‘Are you mad?’ is a dated phrase that has always lain thickly on my tongue since I consciously started wandering through life, no longer with a sense of wonder but with familiar eyes observing its unfairness and audacity.

Although it can seem biting, it has always been so easily recognisable not just as a rhetorical question but a habitual phrase commonly used to validate the sanity of people you doubted to be normal.

I do not know where I picked up this phrase from but what I know is that it followed me. I was younger, my movements carefully measured between distances from church to school and my temper hushed even before it could ignite a response at the quick threat of being flogged. Yet it stayed fondly on my lips like my favourite lip balm, velvety, weightless with a subtle sheen.

Unsurprisingly, ‘are you mad?’ became my default question for any strange behaviour I could and couldn’t fathom. If you were rude to me, I would ask. If you asked me to repeat something I said even when I knew you heard me, I would ask. If you played too much with me, blurring boundaries with derogatory comments, I would ask. For playful banter, I would ask and for slightly serious ones, I would ask but this time it would end with a lower inflection to ascertain seriousness.

But sometimes the phrase is not enough. Sometimes it ends up as an empty question hanging in the air instead of becoming a dagger piercing the body, soul and spirit to absolute destruction. Like one time in junior secondary school. I had followed my mother to the market reluctantly trailing her fast-paced movement with my face scrunched up and my mind already regretting the decision to be a dutiful child.

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I was conscious. I was finicky. I was also very averse to people touching me because it triggered more visits to the dermatologist so when I felt someone grope my bum in the market, I knew immediately that it was not a mistake. As soon as I turned, I was too stunned to speak but my favourite phrase was already at the edge of my lips, flying out of my mouth even before I saw his full figure.

My annoyance rekindled, refusing to be quelled when it met the eyes of a gaunt, shabby-looking man with sunken cheeks.

There was a leer dancing in his eyes masked with surprise at my question. By this time, some market women had gathered in the market separating us amidst my screams and his threat to beat me up. I remember trembling, with tears in my eyes wondering why the market women apologized to him and not me, scrambling to search for my mother who was now looking for me.

Other times, ‘are you mad?’ fondly takes the form of a regular expression to share intimacy in a light-hearted way and may accompany a playful smirk too, like when my friend teases me because I’m smiling at a text, a mushy movie scene, or replaying an Instagram video to oblivion.

There are times this question has met dead silence too, like when my uncle had threatened to put a live chicken on my bed knowing I was afraid of chickens and my response was to question his sanity by asking him if he was mad. It felt like my mouth was no longer my own and had fully disconnected from my brain because the air stilled between us for a long time and the ground refused to swallow me.

The beautiful part of questioning sanity is that my sanity is not spared either. Sometimes, I have to ask myself if I’m mad.

If someone asks me a simple question like ‘do you still want to work in a hospital?’ I ask myself ‘Am I mad?’ as a response instead of just saying no because the phrase forbids a follow-up question. It is also more resounding than just no. Anytime I ask myself if I’m mad, it is laced with a semblance of surprise as a reminder to check my lunatic tendencies.

Many times, ‘are you mad?’ helps to keep things in check and shortens my reactions summarising them with just a question. Did I see the video of the man saying his wife is not his spec publicly or not the most beautiful woman he knows? Did I see the video of the man who did this and that? Instead of rummaging through different words in my brain to express my disgust, I only ask a simple question ‘Is he mad?’ which captures everything so easily.

The Yoruba translation of ‘are you mad?’ is even more cutting and when I witness its use in full display, it almost becomes laughable. Like teenagers walking back from school exchanging these phrases amongst themselves over baseless arguments like a familiar homage. Like a driver to another driver on the road after making an unexpected turn. Like a conductor to a thug who suddenly became entitled to more money because he feels like it.

The exchange is sharp, witty, and immediately understood. Just a phrase, yet it immediately permeates into the subconscious to evoke a reaction. On the road, I have seen the phrase accompanied by the gesturing of the hands of the asker towards the receiver, almost becoming a salutation. They do not smile in unison all the time but when they do, it feels like they have fully embraced the madness inherent in them.

Over the years, I have noticed that ‘are you mad?’ has slowly dissolved in my tongue, my lips still unapologetically craving the aftertaste.

These days, there is a longing to be more prim so there are perfect synonyms to soften the way it pierces the receiver. Like ‘that’s crazy’, ‘don’t be silly’, ‘oh, for real?’, ‘are you okay though?’. These are more widely accepted. Why won’t they be? They are now glazed with softness and false curiosity. I want to question your madness but I want to first find out if you can handle this questioning.

It is largely unfair to sit with one’s mouth shut because silence is a dangerous language when used often. It is even more unfair that madness now has to be met with something emollient instead of something abrasive. We are all so sensitive now, you know.

My favourite cover every time I am met with madness either in the form of an opinion, a question, a perspective or an interest is to pull off a synthetic excitement. I have to feign wonder first because I know there is a possibility that this malady extends to me. Madness is transmissible, its dynamism is endless, and especially as a Nigerian, I have to beware.

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If you ask my mother about diplomacy, it’s her favourite piece of advice. She’ll tell you that’s how she keeps peace in her right hand, holding it close. ‘Labake, be diplomatic, it’s not everything you must comment on.’

‘You want me to pretend? Why can’t we tell the truth?’ I would retort almost immediately, my eyes filled with anger and something resembling frustration.

For extended family members who are as cunning as a viper, or for those whose personalities are as erratic as our mental health in the country, I’m advised by my mother to smile, keep calm, and even play along, even though the only thing that truly connects us is genetics, not love.

Over time, I surprised myself with the ability to speak the language: to smile sheepishly, to divert questions, to say yes even when I mean no, and to act on ‘no’ while feigning surprise in a controlled way, to keep distance and blame it on other things, anything but the truth.

Truth started to become an even stranger thing and peace threatened to become mine, even though it was a false sense of peace. My heart was troubled with all the words I wanted to say but I couldn’t so they would be stuck in my throat forcing only a smile outward. My body trembled with all the vitriol I wanted to vomit but couldn’t and because it was not evanescent, I would be left with random pangs of discomfort. And ire? My head throbbed from all the anger that would engulf me but I could not express it, so instead I would suffer with an incessant headache that was resistant to relief even from paracetamol.

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Is this what the scripture meant when it said you must be as wise as serpents? Does wisdom wear different masks? Does wisdom require different versions of me? Where is the thin line between being wise and walking only in its shadow?

I now live in awe of my ability to have a double life, to almost adapt expertly to my diplomatic nature. After all, life is crazy and human beings are even crazier.

‘You must be careful, Labake’, my mother would repeat as if I did not hear the first time. ‘You’re the only one that does not listen to me,’ she would add, to create guilt that wasn’t there in the first place. She would say it as soon as my voice was raised criticizing evident problems in behaviour and the will for people to face their respective consequences, especially from me.

She would listen to me and then tell me again to be careful. ‘Then how does one create change?’ ‘What is the point of living?’ I would ask but again, she would remind me that diplomacy is not the absence of these things. Diplomacy is only a language that I must learn to survive.

Months poured into years and maybe I now understand. It is almost unbearably important since ‘honesty is not always the best policy’ as Blair Warren said. As a truth seeker, I have even fooled myself countless times. You cannot always say the truth, all the time, in every situation. Sometimes my chest bears the brunt of unfinished conversations, or the ones that never even started. I must lead with love but most importantly, I must be diplomatic.

My heart, once a beautiful garden, has segued into something else. There are now different trees. The tree of truth, the forbidden tree and some wild flowers too. I nurture them all. If I am called to face a particular situation, I pause to know which kind of language it requires. It’s like the surveys at work that ask you about how you feel about a new policy or your manager and pretend to be anonymous when they have really sent everyone a unique link.

My words are sandwiched now. I think twice, I pause. I love, but then I watch. I observe. I doubt. I live in distrust. I dislike, yet I watch. I coat my words with an embalming liquid of uncertainty. If I think you’re mad, I say that I think you should rest for a while and maybe revisit this later. If a founder asks me why I’m truly resigning, I tell them a half-truth and coat it very quickly with a resolve to keep the flag flying.

My mind drifts back to when my mother’s pastor called me aside to remove my nose piercing, saying it wasn’t for people of God. He droned on and on but by then my chest had caught fire.

