Nation-ah-lism
No light
In the past few days, we've [again] been forced to re-evaluate the things we can't live without. At a point earlier this year, I recall telling my friend, “Look, I don’t know what will stop me from watching Al Jazeera even if for a day! If I ever do, I might go crazy!” At that point, it sounded all logical, because...there was nothing to stop me from spending an hour or half, at least, watching Al Jazeera’s feature documentaries. But today, how can I tell my friend that I spent, not just an hour, but a whole week -and still counting- without watching Al Jazeera?
Sometimes it’s like that. We get so used to a specific set of events or procedures that we feel we would slump if we don’t engage in them. To some, it may be a snack that we started eating since we were 3, and now, 31 years later, it’s gotten so much into us that we feel we just can’t go a minute without it. For others, it may be more serious than just snacks. It may be a set of process, activities, or...vanities. My friend’s own is a bit lighter: she can’t go a week without eating fried rice (you know, those kind of restaurant-standard fried rices) even if she has to borrow money to do that -and this leaves her in debts before her monthly cheque came in.
While others may engage in destructive activities that could actually have negative consequences on them, others engage in constructive activities so much they begin to feel their lives defined by them. Take for example, a job.?
When we start a new job, we pour in so much into it -and that’s the logical thing to do in order to retain that job in the face of global uneployment pandemic. We go to work early, take up extra assignments, sign up for extra hours when we have to, always volunteer to do that one task that the ‘old hands’ are not willing to do, and generally work tirelessly to creat the impression that we are their money’s worth. While we struggle to do that, we get incentivised in forms of allowances, promotions, and ‘Employee of the Month’ badges, and naturally, we slowwwwly get to start accepting the fact that this new place is the place we "want to be,” even if it’s not our passion so far as the energy we put out would equal the rewards we get. And one day, we wake up feeling, “Men, there’s no way I’m leaving this place!"
Sometimes it’s our romantic relationship. We’ve tried and tried investing into that partner, though it feels like pouring water into a basket. Even though we know the energy is unreciprocated and that we seem to be giving out more than we are getting in return, we psyche ourselves (unconsiously) into believeing that we’ve seen good days, with better days ahead. Somehow, something tells us that despite our brilliance and our charisma, we won’t find anyone who would love us as this person ‘loved’ us, so we decide, “It’s better for me to stay here than go out into an uncerain world.” Hence, we settle for less than we should be receiving.
There are many things that we can do without which we think we can’t. The only reason we haven’t found that out is because we haven’t been pushed to the precipice yet. When we are, we’d discover that our system has been wired with a coping mechanism for those things we felt perpetually attached to -those ‘black-out' sessions.
Lesson: Wait until you have to, and you’d realise that you can do without many things.
No food
Someone once told me, "If it's not for the stomach, it's not for you."?
Quick question: to what exent can you go just to eat?
It’s a big, blue (:)) world out therw, and it’s interesting that the number of opprtunities are directly proportional to the number of challenges in the wrld! In other words, if there are 10,000 problems, so are 10,000 prospects. The big question is...which of these challenges are worth our efforts? Or, if they all are, do we have the chance, in this our one, short, wild life, to engage in any of those opportunities even if they do not pay us well?
Let’s talk about volunteering.
When I pickd up my role at Mud Season Review as managing editor, my mum called me and asked how much the pay was. When I told her it was a 100% volunteer opportunity, she couldn’t make sense o it. “Why,” she asked, “would they engage you without paying you?” To her, the idea of occupying such a title for as little as no pay at all was too much to be considered true. At best, they were just ‘using me.’ At worst, they were a scam. For someone from her geenration, her fears were valid.
Have you ever had a thought like, “Who the hell brought about this volunteering thing?” If you have, we’re in the same ship. I’ve had times when I sat down and tried to make sense of the whole situation requiring someone to commit their hours to a very vaulable task -which the organisation couldn’t have functioned well without- and receive no compensation. Isn't that a new form of intellectual fraud? Try as I may, nothing about it made sense. Until we look at it from another angle.
Have you had a rethink about the different perks that come with volunteering, say, at an organisation like Mud Season Review? To some, it is obvious that volunteering comes with its own perks, while to others, it just doesn’t make sense that the energy that could have been used in scouting for a well-paid role was being diverted into working a role that pays nothing and offers ‘zero compensation.’ Like me, some people may have faced questions like, "If they don’t pay you, why remain there? Ttere are other places where yr skills are valued more than this, and well compensated. Why don’t you just quit?” Here is the cliche response I give them: networking and experience.
