Peace of mind is underrated

Peace is one thing that is easily underestimated until it is taken away and I would say it's one of those things we never realize how important it is until it has been taken away. I am a peace-loving person and most of the time I have had to take bullshit from people just to make sure things don't escalate and turn into a hostile situation. One thing I hate in life is keeping a grudge with people; friends walking past each other and not even saying hello because of one misunderstanding or the other. So, I tend to quickly fix up any misunderstanding with people before it escalates.

Right now, I have friends who still owe me some money and one thing I have come to realize over the years is that if you don't want your relationship with a friend to turn sour, then don't loan them money or loan them what you can afford to lose. I tried collecting back my money on several occasions but it wasn't starting to become an unpleasant situation, so I just let it go and in the process, I learned a valuable lesson. Anyway, I'm not here to talk about who owes me or not but rather, I want to share a story of one of the times I had to sacrifice something for the sake of peace.

Once upon a time...

This happened in my 3rd year at the university, which was back in 2021. I studied Aquaculture and fisheries management and by the time I was in my 3rd year, the farm manager at my department's experimental fish farm was sending me and my friends out to fish farms around the city for contract jobs. During one weekend when I went to my parent's house, my friend called me that he would be coming to my neighbourhood for a job in one of the fish farms there and asked if I would be interested.

He said the pay was N7000 and considering how broke I was at that period, I quickly accepted the offer. We went to the farm very early the next day and the job was to harvest some adult fish from several tanks. We completed the job in 2 hours and when it was time to pay, the owner brought out only N7000. My friend was confused and immediately told him that it was remaining N7000 but the man disagreed, saying that it was N7000 that was agreed on.

My friend explained to him that what he told him was that there would be two of us that would do the job and each person's pay is 7k. Things started to get heated up with the man saying that paying 14k for such a job was too much and he didn't even make much profit from the sales. My friend kept insisting on the man paying the full 14k because the job we did was worth more than the 7k he was offering. I just kept quiet and observed the whole exchange because I wasn't there when the deal was made and so I couldn't take sides.

The farm manager was called and he confirmed that the amount is supposed to be 14k but the man still didn't agree. That was when I realized that the man obviously wanted to cheat us. What even made my friend angrier was that the man wasn't even trying to plead with us to accept the 7k, he was nonchalantly trying to offer us half of the agreed amount. My friend already made plans on how he wanted to spend the 7k by paying off some debts and buying food items, so he needed to get the complete amount

They kept exchanging words with each other and at one point I noticed that things were starting to get too heated. My friend has a very hot temper and he gets very angry easily (we even nicknamed him Angry Hulk 😆), so when I noticed things were starting to get out of control, I said something that made my friend pause and look at me in disbelief "Sir just bring the money." I collected the money and told my friend to let the issue go because I would handle it. Before we left, be let the man know that he would never accept any job from him again.

In the end, I gave the whole 7k to my friend and he even offered to give me some share of the money but I told him that his problems were bigger than mine, so he should just have everything. Besides, I didn't even do much during the job (I'm a very lazy person), my friend did most of the harvesting while I just offered assistance. But even at that, the work we both did was worth more than what the man offered but I didn't like the angle the whole thing was taking, so for the sake of peace, I just had to let go of my own share of the money.

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