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The Dying Habits of an Agnostic – Tahirah Abdulazeez

Published by Osemhen

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays”

courtesy of deviantart.com

The first humans, our direct ancestors, walked this Earth maybe 250, 000 years ago. The oldest monotheistic religion, depending on your point of view, is 5,000 years old. As we evolved, we discovered what we needed to survive in instalments. And then we refined the ideas. Along the way, there are stops and starts, a linear path will suddenly split off and go its own way, but the original idea continues to deepen, to distil. To me, faith is a type of intellectual refinement. It is the outcome of reason, an embodiment of, not its antithesis.

For years I was an agnostic, unsure whether there was a God. After stumbling around looking for answers, I came upon the philosopher Kierkegaard. In Either/Or, he postulated that there are three types of development. The aesthetic, which is where you develop your tastes as an individual, the ethical where you assemble your value system, and the religious, which is the most important, when you realise that all the answers of how to lead a good life are with God. Simply put, of course. At the point of reading that I figured maybe I was in my ethical, values building stage, and one day I would cross over into faith. And I suppose I have done just that.

It hasn’t been so easy though. As always, when you try to elevate yourself, your mentality, to change from one set of behaviours to another, the one thing you will have to conquer are your bad habits, the old system of thinking keeps popping up, sneakily trying to usurp your good intentions. For me the one habit, among many, which I struggle with daily, is prayer. When you are agnostic, prayer feels a little absurd. Because who are you talking to? Years ago I developed an ideology about prayer partly inspired by a nun I’d heard speak during a debate. A massive survey had been done about the peoples of the world and religion. She was on a panel of people discussing the results. About prayer, she said that when you reach a certain point of understanding and submission, everything you do, watering plants, meditating, even breathing is a prayer. For some reason I was moved by that. I thought about the Universe. I had believed in a form of interconnectedness, that this energy flowed within us all, humanity is a massive grid powered by an unknowable force. So, as an agnostic, my idea of prayer was to be still and diffuse into that feeling. I didn’t ask for anything, didn’t start with Dear God and end with Amen. I just tried to tap into that grid, that energy.

Of course now, that isn’t enough. There are rules, codes and laid down systems of prayer, especially for a Muslim. The difference between both types is important. Because the one thing about being irreligious is you cannot give yourself mercy, or forgiveness, even when you are tapping into energies. But sometimes, I find myself doing the old thing, lying around, waiting for the Universe to fall into me, to be made small, yet made to feel whole.

On Punctuality

Published by Osemhen

 Value :  a person’s principles or standards of behavior; one’s judgment of what is important in life. (Oxford Dictionary)

3 weeks ago, I began a Leadership Development course. There were at least 40 of us, most of us Nigerian. Our instructors were Nigerian (Funmi), Australian (Britta) and Dutch (Ocke).

I learnt a lot in that course; I might blog about my experience in the near future. Right now, though, I want to tell you about an incident that happened on Day 4 of the 5-Day course. But a little backtracking first. Day 1, and we all identified values that were most important to us. Ocke told us that his people, the Dutch, were very practical and blunt, and so he appreciated directness, respect for other people and punctuality. He laid quite a bit of emphasis on just how important punctuality was to him. How he always was punctual to his appointments out of respect for other people and their time, and expected them to return the courtesy. Long and short of the story, he extracted a promise from all of us that we would be punctual to our sessions.

Fast forward Day 4. It rained. Heavy. Medium. Heavy. Medium. Class was scheduled to start at 8 am. At 8.20 am, less than half the class was present. I was among this number, and so I got to watch Ocke redden with anger, tapping his foot impatiently while trying to keep up a pleasant demeanour. It didn’t last long. Eventually,  he stood and reminded us, in a voice that barely contained his irritation, of our promise on Day 1. He pointed out that he, a foreigner, had brought an umbrella with him because he knew it rained a lot in June. He couldn’t understand why “But it’s raining” was a valid excuse for being late to an appointment. He didn’t understand why we hadn’t brought umbrellas, considering that we should know our weather better than he. Britta, another facilitator couldn’t understand why we couldn’t make the sacrifice of making the ten-minute walk in the rain, especially as it wasn’t that heavy.

