A negative experience forcing out a positive outcome

If there's one thing I love about staying in a public hostel, it's the many lessons I get to learn just by watching other people (my neighbours) live their lives.

Today, one thing I learned was that sometimes, we refuse to make changes in our lives until something negative happens, almost like certain bad things help speed up certain positive changes in our lives, changes that we probably wouldn't have forced to happen if those negative things never occurred.

_{Photo by Possessed Photography}

About three months ago, my neighbour had made a deal with another neighbour who lives downstairs. The downstairs neighbour had just gotten himself a generator and seeing how power supply in most part of Nigeria is nothing to write home about, the upstairs guy had thought it wise to approach the downstairs guy and pleaded with him to permit him to connect his wires to the generator too, which downstairs guy agreed to. So whenever downstairs guy turned on his generator, both of them end up getting electricity with upstairs guy occasionally bringing money to buy fuel for the generator.

It was a good deal, one that benefitted both parties because on one side, one had electricity without actually owning a generator, while the other had electricity without having to buy petrol all the time with his own money, a win win. But it didn't take long for upstairs guy to regret that deal because as it turned out, downstairs guy was a control freak and liked feeling in charge, even though he was in charge, he just wanted to make sure upstairs guy knew it.

So there were occasions where upstairs guy would fill up the generator with petrol because he's having a guest over and needed to entertain his guest with his television and all that and suddenly the generator would go off after some hours. Upstairs guy would immediately rush to go check on the generator (maybe thinking it was some mechanical fault) only to find out that downstairs guy had turned it off for the most flimsiest excuses. It could be something as stupid as "the generator was too hot and he needed it to cool off" or "the generator has been on for a long time and he wanted it to rest".

Most of his excuses were a lot dumber that this and it was pretty obvious that he was just telling the upstairs guy that he owns the generator and he can do whatever the F*** he wanted with it. Luckily for upstairs guy, he was smart enough to get the message on time and ultimately decided that he no longer needed the electricity from downstairs guy, so he disconnected his wires and just stayed that way, until today.

Upstairs guy had traveled to his village for the holidays and had returned today with a much more bigger generator than that of downstairs guy. He had told me that the one thing that motivated him to buy that generator was due to the many insults he got from downstairs guy. A negative experience forcing out a positive outcome.

I guess this is part of the reason why they say every disappointment is indeed a blessing.