This divorcee friend of mine.

Slightly above 60 years of age.

I have been his friend for more than a decade. We are connected by the fulcrum of orgasmic intellectual intercourses.

I walked into his office yesterday to find him on his office sofa. He sat, reading a book titled The Art of Saying No. On his office table sat another book titled Ikigai. He’s always surrounded by books. Unassuming. Level-headed. Not given to exhibitionism despite the wealth he’s been accumulating.

Within five minutes of sitting down and receiving the blessings of cool air from his air conditioner, he asked me.

“What’s the dream in your heart right now?”

“I really want to build a learning annexe that can take at least 5000 people. You see how people go to church every Sunday to worship God and learn about God, I wish that folks troop every Friday or Saturday to learn about life, business and topics the church consider too sacrosanct or ominous to talk about.”

He was quiet for a few seconds.

And then said…

“Knowing you, I know you’re too empathetic and compassionate to want to do this for free. But I’m glad you mentioned the church. The thing is that while people feel they’re going to church to get knowledge for free, there’s an orchestrated and smart system to get them to commit financially to keep the system running. That’s through tithe and offerings. By promising people that when they give tithes and offerings, they’ll get God’s backing and favour protection, every Sunday witnesses an inflow into the coffers that the church utilises to pay pastors and keep the place alive. Truth is that while this may seem transactional like how capitalists operate, it’s couched under the fact that it is a non-financial organisation.”

I sat still listening and he continued.

“You can’t go that route. You need people to commit fully to the knowledge that they’re paying for a promise of a future of greatness and income and wealth and stability and a whole lot of things. You must have a smart system to extract money from them while offering them a promise. I know you are the type that will bring smart people to discuss and teach. I’m a divorcee. I’ve been divorced for many years and it’s seeming that I don’t want to remarry but in the few relationships I’ve had, I’ve seen things that made my marriage to fail. It will be foolish of me to want to marry them. So I’m still learning and engaging. Someone like me can teach people the thing that caused my marriage to crash, what to do in the cause of divorce and how to document and pick up the pieces. These aren’t easily taught in churches. It’s bemoaning that the counseling sessions we attended didn’t truly deal with the critical issues concerning two separate individuals who are vowing to spend their lives together.”

I leaned forward and adjusted my form.

He continued.

“You see, since I got divorced, many of my church folks always want to deal with my situation from the point of good and bad. The functionality of a thing may not depend on how good or bad, but an understanding of the elements that make for functionality. You see this piano in my office, the sounds you make from it won’t depend on how good or bad you are as a person. I know you’re good, but if I ask you to play this piano now you’ll produce sounds that will be so horrible to our ears. But one guy that smokes ganja and a member of a fraternity can come in here now and touch this piano and the sound will be so melodious. Why? He understands the elements. That’s what I think your annexe should be for – learning the elements.”

And from there, he climbed into other galaxies of thoughts about leadership and marriage and books while I sat there, listening. He rose at some point and as he walked to the door to invite in a new visitor, he said to me.

“The emancipation and successes of others can come from our documented failures.”