We had our excuses. Rain could cause a cold. It was unsafe. We didn’t have umbrellas. And at the bottom of the entire matter was something none of us could voice. We had automatically assumed that class wouldn’t start at 8 because it rained. A silly assumption, baseless when you give it some serious thought, but an assumption we acted on all the same.

Ocke used some pretty harsh words on us. And he ended with a classic, “I’m sorry but this sort of attitude is why Nigeria will keep being the way it is, despite all the good things going for you.”

Touché.

We were all professionals, mostly Engineers, some with an MSc. already. We were educated, articulate, young, vibrant, smart people from middle-class to upper-class backgrounds. But it didn’t occur to us to sacrifice our personal comfort to keep a promise we had made. And should we have had to “promise”? Punctuality is basic courtesy, it’s professional, it should be taken for granted.

Nigeria has many problems, “African Time” doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. My opinion is that our value system is inherently flawed, and so it cascades down to the other, more practical things. Like being on time for even the least important of appointments, out of respect for the other person and his/her time.  Like making personal sacrifices to keep to a promise we’ve made that now seems unreasonable. Because we gave our word, see?

At this same course, I saw a poster that read, “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”

I made some deductions from this quote. Our country is the sum  of us all. We get the exact kind of country we deserve. Conversely, if we started to act like we ALREADY had the Nigeria of our dreams, we would DESERVE the Nigeria of our dreams. And that would be a first step to actually  getting it. And so I made a personal commitment  to be punctual to my appointments, no matter the cost. Honestly, most times it doesn’t require a “sacrifice” more difficult than getting up from bed fifteen minutes earlier, or logging off my computer earlier than I planned. But there are times when I’ve had to be heroic and ninja-like in my activities. Once, I actually ran to the amazement of the people I was whizzing past!

It might not seem like much, but I think that if we all adopted a value and tried to live it as heroically as we could, we would (pardon the cliché) make a difference. So what value would you like to work on? And do you have any tips/experiences on  punctuality?

Learning to Forget – Tahirah Abdulazeez

Published by Osemhen

It may sound weird but when I first met Tahirah, I was struck by how similar our thought patterns were.  We’re both nerds, scientists turned writers (or is it vice versa), and just the littlest bit dreamy. 🙂 We met at the Farafina Workshop, and I can’t help but imagine that even if we hadn’t then, eventually we would have. I present to you Tahirah (I also love her name) Abdulazeez. She blogs at http://avosilver.wordpress.com

Years ago, I was asked two questions that  resonated with me. The first was suitably mind bending, a philosophical trick question. The second seemed harmless.

“What is your first memory?”

Simple enough, but, it has been like one of those Chinese boxes. One answer or an attempt at an answer opens up a box with a smaller one inside, and so on until infinity.

My first memory is of a car accident. We are in a Peugeot 504. The car crash happens and we end up at the side of the road. It is the middle of nowhere; the destination had been Zaria, where my mother is heading to continue her Master’s degree. Also present are my grandmother, an aunt and I. The aunt leaps out of the semi mangled car and starts to freak out. My stern-faced, kind-hearted grandmother, a consummate disciplinarian steps calmly out of the car after her. She is tall, long limbed and her head tie is tipped back. She walks toward my freaked out aunt and slaps her hard. Not the patented back hand of a telenovela. A proper one, she lifts her long arm from the shoulder and brings it down unto her cheeks. My aunt gapes, her face wet with tears and immobile with shock.