I quickly remembered the language and it saved me from my inclination to cause a ruckus. So I smiled and said ‘thank you so much, sir. I really appreciate it’

I looked at him and he looked at me. He was using the language too because I knew he really wanted to retort. Being a deliverance ministry, everything is expressed with an inherent aggression, even in counselling. I knew he lowered his voice on purpose because he was probably trying to speak the language too. Maybe that’s why he started by saying I’m already beautiful the way I am, that I don’t need any other thing to add to it.

I smiled in the usual way, but my spirit was unmoving and my insides were recoiling. I knew my answer and he knew too. I told him goodbye and he prayed for me. But my goodbye had a higher pitch that day. It was to denote finality.

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Because thinking is a lot of work, Alan suggests we only need 5 minutes to think about what someone has said before responding. Alan is right because sometimes we enter refutation mode and fail to really listen. I also think failing to listen may be warped by the desirability bias—people hearing only what they want to hear.

Truthfully, maybe we don’t need up to 5 minutes because it may seem awkward but you get the point now.

Slow and Steady

The days are bleeding into each other but the only thing that won’t go away is this headache. It’s almost as if I’ll never be rid of this internal battle.

I don’t believe I was born burdened but maybe over the years my voice thinned out from trying to express myself. My raspy, thick, somewhat stentorian voice, which would often turn heads and raise brows with questions like ‘why do you sound like a man?’ disappeared slowly, like my enthusiasm to express myself.

It was only then that I started to think about my thoughts, like an observer and then I started to run mad slowly. Slow and steady.

A Scientist

Adam Grant said it is easy to slip into the mindset of three different professions: preachers, prosecutors and politicians.

As a preacher, we promote our ideals and protect them by delivering sermons. As a prosecutor, we recognise flaws in people’s thinking and we argue to prove them wrong and win our case. As politicians, we want to win an audience so we lobby for their approval.

The risk of being so wrapped up in being one of these mindsets is why we don’t ever pause to rethink our views. The right mental tool is being actively open-minded, not just open-minded, doubting what you know, being curious about what you don’t know and updating your views based on new data.

The right mindset of the profession to slip into is to think like a scientist. God, I really like Adam Grant.

Job 22:21

A two-minute video clip on Pastor Poju preaching about acquainting oneself with the Lord is playing for the tenth time. I can almost say it off-hand now.

There’s something about that video clip that draws me in as if it is reminding me to be present. It’s the same way Earl Nightingale’s videos draw me in, like an intimate invitation to be limitless, to run without holding anything back. It’s a beautiful feeling.

Humour

Life is full of ironies. One of them is reading the first few pages about the psychology of humour and feeling sleepy.

You have no idea but once they start dissecting humour and its origin, contexts and many forms, the humour evaporates immediately. It gets even worse when they start the debate whether or not there is a technical term to denote the particular emotion humour brings.

Apparently, most terms like amusement seem cognitive and do not fully capture the emotional nature only for them to later settle on ‘mirth’ (after all the back and forth you would imagine a more impressive term would be used) and even that is decoded as a distinctive emotion because of its psychological and experiential components.

Maybe this is why they eventually focused on laughter because it’s the obvious behaviour we can largely attach to humour. Oh well.

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‘Tobi please don’t even start whining me today. I’m seeing double,’ I quickly say and he laughs immediately, throwing his head back and his laughter is truly the deflector I need, softening the edges of my heart immediately.

‘What were you doing?’ he asks, glancing at his laptop. ‘I was watching a movie, I’m just trying not to lose my mind that’s why. I tried one practice question and failed and it was the easiest one. I don’t know why I’m so uncomfortable with failure even when I know it doesn’t matter. See if you know all the things that are doing me…’ the words tumble freely from my mouth as I adjust my head on the pillow so I can have a better view of my movie even though I’m not watching it yet.

‘I swear don’t even tease me. I can faint.’ I want to add that I feel like there’s a lion inside me but even the thought surprises me so I let out a sigh instead.

‘Okay I won’t say anything but just know this is the easiest life will ever be.’ He tries to look away and I can see the laughter brimming at the corner of his lips.

‘What the hell?’ I laugh loudly this time. ‘Please don’t add to my issues, I beg you. You’re not trying to make me feel better.’ He laughs again, and my smile softens.

‘Do you know that this is why I like the optimism bias?’ I make my face the bigger screen on the video call screen for a moment to see how I look. ‘What’s that?’ he asks.

‘It’s just the fact that people think things can happen to others except them. I’m going to make a video on it. It’s so crazy because lowkey it makes you think you’re unique.’ I toggle on the healing disc of my nose piercing, realizing how used to it I’ve become.

‘Oh is that the name? I know a friend who has it. Optimist bias? Is that what you said?’ He glances at his laptop again.

‘Optimism bias,’ I repeat. ‘It’s just like when people comment under a post where someone has lost a loved one and they say “I cover my family with the blood of Jesus” or they say “I will marry once and marry right” under the post of a creator who has just divorced their partner. They think they’re immune because we underestimate chance. Just because you ignore facts doesn’t stop them from being facts. It’s so twisted to me.’ I make his face the bigger screen now.

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‘I like this bias, I see it everywhere. People ignore facts a lot,’ he says, shaking his head as if recounting some harsh truths.

‘But like it’s also good to be optimistic, but I think it has to be balanced with realism. There’s a quote that says an optimist sees green light, a pessimist sees red light and a truly wise person is colorblind. From Dr Albert Schwai something,’ I struggle to pronounce his surname and give up.

‘After you’ll say I should not whine you,’ he teases.

‘Please, I’m losing my mind. But I’m also thinking that this is what it means to be delusional too, and beliefs are powerful because confirmation bias is real so these optimistic people…’ I make a random quote sign in the air with my left hand to emphasise “optimistic people”. ‘They will see confirming evidence to what they believe in, so it may be a good thing sometimes.’

‘But we need to embrace reality. Do you know how hard life is?’ he quips and it is only then I notice our differences: how easy it is for me to dream and how practical he is.

‘How can we? Even Christianity won’t let us embrace reality so much, do you know? Omo.’ My head is spinning already and I feel an urge to scream and again I am tempted to say that I feel like there is a lion inside of me and I wonder what that means again. Why not lioness? I wonder.

‘Let me play one part of Vusi’s podcast to you, it won’t be long. I really like it. I think you’ll like it too.’ He seems giddy and it makes me smile.

‘You still listen to Vusi, wow,’ and we immediately mimic his popular introduction in his baritone voice, with my voice being the loudest: “hellllllooo familyyyyyyyyyy” and I laugh uncontrollably this time.

Vusi’s voice fills my ears, flowing smoothly about ideas that matter, the difference between being busy and being productive, busyness and progress, activities and family. My brother pauses the podcast to ask me if I notice how Vusi is using pauses, and how he’s negating things by using contradictions to make certain lines more resounding like how he says ‘busyness is not progress’ and I nod repeatedly but I am more impressed by his articulation.

‘See how articulate he is. I’m sure he learnt it o. Imagine adding communication to my list. Is it until someone dies?’ I sit up this time and my brother purses his lips before he says in his usual teasing manner ‘Just remember this is the easiest life will ever be’

‘I swear it’s not funny now.’ But I’m laughing, covering my face and threatening to scream.

‘Should I ask you some questions on consulting?’ he asks me for the second time.

‘Please no. I just said my head wants to tear. It’s not funny now.’

He laughs again and I am smiling too, wondering what it is about laughter that is so soothing to the soul.

‘Life is so random, do you know?’ I lie down again, unable to stay still. ‘Because for example they’ll ask you some questions and you can’t answer blindly, you have to group your answers, you have to say internal or external, economic or non-economic, primary or secondary and give reasons. I’ll soon run mad o.’

‘So you know too, Ahan that means you’re checking out some of these questions already.’

‘I am, but I’m just trying to be okay. Many things are so confusing. This woman’s LinkedIn bio you shared says “transformation leader” and I don’t even know what that means.’ I rub my eyes, feeling my head spin again.

‘She’s a partner o, advisory level or so too. Now imagine people that are not even aware of what’s happening in life, at least you know what you don’t know.’

‘Conscious incompetence,’ I say, fully restless rubbing my eyes repeatedly to distract me.

‘What’s that?’ he asks.

‘Stages of mastery. Unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, unconscious competence. I still feel I’m in ‘unconscious incompetence’. I don’t know jack.’ I already know I’m close to crashing out.

‘With the way you feel, it’s most likely conscious incompetence.’ We share another deep laugh, distracting me from my obtrusive thoughts.

‘You said I should not say anything to you but you can do this for real,’ he says in this matter-of-fact manner that makes me pause.