Networking has become such a strong part of professional culture so much that it has been fitted into professional schedules like workshops, seminars, and roundtable discussions. Sometimes it’s so obvious and spelt-out clearly: ‘Networking session,’ while in other times, it comes in the fom of ‘breakfast’ or ‘coffee break.’ In either cases, it goes to say that those 30 minutes or one hour spent sharing a chat over a cup of coffee or exchanging business cards could actually be the difference between the status quo and the dream. In 30 minutes, you could strike a conversation with someone who knows someone who knows someone who can influece the decision of someone you need to convince to invest in you or your venture. When done well, these social sessions perform the same function that a cover letter does: convince the person at the other end of the table to give you a chance to prove yourself. When done poorly, it calls for the same woe tht an unsigned formal letter brings.
I see so many young people being frustrated over the amount of experience they are expeced to bring to a job (even entry-level jobs, at times). It just doesn’t make sense to ask a young man of 26 who has just concluded his NYSC to bring in 3 years of relevant experience, when he just rounded off college 2 years ago. Experience says a lot and should determine, to a large extent, the decision about who to hire, yes. But what about instances when the person in question has not had any opportunity to practice in the field he is expected to resume when given the job? I mean, it’s fair to say, this person just graduated from college 2 years ago, where he spent his entire time studying, got involved in campus poliltics in his sophomore year before dropping out of it in penultimate year when he realised that what he really wanted to pursue was a career in publishing. But here he is today, entering into the professional world, and required to bring 2 yers of ‘relevant experience.’ Giving it a face value look, it just sounds like the most mailcious thing to do, but let’s ask: where the hell was this young man when others were volunteering at magazines and journals?
First off, volunteering gives people the opportunity to network with -and meet- people from the same industry who are equally passionate about the job that they do. Volunteering opportunities are mostly taken up by people who are passionate about the industry (even if they pick up the position preemptively to work towards a career path and yes, that sounds malicious, but...at least, they are equally passionate about a job in that industry, so…), so it’s safe to say that when you work with such a team of dedicated and passionate people, you get to work with...the best!
The experience thing has become a big eliminatory factor to consider when hiring for a new role. It’s logical to be preemptive about who you hire to fill an open role, because the wrong decision could send you destryoing your reputation which took you years to build (sometimes personal, sometimes professional), so when you have the chance to not make the wrong decision, I bet you would take it.
Lesson: Who even brought about the idea of asking about the essence of volunteering is?
No water
Water is life, but we've been living these past days without the source of water. How?
Since early hours of Monday mornig, I’ve not had light in my house. Reports that would follow would say that following a tripping off of a transmission line, some parts of the country (Northeast, Northwest, and a part of my Northcentral) would be plunged into total blackout that would last for days. Survival wasn’t easy, but it was quite easy.
On Sunday, a day before this trip-off, I’d spent about an hour pumping water into the reservoir. This may sound like no extraordinary thing, until you learn that the socket I used almost got melted in a previous attempt before this. Long story short, I saved my neighbour and I the stress of scouting for water a exorbitant rates by a simple risk of pumping the water.
What about you?
Don’t you think that one action could have been averted if you had just...planned ahead?
Maybe if you took that side gig you wouldn’t have been stranded after your company downsized.
Perhaps you wouldn’t have had to deal with this level of heartbreak if you didn’t invest all your time into that relationship. Maybe if you had learnt to code, sarted that newsletter, or stepped out to meet new friends, you wouldn’t have been this sad that your partner broke up with you. Or was caught...cheating.
Maybe if you had decided to to support your spouse in training your child, he would have had better grades. Maybe you should have supported her in implementing that no-video-games policy.
Maybe if you had pushed out applications to other organisations, your chances would have been bigger.
Maybe if you had decided to burn that bridge, you wouldn’t be going back to that toxic relationship.
Maybe...just maybe.
Lesson: Perhaps because we can’t accurately predict things to come, the Divine gave us guts.?
Just a people
That's the truth. That's what we are: just.?
The world is large, and you may not want to hear it, but if you die today, the world won't notice -well, if except if you're Trump or Putin. If the world weighed 250kg, it won't flinch if you died.?
领英推荐
Sometimes we overestimate ourselves.
Have you ever been wth someone who loves to believe -and assert- that they are the most valluable person in sight? I mean, people whose WhatsApp status is filled with TikTok videos of creators saying stuff like, “If you know anyone who is studying/practicing/doing XYZ, treat them like queens! They deserve everything good. Bro, if you get the chance, these are the girls that deserve to be wifed!” Two ladies in my WhatsApp contact did this within the span of 12 hours, and I began to wonder, “Compared to what? Compared to who? Compared to which profession? Compared to the millions of proffessions out there, this is the noblest?"
You’re a nurse? Fine. But do you realise that if there are ‘over 10 million nurses in the world,’ when you die, the statistics would still read, ‘over 10 million nurses in the world’?
Dear Beautiful Lady, feel free to flaunt that ass, cos you’re the happening thing. Time teaches a lot of lessons; sometimes to our minds, sometmes to our bodies.