Long after I had injected the memory question into every lull in conversation to shock it back to life, after it had veritably become a party trick, I ran this scene by my mother. She waved me away with a dismissive hand and irritated snort. “That cannot be your first memory; you were only a baby when that happened”

I must have heard the story so many times that it stuck. In my mind I was totally there, saw the whole thing, but it is a false memory. An experience may be fleeting, but the neurons that record them aren’t.  We help to keep memories alive by thinking about events often, stimulating the neurons, lighting them up. As this happens, over and over, a type of neuron-replicating protein creates first a network, then a blue print. In other words, what you choose to remember creates a particular type of mind and builds your cognitive architecture.

If memories are the building blocks of our personality, who we are, then the kinds of memories we feed, that we offer constant stimuli to, differentiates us, makes us individuals. You don’t know that this is happening, until one day in casual conversation someone mentions ATP and you have serious trouble remembering Krebbs Cycle, much to the shame of the A in Chemistry from 10 years ago. And yet, you have no trouble creating a vivid picture of a car accident you never saw. Or remembering the exact way the shoulders of three girls you had spent all night bonding with in the hostel close against you in broad daylight. Your mind has become a fort for memories of hurt and rejection, false memories and bits of trivia like, “a frog swallows its food with its eyeballs”. When you reach for something higher on the mental shelf, you pat uselessly at the dust and cobwebs for things you didn’t give your brain a chance to sustain.

People believe intelligence is a hardwired trait which cannot be improved upon. That even if you did find a way to hike up your IQ points using sophisticated or crude neurological techniques, the moment you stop, your brain resets itself.  It is not a muscle you can train.

Turns out it isn’t true.

Willing yourself to forget certain memories is like demolishing the rickety structures tented all over your brain. You have the chance to create a kind of sophisticated intelligence that lets you leap with elegance and speed from one piece of knowledge picked up ten years ago to a problem you’re facing today. You can build your own mind into something truly beautiful if you can just let yourself forget.

It's a Madt, Madt, Madt (sic) World – Tolu Oloruntoba

Published by Osemhen

Clash of the Tolus this week 🙂 Dr. Oloruntoba shares with three other young men the dubious honour of outwitting me. Twice. It was the Zain Africa Challenge; and his team eventually lifted the cup. If you know me personally, you know that I don’t swallow defeat easily. And so it’s a testament to Tolu’s character that, within a year, I went from bearing a king-sized grudge to numbering him among my most treasured friends. He’s the Chief Editor/Publisher of Klorofyl, the digital mag I’m always raving about. Follow him on Twitter @toluoloruntoba.

A Special Edition of the Newsweek Magazine early this year had the very compelling theme: ‘It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world.’ Of course it is. And if you live in the developing world, it is mad, sometimes, to the fourth degree (or madt, in #NigerianTwitter-ese).

It was a potent cocktail of inspiring stories we grew up on – of fairy-tales or folk tales, and Hollywood, adventure and possibility. We wanted to believe we COULD… we wanted, (needed?) to transcend our limitations and circumstances, to apprehend elusive magic, and deploy it … to be Cinderella, or Pan… then we woke up smack in the centre of the madt world.

We were taught, early on, the ‘rules’ of this world: the nail that sticks out gets hammered; do as little as you can get away with; take it easy- and don’t cause trouble; streets don’t smile; ‘Sneak past, don’t be jangling any bells around here, son!’- We were taught to be good mice: to cower, scamper and creep around the edges of the room, and what we want. A little cheese is okay and if you can corner larger crumbs, when no one scary wants, or is fighting for it, good for you!

This is what they taught us.

And you have brilliant friends with Masters degrees. And quite unemployed. You’ve seen those caught outside in the cold of self-employment-gone-awry. Love is scoffed at – marriage before it’s too late is more functional, see? Everyone just wants to get ahead with their own families. Who wants to be stuck in the cold having tried, and failed, at the lofty? Risk and uncertainty have been punished, around you, long as you remember.  ‘E fit be you’, you find, so you duck for your life in those dark alleys, where you just want to be safe. And dreams of adventure, and possibility, shiver and pale before the giant snicker that is madtness.