‘Like I feel like bursting. I don’t even understand my mood this week. Have you spoken to mummy lately?’ I ask.

‘Yes, Daddy called me too and he even ended the call with “I love you”.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I screamed. ‘What did you now say? Don’t even tell me.’

He laughs again, squinting at his laptop. I want to tell him to wear his glasses, but I am also squinting, and I laugh at the irony.

‘I’m going to watch my movie Tobi, so I can see road small.’

‘Okay my baby, I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ I say and as the call ends, tears gather in my eyes, almost like a summoning, my whole world vibrating and the odd feeling of wanting to scream engulfs me again.

But I stay there still limp yet restless within, still mouthing to myself ‘I feel like there’s a lion inside me. Am I crazy or is it today?’

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She has told me ‘sorry’ more than 13 times in 2 minutes. Her sorries make me uncomfortable because they are so welcoming of blame and laced with a deep empathy that feels too heavy for me to receive.

If anything at all, I should be telling her sorry. Sorry for her stress, for all the worry that she constantly wears on her face like a mask, piercing me in strange ways that make me avoid eye contact with her so I do not fall into inexorable melancholy.

I know she’s apologising in case her hands are too aggressive or if it’s hurting me but all I’m thinking of is whether I should cut my hair, lock my hair to postpone my worry, take a chance with minoxidil tablets for hair growth even though it is temporary or see a trichologist.

I am mourning the loss of my hair, my front hair especially and I cannot mourn this loss outwardly because there are more serious issues in life and people think it’s not that bad, yet. So instead, I am weighed down by my grief, even though mummy Seun’s sorries are yanking me forcefully to the present, nudging me to stay alert to feel her nails grazing my scalp.

I cannot mourn in peace so I stay in the present with her and I respond to each sorry with ‘thank you ma’ and sometimes alternate with ‘thank you so much ma.’

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But it’s not enough to say ‘thank you’ to mummy Seun. What I really want to do is hug her and kiss her on the cheek and tell her she’s so sweet and give her a genie’s lamp for all her wishes to come true but she may be disarmed by my sentimental gesture which many people term foreign since we are consumed with mechanistic love that seems controlled and measured to fit our tough exterior.

I also fear she may not understand what I mean by her being so sweet because it is so vague and it does not cover all I feel.

I’ve watched Mummy Seun overextend herself countless times and she leaves me constantly in a type of awe I cannot explain. I indulge my thoughts and tell her she’s so sweet and I can hear her chuckle in response.

So many things are happening while Mummy Seun is washing my hair. First off I am warmed by her simple gesture to help me loosen and wash my hair instead of going to a salon.

She doesn’t know that I really dislike loosening my hair let alone washing it and so the gesture means a lot to me. I tell her not to worry with a typical Nigerian silent plea that she insists because I truly am undone in my spirit, too tired to step out, and my head is aching so when she says she really wants to help me, I smile deeply and tell her ‘thank you ma.’

I’m worried about Mummy Seun, the way she easily welcomes blame. It’s like a kind of vulnerability that came from being wounded many times with nothing else to blame. Since one of our psychological needs as human beings is to find a scapegoat, something or someone to blame, she has chosen to blame herself.

Sometimes, I see Mummy Seun evangelise in the morning, with her silk scarf tied loosely around her hair. There is something deeply warming about it, and it’s not in the way I observe roadside evangelists wondering why they are threatening people with hell. She seems genuine and she has a warm smile even as she tells people to give their lives to Christ, singing familiar Yoruba hymns with a soothing voice.

Every time I see her, I say ‘good morning ma’ with a slight curtsy but even before I bend, she’s greeting me back so courteously stopping me mid gesture that it makes me want to laugh.

The faux fight for humility between us is warm and delicate, hanging loosely. I can imagine seeing her tomorrow telling her ‘thank you for yesterday’ and I know she will wave it away so casually, stopping me from completing my sentence and her smile will tug my heartstrings again.

It also strikes me that I do not know Mummy Seun’s actual name because she has chosen the identity that centres her motherhood. So I imagine what name will fit her and I can only think of ‘Comfort’ because that’s what she exudes, with her doting smile and eager hands ready to please. I want to know her real name but I don’t know if it matters.

My eyes are still closed now because somehow washing one’s hair exudes a type of pleasure, and a sense of liberation, allowing my thoughts to wander without restrictions.

I’m thinking of humans’ adaptive behaviour for survival and reproduction that Peter Bevelin wrote in the book, Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger.

It surprises me how I can still be surprised at our intrinsic traits largely influenced by genes and cultural integration.

Of course, it is easy to wonder what sets the foundation for our values, character and even standards for morality but it still makes me pause when I learn that we are born selfish and that altruistic behaviours are largely acquired.

I do not know whether to wear my heart on my sleeve, hide it, or if I should wear my heart at all. My mind is suddenly numbed from all the insane possibilities of what humans are capable of.

I am now filled with a renewed awareness, an increased distrust. I am pleased to see how anatomy and evolution contribute to our tendency for fear, reducing uncertainty, and bias for our close genetic relatives (a popular test of kin selection is what we would do if a relative and a good friend were both close to drowning. We can only save one of them. What if one of them was a distant cousin that you’d seen only twice in your life and the friend was a person you spent every day with? Who would you save?)

Knowing we seek survival and reproduction is not new, but the ways we seek it disarm me.

The self-interest, our love for approbation, and the fact that altruism is not always true altruism.

Many seemingly altruistic behaviours still have underlying self-benefits, like social recognition, prestige, relief from distress, promise of a better afterlife, avoidance of guilt and more. It’s new, and it makes everything else disappear for a while except the sound of my breath.

It’s almost absurd, because I’m watching myself too, like an unknown creature, and I’m still thinking of Mummy Seun as she rinses my hair, the sound of her ‘sorries’ still clouding my brain.

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It’s a pinned note on my phone only because I want to figure out the thought process in reaching an estimate, not to be right. I want to figure out the best approach: the top-down approach or the bottom-up approach. It seems ridiculous but I’m observing what I think.

I already know the top-down approach. We start by having an estimate of people living in the US, then the age groups, then the number of people with vision problems, then the number of people with contact lenses and so on.

This random question is hanging loosely in my brain, this wild card. I mentally indulge it, asking even more ridiculous questions, like ‘what is the market size of people who don’t have sense in Nigeria?’ What are the factors I’ll consider?

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A clarifying question would be the definition of ‘having sense’. Also, what would be the metrics to judge people who have sense? Since we have geography given in the question, what about other details like the growth rate of people that generally just have sense? Is it also a concentrated or segmented market? We need to know if people who don’t have sense have more buying power. We’re not taking any chances.

This makes me giggle, this single act of letting my brain figure out this random inconsequential thing.

It is the same giggle that happens in the hospital when I enter the account office with my friend to pay the consultation fee. I shake my head and think to myself ‘there’s something wrong with the process here, why are we huddled in the office asking questions so cluelessly when we should be here to pay? Is it not increasing patient waiting time? And isn’t this constant repetition reducing the productivity of the account officer?’

Then I start to visualise the hospital as a system, my eyes stretching across the room with these strange disruptive thoughts. I outline the elements, the interconnections and the purpose. The elements seem very obvious, it’s usually the most obvious part of a system, like the nurse idly sitting outside and the account officer with his eyes trained on his laptop in a perfunctory way that doesn’t surprise me.

I see the purpose too and I mentally assume the subsystems are aligned as well. The interconnections jump out at me, from filling a form at the reception to paying at the account officer’s room to checking vitals with the nurse. Then seeing the doctor, going to the account office again and possibly the lab. I shake my head wondering what to tweak as if this is a matter of life and death because now I’m fiddling with my fingers, my right foot tapping uncontrollably on the dull brown tiles.

I think about the hospital system’s resilience, self-organisation and I wonder about the hierarchy. I am still meandering through this baseless analysis until the account officer, without looking up, asks for a name and keeps typing. Then my attention shifts back to him, his face almost hidden by his laptop. The low ceiling suddenly makes the room feel airless.

I think the ceiling is too low, and I wonder if it affects his productivity. It’s the cathedral effect, where our environment shapes our thinking. With high ceilings, we think in more abstract ways and with low ceilings, we tend to think concretely. But as a knowledge worker, maybe his digital environment is more important since that’s where he spends most of his time. I catch myself laughing because now I have to consider prioritisation factors to know what is most important.

