LIVE AND LET LIVE (Let People Enjoy Things)

When I was creating my Facebook account in my father’s living room on one of the 1-week midterm breaks, with our ethernet Nitel cord that never worked until that day in 2007 (after trying out cartoonnetwork.com and playing the Kids Next Door game), I was supposed to provide personal details to make my ‘wall’ complete and make my profile more attractive to strangers. I was asked a bunch of questions that as a Nigerian I had filled and gotten accustomed to; marital status, religion, sex, etc. When I reached ‘political views’, I remember absent mindedly selecting “liberal” without caring much for the meaning.

 Sometime in college, my close friends (who are almost always my roommates plus few other ‘outsiders’) and I were playing video games, lounging and just chillin’ when one of our other friend came in, obviously pissed and told us, point-blank that Michael (other roommate, name changed for security reasons) was gay. One of the highlights of my entire college experience was how we all took it; we simply went back to what we were doing. Michael who had been a recluse prior to then suddenly became more vocal and interacted with us more while Snitch left shortly after. Truth was we had suspected Michael before then and had whispered it in hushed tones, but beyond that what exactly was our problem with him? He was an exemplary roommate: he was tidy and neat, he was almost never around and when he was, he stuck to himself. We should have a problem with him because someone weaponized his sexual preference when they had a fight?

That was my first interaction with an ‘openly’ gay person.

When I was reading history books earlier this pandemic (I use ‘earlier this pandemic’ to refer to Q1 & early Q2 of 2020), I came across a quote that stuck with me; “…treason is a matter of dates”. Then I watched a movie called The Count of Monte Cristo (recommended) and the line was repeated with such context that the writer must have been clairvoyant. I then watched The Imitation Game where a man was forced between a rock and a hard place, for a simple life choice. And sometimes I wonder if people’s choices (especially when they do not affect other people) are really anyone’s business, but I digress. Back to Tales under the moonlight:

 I wanted to take a bath earlier and wanted a playlist, so I picked up my phone and loaded up my uduX app. Picked Haba (of course), Bad Influence, Away & Something different. Set up the queue and was about to hit play when I realized I just selected 4 different songs by 4 different Nigerian artists for the first time in my life and I was so happy. Then I remembered ‘Betty Butter’ is the No1 song in Nigeria and I almost hissed but stopped myself. --For a very long time I stayed away from Nigerian music and there was a period of a few years when I did not have any Nigerian songs on my phone until Illegal Music II was released (first Nigerian album I ever got) where I found Boogey and I bought my first (2^nd, 3^rd & 4^th) Nigerian albums. Since then Burna Boy, Wande, Maleek Berry and so many others have found their homes in my devices. My initial grouse with Nigerian music/musicians was the inherent lack of (sensible or indeed actual) lyrics. I felt they were taking Nigerians for fools, believing that they could say whatever they want (or nothing) and slap on a catchy hook or chorus and get away with it (also my grouse with pop music in general). It was difficult for me as I grew up listening to ABBA, Bob Marley, West Life et al.—Because I’ve come to learn an important lesson as I grow up in this life; preference is personal. People like Betty Butter and enough people like it enough for it to be number One. Instead of disparaging it as a hollow, void, incoherent rambling of two superstars who know that they could successfully release their farts as an album and be sure of at least a thousand sales, I could just put that energy into supporting what I actually like and leaving alone what I do not.

 Moral of the story; promote what you like, ignore what you don’t.

 Final bible reading before we close;

 Social media is awash this period (as usual) with news, gist, memes and social commentary about the Big Brother show. The show is as divisive as usual and contrasting opinions on the show’s importance, necessity, viability and ‘need’. My father believes the show is a waste of a channel space while my mother could possibly tell you each housemate’s maiden name if you asked. On Saturday, there was a house party so I tuned in primarily to watch Sarz and Omah Lay’s performances. Three people texted me and after I told them I was watching Big Brother Nigeria; they revealed their shock and one went as far reminding me how I castigated the show last year. True.