Gimme that low hanging fruit

The impulse is to grab for the basic stuff: ‘good’ course in University, ‘good’ 9 to 5 job, connections to those ‘that matter’, daily three-square meals, affordable rent… Read medicine, or engineering, or law. Produce grandkids. Or enter the back-scratch-and-rub exchanges of contract corruption, or self-perpetuating politics .

‘No, sir, don’t rock the boat.’
‘Entrepreneurship? Government work is good!’
‘Non-profit? Have you fed even yourself?’
‘Ideas? Why don’t you just find a real job (and quit dreaming)?’

You understand that those who tell you this may mean well. They, after all, just want you safely far from the maw of the beast. And so begin, the “lives of quiet desperation”, Thoreau said, “that the mass of men lead”.  If I’ve learned anything in my few years, a key one would be the veracity of this statement.

Maslow Was Right

What safety in this madt world really demands is the pursuit, simply of the security of our physiological needs:  breathing, food, shelter, sex; or security of health, family and means of livelihood. All to be found at the bottom of that most apt of descriptions of what makes us tick, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Desperation comes from our thirst, and quest for the sublime- we need esteem, and more importantly, self-actualisation and some meaning in this world, true true. I, for instance, am a Medical Doctor, but a publisher at heart.

I posit that the low hanging fruit cannot satisfy that craving we have for meaning in our lives and work… for significance, adventure and fulfilment, for that vim and joie du vivre. We were made for more. You know this.

I’m not one to scoff at normalcy, or responsibility, but what about that little extra? What about those themes you’ve exchanged for safety? Will you forgive yourself for those abandoned dreams of enterprise? What would you do to improve yourself, if you had no fear of failure? How far will you inch on the road to what could be? (What? Has this become a motivational piece? :o)

Call of the wild

We all know we’d like to make more of our lives, in the final analysis. We want to enjoy it, help others along, and leave a legacy. We want to inspire, and achieve more of the worthwhile. So we can’t be good mice all our lives. We want to be epic. But will we?

Well, if it’s a madt world, we’ll just have to give it a little of our own, won’t we? A brand all our own. A Bulldog tenacity with what we’re really here for. We can’t, and shan’t, back down, so how much can we do now, and where can we begin?

Er, this isn’t a Ted-post about what I’ve done, but what I should, what we must do. Let’s go. And please remind me I said all this, in 10 years! 🙂

The Importance of Being Earnest…Or Tolu – Tolu Talabi

Published by Osemhen

Continuing the TedPosts with one by Tolu Talabi. I met Tolu at the Farafina Creative Writing Workshop last year. I literally have no words to describe him but for an idea on how his mind works, follow him on Twitter @naijarookie or get on his blog http://naijarookie.wordpress.com. Seriously. Check out his blog.

 

I don’t know if you saw this a few weeks ago. There was a two leg soccer match between the Under-17 female teams of Nigeria and Kenya. At the end of the first leg, which Nigeria won, the Kenyan team complained that Nigeria cheated because they had players that were over the age of 17. The Nigerian sports commentator reporting said (very smugly) that Kenya should stop making excuses for losing.

I found the whole episode hilarious (Nigeria using under-aged players? No way!) but it got me thinking about age and how much we expect from people at a young age.

You see, at 16, even if you’re not being called upon to play football for your country, you’re probably finishing up secondary school and making one of the most important decisions of your life about what you want to do after.

Actually, if you think about it, you already made the main part of that decision two years ago in SS1 when you decided whether to be an art, science, commercial, or social science student.

So you start making this important decision at 14, and two years later you put the finishing touches on that decision by selecting what field of study you want in University.

If you’re fortunate, you finish secondary school and roll right into university. And then if you’re doubly lucky, swept on by the rushing wave of your genius, all that studying gets converted into a job as soon you graduate. Of course, there are some of us, who have hitches in between, a few years waiting here, a few years waiting there, but we all get spat out into the same pool at the end.