My friend asks me what is funny and I tell her that I think they may have an operations issue here seeing that we’re all huddled in the room. She says we can just stay outside instead and I nod my head because she’s right, there are chairs outside. Even though it doesn’t make the process shorter, at least I am not as impatient if I sit outside waiting for my name to be called.

What is truly funny to me is my brain working on its own without my permission, doing things I didn’t ask it to do, making things hang in my brain.

Other strange things are hanging loosely in my brain, like my will to fight. It has gradually depleted and I watched its downfall. The way I know is this: if I read or watch something with an ending that evokes a feeling of freedom, then I cry. The tears glistening on my cheeks do not signify reassurance of freedom, it reminds me instead of the constant thrashing with my hands in cuffs then staying limp. I am filled with hope but hope is not enough since I can also feel the fatigue in my soul. It is a strange thing and a strange feeling and there is no analysis for this one. My brain is oddly silent.

Because my brain prefers to observe, I let it observe in this vibrant get-together with colourful souls. I am smiling, watching other people laugh as they play a game that keeps their faces contorted in anticipation of the next winner.

When they ask if I want to play, I say no and I add please and I smile too so it lands in the softest way possible so that it avoids the next question ‘why?’ since I am not prepared to answer that question and then I realise this is a feedback loop.

It is a balancing feedback loop because my social battery is depleted from the first game so saying no to the next game is to recharge my battery again since I can only recharge through solitude. Ah, I see. But my thumb is trying to distract me by doomscrolling, and I catch another feedback loop but this time a reinforcing feedback loop since it is perpetuating the action, growing exponentially. I see it so clearly yet I don’t stop until my head is clouded and I step outside for fresh air.

I am surprised at myself that it is impossible to relax anywhere, outside or inside. The cool breeze tickles my arm and for once, I want real silence, both within and without. But there are still other things hanging loosely in my brain.

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Iyana-Ipaja always announces itself. It is not just the fact that it teems with interminable noise, even though that is jarring too.

It is the sense of urgency.

From brisk walking, to the pull of conductors through their practised spiel of bus stops and to beggars carrying tags of ‘deaf and dumb’, stretching their hands hoping for you to make eye contact, everything is happening at once.

The POS agents are dynamic. You may see some of them in suits, native wear, flamboyant clothes or casual clothes, yet their target audience is the same: random people who want to withdraw money.

I see a man in a purple suit standing above a stool where he places the POS machine.

His hands are in his pockets as the prerecorded audio which nudges people to withdraw drones on and on.

He doesn’t move, his legs are apart and he looks like a lecturer waiting for the class to quiet down before announcing a test.

He seems ungainly in the purple suit, the sides of the pockets struggling for their lives, the button a tug away from revealing his protruding belly beneath his white shirt.

For a moment, he makes me mourn the colour purple and it must be because the suit is terribly ill-fitted.

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The prerecorded audio the POS agents play clashes with one another, making my head spin which is enough signal to walk even faster, and escape the imminent headache seeping through my eardrums.

There are evangelists too, with their loudspeakers that sound like they were given from hell, discordant noises filling the air reminding you more of the fact that you’re a sinner than Jesus loves you.

For a brief moment, I wonder how they measure success as I think about success metrics for them.

Is it how many flyers they give out? That may be synonymous with website visitors, so what about click-through rates? Perhaps the number of people who pause to ask more questions.

Judging by the strong sense of urgency in the air that can hardly be dispelled, the rate is probably low.

What about conversion rate? How many people truly give their lives to Christ? How does he follow up? Does he collect their details? How does he nurture users across this funnel? Is his goal only awareness?

At least I know for sure his messaging needs to change because threatening people with hell seems absurd. Or maybe not, after all Nigerians enjoy fear-based marketing before they take action.

The brisk walking does not stop. I see a man smoking, hovering over the pile of clothes he wants to sell.

He’s not reaching out, calling random strangers on the road like the others. His eyes are bloodshot and he looks like he’s there by obligation and I wonder why it feels like 7:30 am is too early to smoke even when I know that there are no rules in the world of finding solace.

A man has grabbed my hand and the force I use to yank my hand out of his calloused hand is stronger than anything I can imagine.

He looks at me and tells me to calm down amid laughter and I mutter curses under my breath. The entitlement lurking in his eyes makes my skin crawl and I wriggle my wrist as I continue walking even though it doesn’t hurt.

The brisk walking continues. Curses are flying over my head swiftly from the fury-stricken lips of drivers and conductors, some curses unfairly directed at their mothers. Everyone is angry, everyone is impatient, everyone has somewhere to be.

All of a sudden, there is a silent rhythm that settles over everyone’s movement, like marching soldiers. It almost makes me smile until I remember when my phone was stolen here a few years ago.

Immediately, I tighten my grip on my phone by reflex, shaking my head at this painful memory.

I had followed my cousin to the market grudgingly, telling her to be careful with her phone instead, reminding her that Lagos was a crazy place. I had to tell her since she hadn’t been in Lagos in years seeing the way she held her phone loosely.

Life decided to remind me of its ironic nature when I immediately felt the weightlessness of my purse on the bus and I knew what had happened.

I cursed loudly, downed my remaining soda drink without pause, and became silent. Everyone stared at me on the bus but I didn’t care. I wasn’t angry that they stole my phone. I was angry at myself for daring to tell someone to be careful, thinking I was. Unbelievable.

The market is so rowdy now and this may be one of the things that also announces Iyana-Ipaja. It also links to many places. You may want to go to Saturn, and best believe there’ll be a bus going there too.

Despite the rowdiness, Iyana-Ipaja has a meretricious buzz and so you can tell that at the heart of it, it is filled with emptiness.

At the end of the day, there’s nothing to attach to. Everything here is as fleeting as life itself.

I am surprised that the banner ‘Welcome to Iyana-Ipaja Market’ sponsored by Indomitable still looks new. How come? Perhaps it is new. But nothing is ever new here and if it is, with time I know this place will suck the newness of everything.

Iyana-Ipaja doesn’t glorify novelty; it celebrates mediocrity and the urgency of getting by. Just enough to get by, taking life in sips, sachetizing experiences, their imagery consumed by the bare minimum.

I imagine the number of years it will take to escape this indoctrination, if the POS agent wearing the purple suit will realize that he can wear a better suit, if the evangelist will ever stop using an invisible moral compass for other people, realizing that God is love and threatening people with hell isn’t really God’s plan, if the trader will ever unlearn entitlement to women’s hands, if the conductors will ever just, you know, relax.

I wonder if there are still dreamers here or if they’ve been forced to accept their fate, a clash of reality and hope.

At a glance, you can also see things that are missing here: a mother doting on a child, tawdry romance, youthful vivacity, all expertly concealed.

Not that they do not exist but they are quickly obfuscated by survival instincts. What can thrive here?

‘One dancer creates art, a troupe creates a masterpiece’ billboard from FCMB makes me smile for no reason as I memorize the copy.

I know that a company like this can afford to be vague and aspirational in their billboard because they’re well known, yet the phrase lingers because I imagine a troupe emerging from this place really creating a masterpiece, even silently.

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Naval Ravikant wrote the foreword, so I secretly wonder if that is one of the inexplicable forces holding it together in my mind.

If it were written by someone else, would it have the same resonance? If the foreword wasn’t about Elon, would I be this curious? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows?

I’ve reread it multiple times, and I wonder why a foreword should mean this much to me.

Maybe it is the way Naval describes Elon that unsettles me, or maybe it is because the words exude an untold truth that makes me think about myself. It is inevitable.

How can I read that ‘Hard work is common, intelligence uncommon, courage rare and Elon combusts all three’ and gloss over it like an Instagram caption from instablog? It’s impossible.

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Or is it the rarity of Elon’s influence, as Naval concludes that ‘Elon is the greatest entrepreneur since Steve Jobs and he isn’t just a copy’?

Those are not things to gloss over, and they are not even things to long for. They are things, words stitched together to become a kind of flame that doesn’t fade away.

It’s not just a foreword even though it is still a foreword.

I find myself reminiscing even as I painfully watch episodes of Run Away that are underwhelming because it doesn’t leave me on an emotional high. Instead, I’m spotting loopholes.

I’m aware that I’m indulging in sunk-cost fallacy by trying to finish this series but my mind thinks that the ending of the series will be worth it. (It wasn’t)

It is not a bad series but it is not engaging my brain in a way that makes my reality dissolve. If not, why am I still thinking of the foreword?

I glance again at one of the concluding paragraphs in the foreword.

