort but for this to serve us, there is need to have a clean aboard. Can you tidy your room/house? These are the basics or rather the essentials to life. How did I get to this point?
Growing up, some of us were luckily unlucky and this in some way have paid off. Having elder sisters isn’t one of the best things to happen to anyone but once you get used to it you survive the hardships. I happened to have been slightly cheeky growing up and on this account I knew how to dodge doing things I didn’t want to do except for one account. When my sisters were around. I have a sister who could restrain you to a seat the whole day so that you don’t dirty your clothes which regardless of the constraints I still found a way to get out and play. Wanna know how? I’d go grazing which would be the best thing one could do in my fathers home. This meant I’d be protected from my sister in case she wanted to let me know she called the shorts when it got to our hygiene. She made me learn how to do my laundry in Class 3. At that point I didn’t like her much if not dislike her but in retrospect I feel she helped me.
Growing with younger brothers in the later stages when my sisters were either in high school or university inducted me to housekeeping as my part time job since we couldn’t leave all the chores to mum. It became my core business to ensure the houses were clean, meals were prepared on time when mum wasn’t around and such. I didn’t like it and tried every way possible to not be home during the day but then I always ended up being assigned the very tasks.
These were key skills that I acquired in childhood that have come handy in my life especially as I get to run my affairs on my own terms. Having these skills gives you a sense of autonomy and independence only you can express. Having been accustomed to doing my laundry in a particular way I recently called in someone to help out as I was having pressing matters to attend to. I was disappointed and had to redo my laundry.
Having interacted with different people in my short life, I have seen people who lack any of these skills, some with only some and some who are well endowed. The latter will always be able to run their lives with a sense of independence. I know there has been this notion that men don’t cook, men don’t do laundry or even clean their houses. Well, if this is the case then men should not eat, not dress or even live in houses. This is not to say that it’s only a problem of men. There are ladies who can’t cook, do laundry or even tidy their houses. They have to get help. It’s absurd to realize that we are in some way regressing yet we can do better.
“It’s not fashionable to lack the basic of skills, it’s some level of irresponsibility. Let’s get back to the basics.”