Welcome to my entry on this week’s #pob-wotw contest. Appreciation to @scholaris for keeping the dice rolling.

Bitterness can either be classified as taste or feelings. The taste aspect can be sensed by the tongue while the feeling aspect can be natured in the mind. However they both appear unpleasant to the body.

My entry for this week’s contest is based on the feeling aspect of bitterness. Bitterness of the mind and it’s possible outcome, while sharing a story of a woman who permanently hindered her progress and defaced her children’s future.

Few blocks away from where I stay, across the street, there is an uncompleted building that has been raised up to the lintel level for the past one and a half decades, right from when I was a little boy. This building was supposed to contain two flats, four bedrooms each. Looking at the building, one can tell that when the construction began, the owner was wealthy and he or she had a plan for an attractive house, but unfortunately the owner was only able to roof one room in front, left the house uncemented, unpainted, and even covered the windows with a washed out banner and planks, and has lived in it till this present day with her children.

So what happened ?

It was said that initially, this woman had everything working out as planned, she was happily married and worked in a renown company where she got paid heavily every month. But one negative attribute she had that turned her story around negativity was her bitter mind. She was never happy to see someone else succeed in life. Be it her colleague at work, friends, family, or even her husband. She always wished that people would come seeking her help to survive. This makes her feel bad anytime she gets informed about other’s promotions and achievements.

Her negative reactions to such news were never difficult to spot, this made her friends and other people abstain from her, and as time went on she got sacked from her place of work, and thought of setting up her personal business, which she did but it collapsed within months due to the way she related with her customers.

After several quarrels about her bad attitude, she got divorced by her husband. It was from this point that things went from bad to worse for her, the building of her house stopped to proceed. She could no longer afford a rented apartment, so she had no choice than to finish up a room in her uncompleted building and to start living there. Over fifteen to twenty years now, she had lived there without attempting to complete the building.

The same way they say, happiness is contagious, so also is a bitter mind. But in her case, I think I should use the word Hereditary.

Her children grew up having worse attributes of her bitter mind. They were brought up by their mother with the mindset that people are wicked, they never wanted to see anyone pass by, they would abuse every single person that glances at them for long.

       In fact, I had to carefully walk past the front of the building four to five times before I could accumulate these captured pictures. I could end up being chased with a cutlass if spotted.

Everyone in the street runs away from them, most people refers to them as mad because, some times they utter offensive and abusive words aloud angrily without having an opposing party, and they are always hot tempered and aggressive.

They shutdown the world to the extent that they cultivate round the building and only eat from the harvest they get there.

(All pictures captured originally by me, @corporateay)

Having bitter mind towards people’s success would only make one’s situation worse, because people will always succeed and achieve greatness, and it would only annoy and bring more bitterness to the bitter minded. In fact, a bitter minded person is closer to the devil than any other person because it is only the devil that rejoices over people’s downfall.

Once again, I appreciate your time reading through this entry. Have a pleasant week ahead and do not forget to rejoice with those who rejoice. Romans 12:15.