Naval says we have to step into the arena and I furtively pretend I don’t know what it means but my eyes stay on the word. The arena. That’s where everything happens isn’t it?

‘You don’t have to do what Elon does and you don’t have to do it his way but this short life is best spent in the arena…’

I read it aloud for no reason and then remember Proverbs 22:13, seeing the jarring difference in both situations, both identities.

“The sluggard says, There is a lion outside! I shall be slain in the streets!”

The sluggard is running from the arena, I see it even clearer now. There’s the sluggard and then there’s Elon.

Naval continues that we have to live for something other than the mundane and insatiable self and it strikes me how practical it is.

If I’m in the arena, I won’t really worry about my exfoliant reacting with my skin, why I have been pronouncing ‘prerequisite’ wrongly, or what anyone would say or think about anything I do.

Nothing would matter then except being in the arena because it involves something much bigger than myself. It is true.

My mind brushes over the fact that Naval acknowledged the altruistic labour of Eric, the author in compiling this book.

‘Eric put his ego aside and did the thankless work of compiling Elon’s best lessons, in Elon’s own words as practical as possible.’

It stings because this is indeed a lot of work. The word thankless lingers again and I wonder what thankless thing I’ve done lately. Maybe I’m too occupied with the mundane and insatiable self, as usual.

More things are going on in my brain and for a brief moment, I imagine never having a peaceful mind, having an endless chatter all the time. It is difficult to accept.

I don’t know if it’s intentional, but Naval subtly ignites hope (my favourite human addiction) in another paragraph.

‘There is even a third option—young or old, your life isn’t over yet’

My lips draw out in a thin smile, almost missable because my lips are pursed. It is warm, this familiar feeling of hope. It is warm and fuzzy and my lips tighten even more.

I carry the burden of watching the last episode of Run Away valiantly hoping to be impressed.

I pretend to watch but I know where my mind really is. It’s on the part where Naval said an eager cofounder stole his first copy and his coworkers will get twenty copies of this book. I smile again, and this time, it’s a wide smile.

If you’re curious, you can read it here

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It is only when I ask my mother how she is doing that I notice she rarely says how she really is. This epiphany unravels slowly like my smile in tandem.

Every response is masked by deep religious statements made in the name of faith. ‘I’m good by the grace of God.’

I laugh loudly and she quips that I’ve started again with ‘this my laughter’ because of the eccentricity.

‘Mummy but for real, why can’t you ever say how you really feel? Must you add God’s name to everything, even your feelings? I don’t understand you sometimes’

‘Labake leave me alone. God is on the throne’

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‘You’re doing it again,’ I laugh even louder, even more whimsically because her response truly reinforces it but she ignores me, playfully asking about me instead.

It is only when I stumble on a pocket book about Hansel and Gretel that I feel a new brand of disgust at a children’s book.

This is the storyline: Once upon a time there was a poor woodcutter, his kids Hansel and Gretel and a wicked stepmother. There was no money so the wife told her husband to take the kids to the forest and leave them there or they would all starve

Poor kids were all alone in the forest, saw a house that looked like it was made of candy and then an old woman told them to come in. They went in.

The old woman put Hansel in a cage to fatten him up, asked Gretel to light the oven and Gretel pretended not to know.

The witch tried to do it and Gretel pushed her, freed her brother and grabbed jewels and ran away to their father and they became rich. Oh, the stepmother had gone away forever.

The last time I read it, it evoked a picturesque view because my mind lingered on the candy house and my heart beat with anticipation for Hansel and Gretel’s escape. I hadn’t even recognized Hansel’s bravery or their father’s easy abandonment.

All I saw was the house made of candy because I was no better than those kids.

The house looked like it was made of candy so maybe it wasn’t, because when you’re extremely hungry, hunger hormones trigger intense cravings, causing you to perceive even inedible objects as food.

‘Why did those kids go back home to their father?’, I ask aloud.

‘They had no other choice, Labake, they’re kids’, my mind responds.

‘Okay, but why did the father send them into the woods?’, I ask.

‘The stepmother manipulated him and you know this’, my mind shoots back again.

‘But why did he leave those two kids in the forest to starve? His own kids? What if they died? Come on’.

My mind does not respond.

I shake my head at the book and put it down wondering why a book has unsettled me.

I tell my sister that I have a book to give my nephew to read. I don’t tell her that I don’t like the storyline because it doesn’t matter. It’s just a book. Except that it’s not just a book because I am still unsettled.

It is only when I hear the word ‘submissive’ in a TikTok video that I realize that I’ve never really searched for its meaning. I’ve checked subservient, meek, servile, docile which are strong synonyms but not submissive.

I check it and my thoughts recoil immediately, so aggressively that I can almost taste my irritation. Willing to submit to orders, unassertive.

By the time I check more synonyms and stumble on ‘characteristic of a slave or servant’, I know it is time to switch tabs already.

I notice my disgust lying easy on my skin, transforming my previously catatonic expression to confusion. Confused why? I don’t know. What was I hoping to see?

I scroll down again and see always willing to obey someone and never disagreeing with them and an onslaught of expletives fly out of my mouth.

I’m noticing how easy it is to rile me up. I’m noticing my natural tendency to anger and I’m wondering if this is a burden to bear as a choleric.

I suddenly want to run away from my skin but I cannot. I close my eyes and summon normalcy but it blatantly ignores me.

I remember my aunt’s text a few days ago after a disagreement we had that I should pray, because I get angry so easily which made me laugh uncontrollably.

As I remember the text, I decide to respond to her playfully, ‘I will pray but just know that I inherited this anger from you’ alongside laughing emojis.

I take a screenshot and send it to my cousin while on a video call with her and we both share deep laughter with short gasps in between.

I notice how easy it is to laugh with my cousin, and it makes me laugh even louder as she joins me. It is almost idyllic and even as I drop the call, I wish to store this memory forever, but I cannot. The day will end and the next day will come and life will continue.

My mind searches for something to lock onto and I let it roam until it settles on a mirror and I stare at my face.

My healing disc, to prevent piercing irritation, is sitting pretty beneath my nose ring and I’m surprised at how comfortable I am now with it.

I remember how confused I was when my mother’s pastor asked me why I have a nose ring.

I remember sitting there suddenly thinking about my whole life on the chair, how fast the world is changing and wondering how I am still here in this chair thinking of answering this question suddenly regretting going there to say hi.

Was it a rhetorical question or not? I also wondered if there a way to answer like a child of God because sometimes my words surprise me.

He seemed curious, and my heart failed within me and refused to let me feel any emotion. So I smiled and said ‘nothing’ and meant it. Can there be a reason? I thought to myself.

The art of noticing is weird.

One day, you’re crying and you realize that the first tear falls from your left eye first and you remember one silly thing you read when you were younger about how the tear falling first from your left eye signifies pain and from your right eye signifies happiness and it makes you laugh again.

The art of noticing is even weirder because even while I anticipate my crying spells since they usually come at this time, I notice they don’t come.

Instead, I’m limp, voiceless and still sane. It must be all the laughter stored in my belly from my cousin and mother.

I also notice unfailingly how words form on the screen, how I had no idea what to write but all I heard was a phrase and everything started coming together like a puzzle.

It makes me smile because it is truly a strange thing.

The art of noticing my thumbs tapping on the screen, the echo of my laughter, the pastor’s question redolent of a perceived and projected modesty, my disposition to irascibility, my cousin’s laughter on the phone, Hansel and Gretel’s annoying father with zero accountability, and the beauty of seeing everything unfold, adorned in strange affection.

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I have a headache.

This headache is unrelated to this piece but it is the type of headache I feel when I try to rationalize certain things, like the brains of Nigerians.

My consolation is that humans cannot be completely rational, because the popularized idea of rationality requires the suppression of feelings.

However, for real thinking to take place, the whole person must be engaged. It means all your faculties must be present.

So there is no real thinking without properly cultivated feelings to provide meaningful action.

So I must apologize in advance first, because most errors in thinking come from assumptions, which I am also susceptible to, thereby defeating the purpose of thinking in the first place.

Also, note that never in my consciousness will I assume because I’m writing this means I am better than anyone or even the people whose brains I’m curious about. I’m not.

Ever since I realized that everyone thinks they’re better than everyone, it became a fruitless thought to hold, let alone to conform to.

It’s like knowing that everyone is going to die. The generalization makes you aware of your mortality, fickleness and finiteness. I’m not special. You’re not special.

