DRUNK, STINGY OR A WOMANIZER. (Conclusion)
What happens when you are confronted with a question you are not prepared for and yet have to answer immediately? What if you know the answer, but it might go against you if you just spoke out?
This was the Dilemma of Jake…
Joseph Campbell says “The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.” –
After many years of dreaming and fantasizing, hoping against all hope that miss beauty will surely end up with him one day. Jake is rather faced with a situation of having to help make a choice for some men he didn’t even know. Could this be the reason miss beauty was so welcoming? ‘That she only needed a second opinion from somebody, and Jake just happens to be at the right place at the right time for her? This was Jake’s greatest life challenge. He is faced with the toughest question of his life. Should he answer, or should he make an excuse and hope that someway somehow she might turn all of them down and end up with him?
After almost an hour of silence, Jake answered and said ‘love they say is blind, but marriage will open your eyes’. This was the only possible statement from Jake. What did he mean, how does this answer the question posed to him by his dream lady, and what message was he trying to pass on to miss beauty? The complete answer;
Once upon a time, in the remote village of Akimland, lived a very wealthy man. Mr Shum as they affectionately called him was so much addicted to alcohol, he was quite stingy and a known womanizer, but because of his wealth, almost every family in the village wanted to betroth their daughter to him in marriage. To these families that was the easiest way to buy their way out of poverty. After he marries the young ladies, he maltreats and beats them up messlessly anytime he comes back home drunk and this was tolerated by the families of the young ladies, because he very wealthy and as long as he kept sponsoring the family he could have his way.
During one of his ‘beat ups’, unfortunately one of his wives lost an eye, and another died. Even the crime officers in the village overlooked these heinous crimes, because he could easily ‘buy his way out’. As if that was not enough, his stinginess only extended to his wives. He ends up spending all the money he has in his pocket on friends at the beer parlour, and refuses to give anything to the young girls he married back home. He will always make an excuse of paying so much to their families and having nothing left, only to cover up his stinginess. As a womanizer, adding to his ‘stock’ of young girls was just a way to ‘satisfy his libido’. Mr Shum didn’t care about what happened to any of the wives, to him, only the latest woman mattered until new one appeared.
They say this often about stingy men, that ‘‘when their wives or inamorata ask for some cash, they take over a century to decide. It doesn’t matter whether they have the money or not, they are just stingy.’’
Which lady would want to dream of such a life partner, even if they have the whole world? This was a question Jake posed back to miss beauty as he paused to give her a stare.
The look on her face at this time was one of ‘bewilderment’; could this be her possible future with any of these three men?
As she reflected on the ‘almost a sermon’ by Jake for an answer, she said to herself ‘No Drunk, Stingy or a Womanizer’ but rich man is going to be my focus now, but to finish my education and become a self reliant person in the future.
Seven years just passed-by, and at a dinner party organized by Jake’s Company, where he worked as the Executive director, his path crossed again with his dream lady. This time round she gives him her name as Jacky.
One thing led to the other and eventually, ‘they married and lived happily ever after.