Now you’re an adult and you’re kicking off a career and life based on a decision you made at 14.

A decision that was either made for you by people with your best interests at heart, or one you made yourself with whatever wealth of knowledge you had back then.

That is like having to select your spouse at 5. 

I know it is cute, and sounds romantic to say that you have always wanted to be a doctor, an accountant, or an engineer.

But years later, when you know yourself a little better, you owe it to yourself to re-evaluate that path you have chosen. I think at every point where you learn a bit more about yourself, you should sit back and find out how this fits into the picture of your life that you are currently drawing.

While we all want our lives to go well, the truth is, if everything went smoothly, there would be no time for reflection. The hitches, those tough waiting periods between schools and while waiting for proper jobs, allow us to drift to what naturally interests us, and should force us to find what we are absolute best at.

Sure, it might frustrate your friends and family to have you chase after every whim, but you have a chance here to be a more fully fleshed out character than if you had stuck to your day job. The thing is, very few of us are “pure” anything, pure business administrators, or pure lawyers. You are a mish-mash of a million things. An estate surveyor, with a quick head for numbers, who took some computer lessons, loves music and trained with the choir, has a critical eye for art, writes a little, likes children, has a mild interest in sustainable development and alternate energy sources and remembers every episode of Voltron.

All this knowledge you have amassed is a part of you, so don’t dismiss it. Everything you touch should be coloured with this rich brush that is uniquely you.

Somewhere between the skills you have acquired and the innate passions you discover over time, is a sweet spot that gives you the most satisfaction. And until you find that spot and tap into it, everything you do will be generic. You will merely be following someone else’s footsteps and chasing someone else’s dreams.

“Every man is born an original, sadly most die copies” – Abraham Lincoln.

 

The Gospel According to Mark

Published by Osemhen

Today, I put up the second Ted-Post by Mark Amaza. I met Mark (Twitter handle: @amasonic) at the Zain Africa Challenge in 2009. In the 3 years I’ve known him, Mark’s passion and fierce patriotism have inspired me. When I got the idea for the Ted-Posts, I knew it would be incomplete if he didn’t write in. So here. I present his piece.

I have always been very proud of my heritage and my roots as a Nigerian first, then a Christian and a Northerner next. There is always pride in my voice when I meet people from the South and I tell them that I am a Christian from Borno State, and how I tell everyone how multi-religious my extended family is, the fact that my maternal grandfather is a Muslim and was even the muezzin of his village till old age caught up with him, and how I have numerous uncles and aunts who are Muslims, some of whom grew up with us.

But this nice story of religious co-existence is not everywhere in the North. As a child growing up, I also got used to taunts about my faith; being called ‘arne’, which means infidel in Hausa; living in the perpetual fear of not going out on Friday afternoons, lest religious crises start and I am caught up in it. I saw and continually see qualified Christians denied government appointments or not being elected to offices because of their faith, the closest to me being my own dear mother who went through an almost life-shattering ordeal of persecution in her workplace. I also experience the mutual distrust that exists between Muslims and Christians in the North to the point that a few years ago, I came to the shocking epiphany that a Maiduguri boy like me barely had any Muslim friends at home.

I do not know which one is worse: the fact that the constant persecution and maltreatment Christians in Muslim-majority Northern states have faced has gotten us to the point that we do not even aspire to be anything more than just exist and get by; or the fact that once I cross the Niger and go South or I meet Southerners, I am accused of being a conspirator in what is perceived as a grand plan to annihilate all Southerners in the North. To my accusers, the fact that I am a Christian makes little difference to them. I am a Northerner: that is all that matters.

In retrospect, it is the combination of all these things that make me who I am today: my background, the sum total of all my experiences, and lastly, how I have responded to them. I have always devoted my writings and political ideology to creating a society where each and every person is afforded equal opportunity, not less or more because of his religious faith or ethnic background, issues which he had no control over. I always dream of a country where, to paraphrase the words of Dr King, ‘we will be judged not by our religion or ethnicity, but by the content of our character.’ For me, the dream that one day, my children would feel free to walk down the streets of Bauchi or Kano or Maiduguri on a hot Friday afternoon, worrying about the sun’s intensity and not about their safety is one I continually hold on to.