I’m simply stating an observation which unfortunately is evidence of my curiosity, a mind that won’t stop chattering and a body that has refused to be still. I am restless, even in my soul.

(Pretty long disclaimer, whew)

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What can we learn from the brains of Nigerians? is a failed attempt and an existential parody of the real question neuroscientist Eleanor Maggie of University College London posed in trying to analyze the brains of London taxicab drivers: What can we learn from the brains of London taxicab drivers?

She considered that taxicab drivers in London held a lot of information in their brains.

They had memorized the maze of 25,000 streets and discovered that they indeed had more grey matter in their hippocampi.

The point is that their brain had expanded to accommodate the cognitive demands of navigating London’s streets. This is a clear example of neuroplasticity, literally.

So it bothers me when I see some of the opinions Nigerians vomit online. It makes me worry about our memory centres, if they’re shrinking and if our brains too are shrinking.

How else would you explain the addiction to suffering and the glorification of poverty? Our priorities are dampened by vain acquisitiveness, constant fear and selfishness.

Unlike the brains of London taxicab drivers, our cognitive demands seem nonexistent so if our brains were to be analyzed, we may likely have less grey matter in our hippocampi.

Since learning new routes forced the taxi cab drivers’ brains to create new neural pathways, I wonder what the reverse does to our brains because we barely learn our lessons and we barely remember anything.

This is obviously not new. Watch a Nigerian stand up for Nigerians and watch the same Nigerians exclude themselves even in a country that affects them.

It is disheartening. Even for those who think they’re untouchable, that it doesn’t matter as long as they can think for themselves, that their brains are somewhat special, that they’re not susceptible to the low quality of intellectual theatrics, it is still disheartening because you’re wrong.

You’re wrong because you underestimate the power of socialization.

You’re wrong because thinking is necessarily social and even the false celebration of thinking independently is usually a response to other people’s thoughts.

It is sad, this level of willful ignorance that we have to deal with. It is like we are devolving into something else, a pitiable kind. There are countless proofs of this.

The silver lining that is also a curse is the swift adaptability of Nigerians.

Our brains are wired to settle on the next best option, to find a way around it, to ‘sachetize’ everything, find shameful alternatives and revel in the faux creativity spurred by pure scarcity.

Resilience is the only strength that Nigerians have that can impact our brain structures.

Through the storm, rain and the bloody heatwave, Nigerians survive. Thriving has become a foreign concept and youthfulness is now a vague and unusual thing.

I am still in awe. I think we are dulled by the monochromaticism of our country.

We need colour, we need variety but we search for it in mundane ways and find joy in the saddest places. It surprises me that our faulty sense of humour has also become stultifying.

Bandit jokes are funny, loss of lives are funny, rape cases turn into an online battle or opportunities for a redirection of individual validation, exemption, blaming victims or emphasis on false accusers.

Suicide becomes comical with the commonization of ‘hypo’ stringing along with it, melodious songs or supposedly funny videos.

Everything seems like a psychological maladjustment. Everything is funny even in death. It is not normal. If you think it is normal then you are not normal.

Our priorities are confusing. Our fights are often baseless. Watch a Nigerian man say ‘this is not a gender issue’ during a rape case when the statistics clearly show otherwise.

Watch people engineer theories, basking in hindsight biases of ‘I knew it was going to happen’, armed with rebuttals and devoid of empathy for grave issues.

Everything deeply insane becomes normalized. Suffering is the new normal.

Watch interviews with Nigerians and see the apparent discordance in responses enough to clothe you in expensive shame.

Watch Nigerians have a greater bias for their homophobia than for sexual assault and violence.

It is bizarre to me for anyone to think that saintliness is a prerequisite for dignity. Who decided this? Who decided that you would be a judge for who deserves dignity?

Even though I know that we cannot be completely rational, it does not mean I cannot mourn the inadequacies.

Speaking of rationality, it is sadly relative.

For example, in a review of What’s the Matter with Kansas? Thomas Frank tried to understand why Americans vote in defiance of their best interests.

Even though this is comparable to Nigeria, Alan Jacobs argues that this claim assumes that the only real interest that people should have is economic interest.

It means that Frank failed to acknowledge that people may be willing to make economic sacrifices in order to live in societies that they think of as morally stronger.

It is sad to me but I must be willing to understand that it doesn’t make it less rational just because what I’ve deemed is the best interest should be largely economic.

It’s even sadder that no matter how much I dwell on this issue, it changes nothing.

I believe in neuroplasticity but I wonder if this case of the brains of Nigerians isn’t a case of neural rigidity or even neurodegeneration. This inflexibility. This unchanging state. This refusal to grow, to be better, and to think better.

To say that I am in awe is insufficient. I feel like I am lapsing into an abyss of idiosyncrasy. I may be going mad too.

So what can we learn from the brains of Nigerians?

That we barely learn our lessons, that we repeat the same mistakes over and over, and we forget too quickly.

Nigerians are addicted to suffering. We’re also suffering from learned helplessness because we have been exposed repeatedly to experiences that are uncontrollable and stressful and so now we have stopped attempting to change our circumstances.

We have been silenced before and now all we’re left with are inaudible whispers evident in our passivity, apathy or individual liberation.

It is not enough to hover analytical power to this observation because what does it truly change?

My character too has to be inclined to take the products of this analysis and rearrange them, both thoughts and feelings so that it can produce meaningful action.

I must respond to this issue in a way that it deserves, after all true thinking is to be finitely aware and to act responsibly.

Maybe this is a monistic approach and perhaps there are nuances too. There is also a hidden addiction to hope, even a daring renewal.

So what exactly can we truly learn from the brains of Nigerians? That there is something wrong with the way we think.

One thing I know is that thinking will not guarantee happiness or satisfaction because it is a risk, but isn’t being alive a risk? Isn’t being Nigerian an even greater risk?

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You may have no idea but I am reminded that even if it has permeated and filled the interspaces of my consciousness, it is still not my anxiety. It is just anxiety.

Some foibles I can own. But this one, I cannot. I refuse to.

Although I may not answer your question the way you want me to, I hope you see that my smile is more than just stretched lips, it confers something deeper, a knowingness, an irrefutable bond.

Because I typically smile at everything, the familiarity of my smile will wear off, and you’ll probe again, asking where I really think this anxiety stems from.

This time, I won’t know what to tell you. I cannot smile forever and we have already become one.

I’ll try to crack a joke because that’s how my brain works sometimes when faced with real questions. My humour is somewhat broken and my brain permits it.

You’ll tell me to be serious and I genuinely won’t know what to tell you. It’s like asking me why I complain about having too much screen time and still endlessly scrolling on TikTok. The answer is convoluted and simple. It’s just happening.

But you won’t stop asking, so I’ll tell you what I told my therapist when she asked about my triggers: ‘to be honest, I don’t really know’.

‘It is like walking outside with a constant foreboding. You’re sitting in a place, but your mind isn’t really there, and it feels like something bad is going to happen. It is not extreme but it is not minimal either. If I can hear my heart pounding in my ears, then that’s not minimal. It is not extreme because I’m not covering my ears and cowering waiting for a bomb to detonate but my eyes are scanning the perimeters constantly as if it’s going to happen. It doesn’t really affect others, just me. It is impossible to relax. It feels impossible to be still’ I tried to describe the feeling once.

The most enraging thing about acknowledging anxiety is that I have to deal with the sardonic expressions from people who are palpably unacquainted with paranoia even if they mean well with their artless tics.

To them, you need to get yourself together. Some think it’s silly. They compare it to the flutter in your belly before a presentation or the tingle in your body when you see your crush.

They have no idea that it can consume you completely, that it can smother you and then, cripple you. Anxiety makes you motionless.

They are not just unaware; they’re in disbelief because it is strange to them. It is strange to me too but what can I do?

Anxiety is a myth to them so they repeat the winner of the most banal of phrases, the one whose meaning has become as forgotten as peace of mind, ‘calm down’.

Surprisingly, it has the same effect as screaming at a mountain to move.

It’s a crazy world, so you have to smile in acquiescence even when there is turmoil within. Life is somewhat unfair so that’s okay.

My first contact with life being unfair was in primary school. I had a crush in my class whose name was Daniel. Let’s call him Crush D.

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Unfortunately, there was a bully too whose name was also Daniel who annoyingly used to lick his lips and call me his wife. Let’s call him Bully D.

I hated the entitlement dancing in his eyes and the demand for ownership that I could sense even at that age disgusted me, made my insides recoil, and filled me with roiling thoughts.