 Up until late last year / early this pandemic, I did not realize the economic viability of the Big Brother show. I did not consider the jobs created, the funds recycled, the FX it brings, the exposure non-housemates get, the benefits to the entertainment industry, fashion industry and general image. I was just bitter because Gulder Ultimate Search & Who Wants To Be A Millionaire were cancelled but Big Brother survived and blossomed, but I failed to ask myself the existential question: ‘why’? Furthermore, why should the shows I want be kept but others scrapped? If you don’t like Big Brother and you still don’t care about the economic or entertainment benefits, simply tune out of it. The football season comes every year and people who don’t particularly care for Ronaldo or Messi don’t go extinct. People deserve to get entertained without necessarily explaining why or ‘benefitting’ from it.

Let People Enjoy Things.

To quote the philosopher Erigga; “Bad belle na disease, for rating e beat staph”.

I hope I’ve been able to convince and not confuse you that:

i)                    Leave people alone.

ii)                   Your life is exactly that.

iii)                 You shouldn’t judge people by your standards.

iv)                 Mind your business.

v)                   Promote what you like, ignore what you don’t.

vi)                 DO NOT tell people how to live their lives.

vii)               Everyone has preferences; they are personal, not objective.

Follow these 7 rules and you may not get beaten up.

Since I read “Culture is just peer pressure from dead people”, I haven’t been able to think of it as anything else. Make your own decisions, emancipate yourself from mental slavery, break your own chains. Who you are should be complex, not a stereotype.

Shalom!

TIME

‘TIME’

 “Time is linear”, “a straight line is the shortest distance between two points”, “the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell”, “a tax is a fine for doing good and a fine is a tax for doing bad” etc. were things I was taught in primary school (Isn’t it funny how most of the things we know now are based on the things we learnt early in life and apparent dumbness can be traced straight to poor early education?) but I digress.

 The human mind has been taught to perceive time as linear, as the period between tasks we are performing and the next task to be performed. Think of this; if I were to ask you the time now, you’d reply with whatever your clock says, but subconsciously, your mind is saying “it’s 2pm already? But I woke up by 11!” or “wow, it’s still 4pm; 5 more hours till Nepa will be useful”. We cannot fathom time as a phenomenon on its own, but must be attached to something else, to understand its form.

 The plan for a ‘fulfilled’ life is being born, growing up, attending school, graduating from nursery, primary, secondary and tertiary institutions, getting a job, getting married and having children; all these preferably in the first 30years of life. Continue working to be able to afford a (better quality of) life for your own offspring, retire, grow old and die, having fulfilled The Procreation Decree.

  But is that all there is to time? I have friends who have been told since before they could understand the English language that they are reincarnates of their grandparents; I myself have been regularly informed by my mother that 3months before I was born, her late father appeared to her in a dream and told her he was coming back (which prompted my nickname “Dad(dy)”).

 I have a few issues with time; I hate the “time moves fast when you’re enjoying yourself” and “time crawls in Math class” paradigm & please has anyone solved the ‘If you go back in time and kill your grandfather, you might or might not exist’ paradox? The hen and the egg?

 My biggest problem with time, however is how time can be a damp blanket over a particular period; how you might only remember a (‘good’, ‘okay’ or ‘great’) 3 year relationship as a bad one because it ended in cheating, how it convinces you that high school was a good time because you graduated, how your childhood was ‘alright’, because you’re here and ‘normal’ (not knowing you need years of trauma counseling). How you can look back in your life and pinpoint certain periods and be happy/sad/angry or laugh, but forget that there were things that led to it or things that occurred after it.

 That’s why I’ve chosen to take every moment for what it is and what it brings and not view them via the scope of time, but view each as a piece of a whole. Since then, this Covid-19 situation has been more than just tiring to me, it’s been infuriating, immensely exciting, hilariously mundane, mind-numbingly boring, remarkably energizing but, as a whole, I can’t wait for it to leave so I can see what time has to offer next.

 Time isn’t the 12 months that makes up a year or the 4/5 years of your Uni education. Time is the 365,000,000 moments that make up 1 week out of that year and every single moment of your 4/5-year Uni adventure.

