This Is Your Choice

Oladele Bolatito - Nigeria

Why did he bring us here? After promising us heaven and earth…..we shouldn’t have listened to him.’ Those were the complaints of my classmates after we arrived in the hotel where we had the intention of lodging for two days during a tour. They were complaining because they were grossly disappointed by the state of the facilities on ground at the hotel. I was quite sure that some of these people had never lodged in a hotel before but yet they had expectations. ‘Expectations’ which I think they derived by watching some adverts which had given them an idea of what a hotel should be like. Now, I couldn’t help but watch and listen to their agitations.

A certain set of people in my class had been chosen to handle the planning towards this tour. So with the feedbacks they were giving us from time-to-time, we all had our hopes raised so high. Only to get there and have all our hopes shattered like a glass. One other reason why I think our high expectations were raised, was that our lecturer had given us some series of lectures on the course which was on Tourism and Recreation Planning. We had being taught on what had to be in place for one to participate in tourism, so we thought we knew all we needed to know.

I think at this point, I would like to ask a question- ‘on what basis are your expectations about people, places, situations, events, etc’? Are they just based on some other person’s view which you learnt about or even on your own view which you had ‘selfishly’ coined without thinking beyond. Someone once said that- ‘A man is limited by what he knows’. In my own view, I think that my classmates could have just looked out for that aspect of the place where we were that could have been made use of to their benefit. Instead, almost everyone was feeling bad and refused to enjoy the moment while it lasted.

Due to the fact that I loved listening to the news (current happenings around the world), I chose to sit back in my room (which my other two roommates had deserted because they were ‘bored’) and watch the CNN. I made a choice of not allowing the situation around me to determine how I feel. How I wish that others could just make the most of such advantages around them instead of whining about what is/is not happening, what someone a has done or is not doing this. I believe we all have a choice in how we feel; you can choose either to feel either good or bad regardless of what is and what is not. It all depends on you. The choice is yours……………….