The thing that gladdens my heart is that there are millions of others, even across the religious divide that are hoping and praying for this egalitarian society, and also thousands of others who are willing to lend their voice and efforts to see this become a reality. No one deserves to live in such circumstances as I, or millions of others did, being constantly reminded of our second-class citizen status, and in some instances, at the expense of our lives.

It does not matter if we are Christians or Muslims. In the end, we are all children of Abraham.

Broken – Joseph E. Parker

Published by Osemhen

I first “met” Joseph last year when I was sourcing for writers to write in for the soon-to-be-released City Issue of Klorofyl. I use the term “met” loosely. We met on Twitter, and even though we’ve been in correspondence for a while, we’re yet to meet in person. 

Joseph is a poet. There aren’t a lot of poets whose work I understand and appreciate, but I’m a big fan of his. His poems are uncommonly fluid and lucid, and I find them beautiful. I can’t tell you how pleased I was that he agreed to write in for this series and I recommend you stop by his blog when you’re done here.

 

Image

Some of the Kids I Met

“Something’s missing,” John Mayer wrote, “and I don’t know what it is.” Something is missing. Something essential. Something necessary to making a difference in the world. And most are afraid to find out what it is. Why is this? Why do we feel this void within? We long for what we can’t have and  inevitably grow  disillusioned. Why should it come as a surprise? We keep searching for meaning and ultimately we end up feeling tired, worn out, and frustrated. 

I have come to loath the overuse of such phrases like “finding yourself” and “discovering your purpose.” There’s something ultimately insincere and unfulfilling about the promise of a “better you” that doesn’t involve pain and sacrifice.

 The real road of meaning is dirty and full of jagged rocks, even pieces of glass. It’s long and difficult, and that’s how we would prefer it. Jesus called this “the road to life that was so narrow few actually found it.” John Bunyan depicts this as an epic struggle in which the hero must fight his way through opposition into paradise. Emily Dickinson wrote about it in a poem: “Success is counted sweetest / By those who ne’er succeed / To comprehend nectar / Requires sorest need.”

 Despite the fact that the self-help section at our bookstores taunts us with half-truths and false hopes, we keep searching. We want purpose. We long for it. Every day, we’re looking for meaning. You can see it in people’s eyes at the mall, in the products we buy and never use, in the books on our shelves, in the clothes that we buy that somehow never make us look how we dreamed they would.

 But nothing works till you encounter the world’s deep need, till you have a revelation of how you can be part of something greater than the consumerist pursuit of self.

  And then,  it all changes. The result is being “broken.”

 I first got broken in a “backward” town called Obayantor in Edo state. Our NGO went there to  assess the area and attempt to quench the thirst of its inhabitants. I wept as I saw hungry children looking so despondent, hopeless and desperate; you could sense that they had no idea of a “future.” The worst thing you can take away from a child is hope. I was wrecked by a world that I had never known—a world that was becoming real for the first time to me.

It’s the unfamiliar that calls us to be more than we could ever be on our own. And in that period of discomfort, we learn something about life—real life—that we didn’t know before. Something cataclysmic or maybe even gradual happens. There is a nagging feeling in our souls that something’s been wrong with the world for a while, and when this moment of breaking happens, the feeling is no longer bearable. You no longer “fit” into the old world. You’ve seen too much, heard too many things, and you can’t go back to ordinary living.

 I am writing this not to give you answers. I just want to ask: What if  there’s more to the meaning of life than your own story? What if you have a crucial part to play in an overarching narrative? This isn’t just altruism or compassion or charity ; it’s a shot at living the lives that we were meant to live, that we’re scared to live, that the world needs us to live. And that we need us to live.