 Time is doing what it must (move forward), we can only do our best to trudge along right beside it.

Tomorrow will make it 5 months since my grandma has been buried. Lost her a few days to Christmas 2019 and since then, well, the world hasn’t been the same. But instead of a holistic remembrance of her, I’ve begun to take it days and moments at a time. Willingly going to her house to eat one of her concoctions (Indomie and bread was a special dish), avoiding her because she wants to give one of her lectures on how I’m to ‘big-brother’ my siblings and cousin since I’m the first son of the family, gisting with her and teasing that I’ll marry a northerner, caring for her whenever health problems arise and her promising me she won’t die until she’s carried my child (women lie unprovoked), her complaining about my father to me, etc.

Our lives are a collection of fleeting moments and time is the only lens through which we can view them.

 Live IN the moment, Carpe diem!

'Average'.

‘Average’.

 I was conveniently born at a time after my parents played (and won) The Hunger Games. We hadn’t ‘blown’, but we had enough that I got to attend a ‘good’ school. I excelled in primary school (not gonna count nursery school, cause how can you excel if someone else changes you?), I was a straight A pupil, represented the school in competitions, won my fair share of 4^th-placed medals in sports, but my big break came one day when we had a drama hosted at Obi Wali Cultural Center, Port-Harcourt.

 I don’t have much of a memory about it but I must have done very well because the next Monday, the school had representatives from an advertising company come calling and requesting for me to be involved in two adverts; one for MTN and one for Ribena. I don’t remember much of the Ribena advert, but if you saw an MTN advert in the early 2000’s where a young big-headed boy with large glistening eyes was on a phone call with his papa (Mr. Jimoh- a teacher of mine and our drama leader) in the village, it was yours truly.

 The two paragraphs above are to show how I was exceptional; both academically and extra-curricular wise. After then, I went to Secondary school and fell in love with literature (coincidentally, elder sister was in a theatre arts group in boarding house) but retained my love for drama. My academics however, took a dive; there were by no means poor, but instead of straight A’s, I became a 1^st-3^rd student.

 This post isn’t to talk about exceptionalism or greatness, but to talk about ‘averageness’:

Before Covid-19 shocked the world, a lot of us football enthusiasts were used to the images and sounds of racially provocative gestures targeted at black people and the news of Balotelli suffering racist chants went viral. A few weeks ago, I came across a video of Cuban doctors being flown into Italy to help them combat the pandemic and all over, they were being cheered and welcomed- these people, same color as Balotelli, but different receptions.

 On Twitter recently, there’s been a lot of brouhaha about how health sectors in developed countries need more hands and how undeveloped countries believe their best are being poached. A law maker in the US was calling for the number of green cards available for professionals, especially in the health sector be increased, even if it means reducing the numbers of other criteria.

 While I have no problems with the intent, I have qualms with the underlying subliminal message we are passing; is it only the professionals who deserve the green cards? Is it only the exceptional(s) who deserve to be cheered? Do I; a young, ordinary man, trying to make my way in this cold world, in pursuit of greener pastures and success, not deserve a green card? I don’t even want their adulation; I just want to be able to go about my business without being called King-Kong.

 I have a grouse with fake-posturing; 90% of the population cannot be great, the majority cannot be special, not everyone can be awesome at whatever they do. Until we as a people unite and admit to ourselves that being ‘average’ is good enough, we will continue living a lie. Children derided for not exceling, adults punished for not competing, businesses taken-over or closed for not being the best. If everyone is supposed to be the best at everything, then who are they supposed to be better than?

 These are the thoughts that keep me up at night. Stay safe people, stay home.

Need to go have a talk with my dad about that MTN and Ribena advert payment.

|| The original post ended above; the following is as a result of complete 8hrs sleep||

 “Average is good enough” ~ Okekayi Woko, 2020.