I disliked him completely. He was bald, a little taller than most kids of his age, maybe a class or two above me (my memory fails me painfully and now I can see the downsides of repressing memories because both good and bad memories have to go)

One day, I was tired. I had had enough. Maybe impatience really is innate but I know I had reached my annoyance peak. I stormed to the headmistress’s office to report Bully D to her so he could stop calling me his wife and smiling at me because I didn’t like it.

I do not know how the words tumbled from my mouth but I remember being angry, my hands visibly shaking and words running freely from my mouth. She apologized to me and said she was going to punish him.

I do not know what happened next, but the next thing I saw was her punishing, guess who? Crush D, the wrong Daniel, and I could see the bully D smirking at me from afar. I was too stunned to speak.

Apparently, it was recess (I think) and she had asked who Daniel was and my innocent sweet lovely crushee had innocently raised his hand and so she punished him for it because she thought he was Bully D.

I was heartbroken, seeing my crush get punished for something he didn’t do.

This is how I know life is unfair.

This means that I don’t typically like to revel in the memories that may have caused this intense paranoia because it is to bask in the unfairness of life which is pathetic.

If I do, then it means I would be blinded by the disillusionment of patheticity, and all the values I hold physically close to my chest do not support any form of victimization so I have to snap out of it as soon as my memory pulls me to that level.

You’re looking away now because you don’t know if you should follow up because you don’t know how much this means to me.

You can’t tell if I’m taking this seriously or not. Truth is, I don’t know how much it means to me too but I can tell you for a fact that sometimes anxiety doesn’t always win.

Sometimes, I do not feel it.

Like when I’m angry. When I’m truly angry, I do not feel paranoia. I only feel anger. It feels like I cannot be angry and scared at the same time. I must choose one and ire always remains king. Such a jealous emotion.

This is one of the times when anxiety never bobs its ugly head. On some days I am shrouded in nonchalance and it helps although I often hear that nonchalance is a dangerous emotion because anger at least shows that you care.

So I’ll tell you something at least, because you’re a little patient which typically should not be awarded but it is a trait that I inherently lack so I am in awe, of you, that is, except this is a facade.

Maybe you do not really care. Sometimes, I forget that humans are you know, humans so I almost believed you. The thing about anxiety is that it also makes one distrusting.

It is why when my therapist once asked me to journal when I feel anxious, I told her ‘okay’ because to be honest, I didn’t want her to think I was problematic so I nestled in the comfort of submission which I naturally detest.

I didn’t journal because I couldn’t.

Words ran from me, almost physically, without exaggeration. It became an alien thing.

The next session, she asked me how I was doing which I knew was not really a ‘how are you doing for real?’ question or intent, I told her I have been great in the past week. Zero anxiety. Zero triggers.

I lied to my own therapist so now tell me who can save me?

This is how the world works. (Funnily I once tried to read a book titled How the World Works by Noam Chomsky but the first page carried an irresistible wave of sleepiness, it almost made me doubt my comprehension skills so I never quite figured how the world works)

Anyway, this is how the anxiety world works.

The show must go on. Action is the only thing that matters. Action is the only feasible solution. Like writing about it, doing stuff, taking steps. That’s how this world works.

I have to worry instead about how to think. A huge part of my life is dependent on how I think, no matter how much I run from it.

I have to worry instead about how I solve problems. It is interwoven with thinking and they’re both difficult.

Limitless by Jim Kwik, How to Think by Alan Jacobs, Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte, The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli can help but I can’t use their brains. I have to use mine, painfully.

I have to worry instead about how to stay still because the thing about anxiety is that it has multiple prongs rudely poking from every side in a way that makes me anxious about where it’s going to strike next.

The layers are maddening at first then they unravel little by little. It’s like a striptease, except this unveiling feels morbid.

I am bare even in this acknowledgment but humour will clothe me again, soon.

The urgency of life’s demands will require that I have an exquisite ‘outfit of the day’ and I will again be safe. Or feel safe, who can tell the difference? Eh?

Why am I writing this? I don’t know.

It is because I realize that even though everything in life feels as confusing as adulting, it also feels like I’m suspended in a haze of disbelief like watching Seyi Law defend this government in a podcast.

It feels somewhat out of control too, like my social media addiction. Still, there was something in my heart that pulled me to grab my phone to write this.

This is funny because Psalm 27:8 made me pause earlier today: ‘My heart told me to come to you, Lord, so I am coming to ask for your help’.

And I wondered to myself in the confines of solitude that held me still while my mind roamed miles and wouldn’t stop its endless rigmarole, what is my heart telling me to do?

Maybe this is it. I don’t know. I’ll never know. But maybe you should not ask me any more questions either.

Maybe it is better to pretend anxiety is not present. Maybe it will go away or not. Regardless, I have to prioritize other things.

Sometimes neutrality has fatal consequences. You have to pick a side.

Paranoia kind of forces you to choose. This is not meant to evoke sympathy because there is still an evident pique. I too, want to know: what causes this anxiety even?

Oh and by the way, have I answered your question?

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As my eyes widen with giddiness, I assume a new childlike voice that surprises me even at its strangeness, my head tilted ready to say ‘hey baby’.

Nothing beats the mirth in my chest, that I’m his favourite. I am tempted to text my brother to tell him this news because I know he will laugh about it and make a new attempt to evoke more vivid memories with him.

I have now run out of questions to ask my nephew. ‘How’s the monster truck?’ ‘How’s school?’ ‘What did you eat?’ ‘Have you been a good boy?’ ‘You’re so tall now’ to which his responses are glib, a smooth affirmation from a satisfied belly.

I wonder what people tell children because the next question ringing in my head is ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’.

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I am eager to ask because I cannot distinctly remember my childhood experiences due to an extreme suppression of them but I remember how my answers ranged from pianist, to air hostess to rapper.

His hands are flailing about and he’s picking at his food. I tell my sister that I’m done because I have nothing else to say to my baby boy and secretly because I miss talking like myself.

It makes me wonder why I have to assume an infantile attitude when speaking to children and if it’s an indoctrination from all the children’s movies I’ve seen.

I tell my nephew ‘bye my sweetness’ and his haphazard wave makes me giddy again.

I have all the endearments at my fingertips. From sunshine, my beloved, love of my life, love of my soul, love of my brain, darling, to my heartbeat. I once called my friend my spinal cord. Everything but their actual names.

Maybe it’s a coping mechanism too, a way to yank myself away from reality too, a way to avoid memories because I grew up hearing my actual name repeatedly. The air in the house then was usually stricter than a military regime so there was no cue for endearments.

How I became a professional in using endearing words to describe my loved ones to me still baffles me and should probably be on my resumé since I’m so good at it.

I have almost told a driver, ‘Thank you my love’ because he dropped me closer to my destination and I didn’t expect it.

I now see what love means after that call with my nephew. I know what I feel but I cannot describe it. It is a readiness to do anything for him.

It is an ingrained preparation, almost as if to ask ‘Hope nobody is disturbing you?’ not in a flimsy way but in a way that shows that I’m ready to address it even if I’m miles away.

I do not feel like this all the time and that’s how I know that if this isn’t love, it is a gigantic mimicry of it.

Later, I laugh loudly on another family video call as my sister teases my brother that my nephew wanted to speak to me and not my brother. I laugh because of the way my brother expresses his shock.

I laugh again while telling him ‘sorry’ mockingly. ‘You have to try harder’ I quip. ‘I’m his favourite now o’ I announce even as the video lags, feeling the same note of victory in my chest.

This note of victory is beyond a filial inclination of being an aunt. So I start to think of all the ways that evoke this feeling.

I think of my mother who told me she wished she were in pain instead of me when I told her that I was in pain.

She said it matter-of-factly and I became undone. The sob purged through my diaphragm and I let out a snort instead to avoid being dramatic. ‘For real?’ I asked her.

She looked at me as if surprised I would question it, ‘Yes now. It is better for me to feel the pain than you to feel the pain’

‘But I don’t want you to be in pain either’ I said. ‘It’s somehow now’ I added, and she shakes her head in that familiar way she does when I ask things like ‘Why are those people wicked?’ and ‘Is this how we’ll pray for life?’.

I know what it means. It’s a stretching of self that is already ingrained within her, a capacious tendency.

She will stretch herself for me. She will do everything that she can for me and it scares me.

‘You’re so sweet’ I tell her.

‘Madam sacrificial’ I add and she playfully ignores me.

This memory lingers and again, I know that I feel something I cannot name for my mother, and for no reason, I want to cry all of a sudden.