 Random acts of service to the needy around you are great way to start. You don’t have to work for the Red Cross to make a difference. Cure the “desert places” in your street, your community. Help the homeless man around that street corner.

Make this a lifestyle. You know this. I know it. It’s time. It’s time to act.

 

Joseph E. Parker

Ted-Posts, Lent and Broken Laptops

Published by Osemhen

 Early this year, one of my friends asked me, “If you could give a Ted-Talk on any subject of your choice, what would you talk about?”

It took me awhile to answer but I replied, “The importance of singularity, of not taking your cues from the crowd and daring to stand alone.”

But his question has haunted me over the past one month and I realize now that I’d actually talk about something else, if I got the chance. I’d talk about the importance of friends. Because no matter how much I want to believe that I have always done my thing, it would be slightly dishonest. I am the sum-total of all the people I have let into my life. And everything good about me, I have because I aped someone else. Ditto everything bad 🙂 (this is a sub to relevant parties. You know yourself).

But honestly, I have been privileged to know and count among my friends, some pretty cool people. And I want to share them with you via “Ted-Posts”. If you’ve listened to a Ted-Talk, you know that they’re usually short, meaningful and give new insights on the most diverse of topics. So I asked some of my friends to give their own version of a Ted-Talk, only in written form. The very first one goes up on Wednesday, and I hope you like it. Plus, if you (or someone you know) would be interested in writing a Ted-Post, let me know. Just ask yourself the question: If you could talk for five minutes about anything in the world, what would you talk about?

In Other News

So, last Tuesday, my Dell XPS 15z laptop slipped from a sofa, fell less than 2 feet and soft-landed on its side, on a carpeted floor. Nothing to worry about, I thought. Till the screen refused to light up, and the computer refused to boot. I had to replace the screen *sob* and reformat the hard disk *wail* and I lost all my info and data.

Everything. The novel I’ve been working on for the past one year. My pictures from university. My various reports, presentations and what-not. All gone. I’m still in shock; it hasn’t quite hit me how much I’ve lost. I  promised myself I wouldn’t get sentimental, or sad but it’s hard not to grieve a little. I’ve learnt my lesson now. First of all, not to leave my laptop on surfaces of dubious stability and secondly, to always, always back up my data. To that end, I’m getting an external hard drive. It seems like medicine after death but hey… *shrug*

And it’s Lent. That time of year when we do a lot (A LOT) of reflection on our short-comings, and how we can better live out our Christianity. It’s a reminder about the  Crucifixion, but also ultimately a reminder about God’s enduring love

. A lot of people have asked me about the Catholic practice of sacrifice and mortification during this period. I actually thought those practices went across all denominations but it would seem I was wrong. So here it goes. Many people are fasting, true. It’s a form of reparation for sins. But more importantly, it’s a very physical way of reminding oneself to be contemplative during the day. Every hunger pang reminds you why you haven’t eaten (I’m fasting), and that in turn reminds you why you’re fasting (it’s Lent, and I’ve chosen to draw closer to God and subdue my flesh). So invariably, you’d find your thoughts turning more and more to God, as opposed to when you weren’t fasting.

The fasting is not to win salvation, don’t get it twisted. And not everyone fasts. Some people give up TV, others chocolate, others alcohol. Any licit pleasure can be given up. A side-effect of this “fasting” from a particular pleasure is that it just might wean you off a possible addiction. For instance, last year I gave up Facebook for the whole of Lent. And after Lent, I found it hard to pick up from where I left off. These days, I daresay I use Facebook more responsibly. Let’s pray this year’s sacrifice works just as well 🙂

On Missing Lagos

Published by Osemhen

The 3rd Mainland Bridge, main artery between the Lagos Mainland and the Island.

You were born, bred and “buttered” in Lagos. It wasn’t that your parents consciously made the effort. Secondary school was incidental; the schools you applied to outside Lagos didn’t want you. Ditto, university. By the time NYSC rolled around, you weren’t interested in seeing the rest of the country. Lagos was home, and you couldn’t imagine leaving it for the hinterlands.