 One reason why I personally never rated The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as high as I rated 30 Rock or Parks and Recreation or The Office is because Fresh Prince had an almost ‘forced’ feel when it came to morals. Some episodes just seemed like the result of a brainstorming virtue-signaling production cast. The other shows never seemed like they had a moral story or they had lofty expectations to fill. They just told their stories, with some laughs, a little romance and tons of drama.

 We as people tend to prefer the greats and there’s nothing wrong with that, but expecting greatness from everyone is absurd.

“Average is good enough”.

 One more story and we say The Lord’s Prayer:                              

 When I was in SS1, all those years ago, my school took me for a math/science competition (for SS2 & SS3) where I came 7^th in Rivers State and 18^th in Nigeria. The results were announced before we left the venue, and I was downtrodden. A few seniors came in the top 10 and two people came in the top 5’s. We got back to school (and naturally the news had gotten there already). We were heralded and I personally felt so good. My mum called that evening and I could feel her beaming from across the phone. One of my best memories till date.

 “Average is good enough”.

 Our Father…….

The Ripple Effect.

‘The Ripple Effect’

Greetings Mortals;

My childhood is filled with a lot of holes- repressed memories and things I actually cannot remember. Maybe I was used for an experiment or maybe time indeed is a figment of our imagination.

Regardless, one of my most profound and brightest memory is; secondary school, 1-week midterm break. Aunty came to pick me up from the house, was gonna spend the weekend at hers then she’ll take me to school for resumption on Sunday. A few hundred meters from the house gate and I realized I forgot an assignment I completed, printed and spiral-bound. Wrestled with the prospect of making my aunt turn around or probably getting flogged and derided in school for having a whole week and not completing my assignment for a few more meters before I caved and told her.

 She turned back, we got the assignment, my eyes lit up at how I’ll be praised for my awesome assignment and *boom*. Accident. Right at Rumuomasi-linking Airforce, someone brushed my aunt’s car and sped off, acting like nothing happened. My aunt was bewildered, guilt welled up inside of me and before I knew it, we were on a high-speed chase.

 Aunt eventually caught up with him around Rumuola axis (her green Honda civic was always a beast), blocked him off and parked. Came out of the car, ignored the building traffic behind us, popped the trunk, grabbed a pair of shears and went H.A.M on his car. Weirdly enough, that’s where my memory ends.

The ripple effect of forgetting my assignment/not speaking up early.

Some months ago, I was reading a thread on twitter where a woman postulated that parents should endeavor to personally pick their kids more, instead of sending the driver or help. While I agreed with the intent, I scrolled past. Few days later, I saw a quoted tweet where a man was replying to the tweet saying he will cancel all his plans for the next day, just to make sure he picks his daughter up himself.

I couldn’t help but let my mind wander; during its vagabonding, I imagined a young man who, having secured the meeting, had leveraged all he had, prepared endlessly for the day, only for his chance to be shattered because someone read a thread on Twitter and deciding to put the theory to test.

The man later came to tweet (yes, I earnestly followed the thread) how his daughter was elated. I’m glad she was glad, but at what cost?

This is my problem with the ripple effect- the unknowns (I’ve always had a problem with unknowns, probability and uncertainties. For a basic carbon-based life-form, I have a lot of guts for someone who doesn’t even understand the universe he currently inhabits.) The thought that every action or inaction has an untold, unforeseen repercussion (The law of unintended consequences) is scary. It’s neither good nor bad, just there, unknown and we live our lives oblivious to it.

Everyone reading this has come across such moments; near-death experience, accident, injury, ‘na me fuck up’/ “had I known” moment etc. when if an action or inaction had taken a minute longer or been delayed a minute, when if someone had been quicker or slower, if the universe had aligned faster or mother nature had taken her time, something wouldn’t have happened or, wouldn’t have happened that way.

We have scars, marks, memories to back up those times, but that are for the ones we know. What about the ones we don’t? the ones we had no control over? Yesterday I witnessed a friend confess how in primary school she falsely-admitted to a boy ‘touching’ her because she was being beaten and force-fed ‘confession’. She admitted, so it’d all end and she got a beating for it. Who knows how it went for him?

