When You Dine with Royalty, Never Forget Who You Are.

A while back, I had the opportunity to sit down with a few men of substance for a chat. Usually, someone can forget about who they are and end up being a disgrace to themselves in such a scenario. It is the tale of the gazelle that danced itself lame before the main dance could begin.

I don’t mean to say that we should not be in the present while dining with royalty but that we should not forget and burn our chances with being royalty ourselves. Probably you could be wondering why I am writing all these, but worry not because I am about to toast the glass.

It happens that in that meeting I was the center of focus. Not that I stood out, nay. It has to do with the fact that I had the story to tell. Yet in that mix, I needed to give enough chance to the other side in order that the talk could be meaningful.

Unfortunately, I didn’t do that. I went ahead to take the center stage. In fact, I ended up behaving as though I was royalty myself. This did a lot of harm to me in that I behaved as though I knew more about royalty than them that were royalty.

Let me do a case study to help me put my point across. I once had an opportunity to have a very unique kind of friend. This guy was a kind of know it all. Even in areas in which he had zero ideas about, he would always go ahead and try to behave as though he was the expert.

So, there is this day we were having a discussion about buildings and construction. Personally, when I know that I don’t have enough knowledge about a topic or discipline, I give a disclaimer if I have to give my opinion. But for my friend, there was nothing like that.

So, we were wondering why some buildings get completed quickly and others take like forever even when all factors are held constant. For example, there is financial resources available, raw materials are available too and, in enough quantities, yet some buildings will still take longer.

My friend went ahead to ‘shine’ on how incompetence is the thing with such projects and how such people involved should be dealt with. Unfortunately, or fortunately enough we had an engineer in our midst who disputed my friend’s claims and gave a divergent opinion.

 According to him, sometimes projects stall a little when there are design changes that a client wants added or other technical challenges which of course are very necessary. My friend wanted to be the last man left standing and disputed that loudly. At the end of the day, he was alone literally and ended up making a fool of himself.

Another case happened recently. Some gentlemen came from the village on assignment. Their pointer man in the city went ahead to brag on them and how he had a fast knowledge on everything vehicles and planes and buildings and…

In simple words, he mesmerized these fellas from the village with a lot of falsehood and know it all. But because I was there and wasn’t ready to see these innocent fellas made fools of themselves, I went ahead and rectified the falsehoods in his presence. And it was on those things I was sure and were factual based.

What all these guys forgot is that the ‘royalty’ we find ourselves in is just for a moment. We are to be cautious in how we handle opportunities of influence we find ourselves in. This is to mean that when you find yourself dining with loyalty, remember you are not loyalty yourself.

The best language to be used is that of rubbing shoulders. In other words, when you rub shoulders with royalty, always remember that it was rubbing after all. It didn’t translate to a complete transformation of your very self-becoming royalty.

When we find ourselves rubbing shoulders with royalty, let us remember that after that, we are left wearing our very own clothes. Nothing changes. The problem is that the glamour of royalty makes us to forget who we are and behave as though we are in truancy.

A moment with royalty should be held as temporal should one find themselves in such. This is to mean that when you find yourself dining on the same table with the king, remember that such an opportunity is tagged with time. It could be as short as a second to as long as an hour, two, three or even five. And at some point, the dining comes to an end. It is never forever.

So, as soon as the loyalty is out, so does our inducement with royalty and we thus default to our own selves. Appreciating that fact and behaving yourself may mean the difference between rubbing shoulders with the royalty again and the journey towards becoming royalty yourself too.

We can now relate to this joke that is very common. Two donkeys met in Jerusalem and one complained to the other about why people were not noticing him. The day before, people had gone about placing their scarfs and clothes on the road for him to walk on.

He was reminded that it was because he was carrying Jesus on that day. And that without Jesus, he was nothing. In other words, carrying Jesus didn’t make him Jesus and while that moment lasted, he needed to embrace the goodness with which it brought yet still remain humble.

At the end of the day when Jesus, was gone, he still remained a donkey. While you dine with royalty, remember who you are, where you come from and all that have been with you. At the end of the day, the moment will be gone, you will still be you and will go back to them that had been with you.

End.

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