You eventually left, though. Work made you. You figured at the time that it wasn’t a big deal; Lagos is an hour away by air. The new climate is wetter, but pretty much the same. The houses are the same, the people as well. The difference in accents is only there if one looks for it. You had friends, relatives who had been transplanted as well but they didn’t seem the worse for wear. You’ll be fine, they said, it’ll be fine.

No one told you about the yen. You didn’t know you would be so sensitive, that you would miss the intangible; sleeping in your old bed, knowing your way around town, familiarity, belonging. You don’t see yourself ever fitting in this new city, and the thought fills you with panic sometimes.

The pining is all, the missing is all.

You return to Lagos at intervals and you realize that you have begun to colour it with the hues of a paradise that it wasn’t. On the outside, it’s the same, noisy, rowdy, trafficky (sic), hot. But it’s where family is, and a church of people who know you and smile at you, and shops that you’re familiar with, and a tailor who knows your body better than you do, and the beach, and grins that make your heart beat faster, and your friends…who are changing too. Getting engaged, changing jobs, developing new tastes, leaving too.

Lagos is not the same. You have left, and she ignores you, leaving you standing on the fringe, staring in through the glass, an outsider, an unwanted child.  Fear crystallizes, you belong nowhere, do you?

Your Lagos, that Lagos is gone, fossilized in the amber of memory where it is safe to colour in the hues of a paradise that it never was.

I'm Developing A Pot-Belly and Other Sundry Matters

Published by Osemhen

And it sucks. Pun intended.

Saturday, I travelled to Enugu. I’d never been there, and just the thought of the journey by road filled me with all sorts of queasiness. I imagined  armed robbers, deadly encounters with speeding trailers, flat tyres, the driver missing his way… Fortunately, things weren’t so exciting. The trip was 4 hours of unrelieved tedium I spent thinking, reading, wondering.

About doing the right things versus doing what was right. About things like adulthood and responsibility and maturity. Someone once wrote that the first mark of maturity is serenity. If she’s right, then I don’t think I’ll ever be mature. I can’t be serene; I have some sort of mental Tourette’s. I fidget, and when I start talking, sometimes I can’t stop. It’s who I am. I can’t say I don’t wish I was serene. I do. But it’s not a gift the good Lord has seen fit to bless me with yet. Is adulthood something that happens to you whether or not you want it, or is it something you choose? Do you wake up one day and say Okay, I’m an adult from today. I’ve got to act like one.? And if you act something for long enough, does it become reality?

What’s real sef, what’s not? What’s important, what’s not?

My day job asks a lot of me; physically and mentally. I have tried to respond accordingly, but so much more has suffered. My blog, for one. My writing. My still-in-infancy social life in this new environment. My interior life (spiritual). My washboard abs! 😀  I can swear that I’m developing what could turn into a paunch if left unattended.

One of the good things about studying Engineering is that you get a lot of practice solving for ‘x’, an unknown but desired quantity. All of that thinking plus timely advice from good friends, and I have a sort of solution pack, not exhaustive but definitely a first step towards inner coherence.

  • Start to think of writing/socializing/prayer/personal health not as luxuries but as priorities.
  • Forget multi-tasking, and focus on doing one thing at a time and doing it well.
  • Manage time better.

I deactivated my Twitter account. I found out that on the days I tweeted a lot, I wrote a lot less in my diary. I don’t think that’s healthy so I’m now on a Twitter hiatus, sort of. It was fun while it lasted, and I have a feeling I’ll go back later but for the next few months, I intend to dedicate all my wisecracks, wit, sheer brilliance 😀 to my diary and my blog. Yay?

This year, I want to try something new with eurekanaija. The idea is still kicking around in my head but I think you’ll like it. Will keep you updated as it progresses.

Did you miss me?