Dear Mr Handsome, while you can, have all the girls you can.
Lesson: 1, alone, is one. 1, in a crowd, feels like the whole crowd.???
Trying
What's all this struggle about?
“To live life while we live.”?
Is that it?
I doubt.
The essence of all ris struggle doesn’t end here. As humans, we have experienced our differet forms of struggles. Some of these strugles have redefined who we are. Some of them have pushed us to becoming better versions of ourselves. Some of them have pushed us to making decisions that felt like the best decisions in the heat of the moment, only for us to realise how f’ed up they were. We undergo certain phases, painfully writhe through the whole process, and celebrate our passage of that phase. Only for those phases to resurface again. And because we have seen worse days, we are sure we would scale through every phase ahead. “That,” we are told, “is what life is: a loop of sadness and fulfilment.” What about the after-life?
I am a Christian. One life lesson that I have picked from my journey as a young Christian is the fact that this life and the life after this are linked in ways more closely than we imagine:
The world, I lke to believe, is the qualifying ground for where we would be after here. Whether we obey or disobey the instructions given in our holy books, is what will etermine where we would be. Sometimes when I hear people talk of the infiltration and surge of different religions in the world, with diverese beliefs and consider them a problem, I laugh and shrug, “If a 100 people need a 100 ways to approach 1 Divine Supeme, why discourage them?”
I love what religion has done in the world: helped us understand that no matter how we seek to be masters of ourselves, there’s always something, someone above us. And that’s what helps us work on our accountability.
Lesson: If life after here sounds like a joke to you, rethink: you may be the joke.
To survive.
Survival means different things to different people.?
To some, it means managing life.
To others, it means, living well.?
Lesson: It’s a matter of perspectives.
The 'car' thing with adulting
I've never (until recently) fancied the idea of owning a car. A few years ago, I could almost swear I didn't -and wouldn't- need it. But if I'm to make a budget now, one of the three things to go on that budget woud be a car. The first being, a house. The third? A farm.
Sometimes we swear that we won’t do, or own, or be affilitaed with some things. A short distance down the line, we would be the ones advocating for it.
I recently saw a video of Asare Dokubo addressing an audiece, telling them he belives he made the worst decision endorsing pesident Tinubu. The person who shared the video on his status included a sarcastic comment, “Your wailing never start yet. Tinubu has left you behind!” This was a sarcastic shade to the time, over a year ago, when Dokubo came out to vehemently support and campaign for the same man that he is regretting endorsing today. And one thing with NIgerians: you can never stop being an ambassador of something, no matter how much you vehemently dissociate yourself from it. And I think that is toxic.
The world is full of different people with different philosophies, and for me, the funniest set of people are the ones who expect you to be a lifetime devotee to the ideals you enorsed at the onset. If, for example I’d endorsed a certain process or policy, I do not have the right to turn around and dissociate from it. For them, “You say it, you stick to it for life!”?
In the days when Burna Boy was getting into the spotlight, something about him just seemed to irritate me. I’m not talking about his appearance or lyrics, or anything about his personality. I couldn’t explain it, but something about him just seemed to irritate my demons. I didn’t hesitate to spell it out clear that I was not a Burna Boy Fan -and would never be. The days when songs like Ye and Angelina were blasting off the speakers of every major freshers’ night or any departmental orientation, I would not hesitate to ask those who cared to listen, “What exactly about this guy fascinates you?” Others were graceful enough to explain that Burna Boy sings what “the average Nigerian relates with.” Others would try to create a link between Burna Boy and the legendary Fela, hoping I would like him because of how much I was a fan of Fela. Others, sincerely, simply didn’t know why they liked him. They only said one thing: “With time, you will like him.” Somehow, they won.
Less than a year later, when Burna Boy would go head-to-head with Angelique Kidjo for the Grammys, I was the one jamming his mixtape as I did the laundry in the afternoon before the awards. I was the one posting his pictures the following morning on my status with the caption, “Grammys or not, we know your worth!”
It’s not all the times that I have had changes lke that, though. I haven’t been a fan of Wizkid right from when I recall. Not that I can tell excatly why I...hold on. Maybe I can recall where this started from. In my JSS2.
In JSS 1-2, I had a bully who tortured my life (I think I have written about him a few months a go), his name was Godspower Abajoue. He would call me, rack jokes about me, send me on errands to girls, hit me, as he wanted. You know who he always talked about? The guy whose Kpakurumo song was trending around 2011/2012. So, I think that was where this dislike for Wizkid started.
Till date, I haven’t liked Wizkid. And, truth is, in 10 years, I may still not.
This is life. Everything that has breath grows. And sometimes, ‘growth’ means letting go of those things we once held dear. Don’t be ashamed to clarify your stance. Even if it means you letting go of your earlier convictions.
Lesson: Your only loyalty, darling, is to change.
See you next week,
#K