The ripple-effect has far-reaching consequences, our favorite superheroes all have an origin story and most of the darkest of them are usually victims of actions or inactions they had no control over.

SPOILERRR!!!!! The story of Bruce Wayne (Batman) comes to mind. SPOILERRRRRR!!!!!!

One more (recent) memory and we share The Grace;

December 2018, I was supposed to have left school finally, with my MSc.

I finished the learning part of college in 2014, went on (compulsory, stressful and ultimately pointless) IT for 6 months, wrote my final exams and immediately after, went on Gulliver’s Travel-esque holiday. I visited different states, flew, swam, dove, dropped, climbed… I basically did it all. Fast-forward to 2015; went back to Kuala Lumpur, submitted passport for visa-renewal and was basically chopping life, touring uni’s, seeking for the one that suited my fancy and in close proximity to friends’.

Visa never got renewed. Never went to Uni. Never got that MSc.

Some Nigerians somewhere had used their student visa to engage in illicit activities, prompting the country’s hierarchy to decide to limit ‘certain’ peoples’ student visas. Unfortunately (for me), I was part of the select few.

They saw they had renewed my visa twice before, and started questioning what I needed a third visa for. My school put up a good fight, my dad went ballistic in Nigeria and wrote countlessly to the high commission, but alas, here I am, 5 years later, doing the writing equivalent of selling wigs.

This ought to be tagged as a cross between ‘Tomorrow’ and other fairy tales & The Ripple Effect.

Now, with this pandemic ravaging the earth, our actions and inactions are probably more nuanced. You could be the reason someone stays home, goes out, infects someone else, gets infected, dies.

Stay home, wash your hands, eat well, share this post and more importantly- think more before you act or do not. Even if there will be more far-reaching consequences than we can fathom.

Love and light.

'Tomorrow' and other fairy tales.

‘TOMORROW’ AND OTHER FAIRY TALES

When I was much younger (some 30+ years ago), I was talking with my (cousin, whose age difference made me call him) uncle, he asked what I’d want to be by 25. “rich” was my short but sweet answer. I told him I was gonna be a millionaire by 25. While I’m very sure Uncle Graham has forgotten this conversation that happened in our grandma’s living room, it has always stuck with me and acted as a kind of motivation (and weirdly enough, assurance), convincing me that if by the age when I didn’t understand the complexities of the world, I had already stated that I would be a millionaire by 25, then why wouldn’t it happen?

‘Tomorrow’ and other fairy tales.

Some years ago, when I was crazy in love, overdosed on (pre-cocaine) Bruno Mars and dreaming of everything I will do for this girl and our unborn children, we often made the egregious and common error of talking about what we wanted from ‘our’ future.

 We promised each other the world, everything in it and everything out of it (Radimene, you still owe me a daughter). We were so sure our ‘tomorrow’ would come to fruition and it will bring with it everything we had promised ourselves.

‘Tomorrow’ and other fairy tales.

“Tomorrow waits for no man” is one of my father’s favorite quotes, usually followed by “you’re not proactive”. Coming from a man who basically lives for doing things at the last moment, it didn’t really sting as much as it should have, but eventually, I got the message.

James 4:14 sums it up when it succinctly reads “ye know not what tomorrow will bring”.

“Tomorrow is not promised”. I grew up Nigerian and Christian, so I have heard a million variants of those phrases.

Even recently, amongst friends, when I hear them talk about the future, I always tell them it’s arrogant talking about ‘tomorrow’ as if we subscribed for life and are sure of it. As if we were in control. As if we aren’t all just a speck, an insignificant blip in the run of things. We talk about the future like we matter. We ‘plan’ and organize like one pandemic can’t shut the whole world down. We talk about tomorrow like we have a smidgen of control how it pans out.

‘Tomorrow’ and other fairy tales.

If you were to ask me now what I planned for the future, my honest answer will be finishing from Bells, going to Europe the earliest opportunity I have and never coming back.

Seems I’m yet to learn.

‘Tomorrow’ and other fairy tales.