I text my brother to say ‘guess what I’m doing?’ and I cannot wait for his response so I tell him already that I’m trying something new to which he responds ‘wow’.

I ask him if he has opened the link because I know my brother will say ‘wow’ even if the link leads to an error 505 message.

He is prepared to love me. It is that preparation I sense when he calls me to tease me every time.

After I sent a picture of my nose piercing to the family group, he sent a dancing sticker to which I questioned because it is not in his nature to not compliment me.

I tagged him in the group to ask, ‘Why didn’t you compliment me?’

He said he sent the sticker as a response to the message I added underneath the picture that my mother does not like my piercing to which I told her, ‘Mummy we’re in 2026 please don’t start’.

He then goes ahead to tell me I’m the most beautiful woman in the world to which my sister quickly adds that I’m not special because that’s what he tells her too and I laugh again because I love them both.

I feel a longing to protect them sort of even with my tiny arms but I can’t because it is impossible.

I wonder if that is a love instinct, to protect instead of to let go.

The siblings’ WhatsApp group feels like a shield sort of and it is a living reminder of my ability to feel something different, long-lasting, and unnameable.

I always tell random people I love them because I do. Someone once told me to be careful because it can be easily misconstrued and I listened for a short while.

It is so easy for me. Why? God is love. I also have a bit of an empathy bone in me so I can jump to say ‘omg I love you’ for the most random things but I now realize that I have felt differently in all my proclamations of ‘I love you.’ From my family to my friends to acquaintances to strangers.

For my siblings, I think it’s beautiful, that softness within, the excitement to share good news, the worry to shield them from bad news, the pain in sharing my pain with them but at least I know they will listen.

The fights too, ‘Labake you don’t listen’ ‘Why are you always like this?’ ‘Mummy said I should talk to you Labake’ to which I would retort ‘It’s not funny, nobody is listening to me too.’

But deep down, I would feel them close, almost physically tugging at my heart itself, sometimes a soft pulling, other times a violent cascading.

It is almost like a whisper that energizes me daily and says to me ‘you can do anything’ with the assurance that they will be present, my brother typing ‘wow’, my sister asking me ‘what’s next?’ and my nephew smiling from afar.

Ah, my sweet sweet loves. Them, you, the driver, everyone.

Happy Valentine’s Day indeed.

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I can’t find the root cause either even though I have tried to analyze them. I have ruled out PMS because of its jarring inconsistencies.

I have ruled out many other things because crying spells do not usually accompany an inability to write, stay still, think or breathe.

This is a failed attempt to pick myself up so I have decided to write with the hope that if nothing saves me, maybe these words will.

I am surrounded by different things that ignite hope even in unlikely places.

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For example, I accidentally stumbled on a phrase while reading the foreword of Blinkards, a satirical drama by Kobina Sekyi that I know I won’t read.

In the foreword, the author is described as someone preoccupied with the art of the possible and it warms my heart.

I ponder on that phrase, indulging my broken self without remorse.

I know that even though my soul has betrayed me by lying shattered on the floor, it didn’t matter because that simple phrase strung hope together.

The art of the possible. It shows that even if I can’t figure everything out or find the root cause of things, there will always be a possibility.

It is truly difficult to write about oneself fully and authentically because there are parts that are hard to confront.

Parts that seem unreal, but they are there staring at you in their unique monstrosity still begging to be embraced.

I am obsessed with finding root causes of problems because that’s the right way to solve problems even though they’re difficult to name and face.

Most people like proximate causes so we treat symptoms so I’m trying not to be like that.

To say that I am trying will be a lie, I am just hoping not to be like that and that’s okay.

Hope finds you in unlikely places and it must be the same way Roland Freya, an economist at Harvard stumbled on the illustration when he was trying to figure out why whites outlive blacks by several years.

Heart disease was the biggest killer in both races but was far more common among blacks.

Then he stumbled upon an old illustration.

The illustration showed an Englishman tasting the sweat of an African.

He was licking the slave’s face and one of the suggestions that this act ignited was that he was testing the saltiness of selves.

The ocean journey of a slave from Africa to America was long and difficult and many slaves died on the journey because dehydration was a major cause.

In that case, Fryer wondered who was less likely to suffer from dehydration and realized that it was someone with a high degree of salt sensitivity.

If you can retain more salt, you can retain more water and you’ll be less likely to die along the journey.

Maybe the slave trader wanted to find saltier slaves in order to ensure his investment was a good one.

However, salt sensitivity is heritable and it means that the descendants, black Americans would stand a good chance of having cardiovascular disease and being hypertensive.

It is the selection mechanism of the slave trade that became a likely root cause of African Americans’ higher mortality rates.

No one knows if this is conclusive but this is an example of what it means to find root causes.

They may be difficult, unsettling, prone to arguments or even wrong but at least they are plausible causes.

Like the peak in crime rates around the 1960s and 1980s not being solved by tighter gun laws or more capital punishment because even if they were logical, they were unrelated to the root cause.

Crime stayed high for many years until the early 1990s when it began to fall.

Now even factors that helped in reducing crime rates like more police officers and more people in prison didn’t account for the entire reduction in crime rates. Why? Because they were unrelated to the root cause.

There was a missing factor: the legalization of abortion in the 1970s which meant fewer unwanted children were being born, and fewer children were growing up in the sort of circumstance that increased the likelihood of criminality but even that wasn’t related to the root cause.

The root cause was that too many children being brought up in terrible environments led them to crime and so as the post-abortion generation came of age, it included fewer children raised in such environments.

This search for root causes reminds me of the art of the possible. It seems that everything is possible, even finding answers.

So until I figure out whatever is happening, I will try first.

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I can still remember the engineer’s voice masked by the formality of Google Meet’s interface, explaining like a teacher who had taught this process on managing app upgrades multiple times and has now become uninterested.

Firebase uses a minimum build number and a latest build number to manage app upgrades.

He droned on and on letting me know the basics, that I can ‘force’ people to upgrade their app if there’s a new feature we want all users to have access to by changing the minimum build number.

So even though he rambled on about the process, like how to get the build number, remote config, this and that, I couldn’t stop thinking of a way to forcefully upgrade my life.

I wish my life had a minimum build number and a latest build number so that even though it can be optional to upgrade, it can still be forced.

Perhaps this is my favourite part about neuroplasticity, embracing the possibilities that you can be anything and everything you want to be.

Maybe after a forced upgrade, I would experience true peace or something close to it.

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I like using Firebase to send push and in-app notifications because it’s really fast.

Push notifications are mostly reminders.

You send them because you want to stay top of mind with users: Have you seen our rates? Unbeatable. Send money now.

Sometimes the reminder is urgent: Update your Card details now.

Sometimes there’s an urgency: Cloudflare outage resolved. Thank you for your patience

Sometimes it’s playful: Enjoy yourself this weekend. Just send money.

Sometimes it’s timely: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.

Sometimes it’s memorable: Happy Independence Day.

Sometimes there’s a catch: Our promo ends tomorrow, stand a chance to win a reward up to $200.

Sometimes it’s just a reminder: Pay online and in-store with your USD card.

Sometimes we have to emphasize certain upsides: Works with Apple Pay and Google Wallet.

But they’re all reminders, soft nudges that can only hope that you take action. Isn’t that how life is?

There are also reminders in life nudging me to take action: stories, videos, articles, more stories, in different ways.

Sometimes it’s memorable: my birthday.

Sometimes it’s matter-of-factly done, like a resignation.

Sometimes there’s a catch: a nose piercing.

Sometimes life emphasizes certain upsides: Kingdom financier, a hair transplant.

Sometimes it’s memorable: a family video call with everyone’s faces half-lit with hope, half-lit with worry.

Sometimes there’s an urgency: A near-death experience, an accident, falling ill, losing someone.

Sometimes it’s timely: Ah Christmas, New year resolutions too.

Sometimes it struggles to stay top of mind in the form of daily rituals, systems and structures: A 5-minute workout every morning, Earl Nightingale’s recording, Bob Proctor’s book, Tongues, the word of God.

Reminders, reminders, reminders.

Weirdly, our brains never get tired of it. For example, I’ve been listening to GaryVee for over 6 years and I still never skip his videos even though I can try to predict his next sentence.

Why do we like reminders?

Maybe it’s because thinking is so exhausting.

Alan in his book, ‘How to Think’ is making me understand that thinking is more of an art than science because there are no rigid or stringent rules.

But he’s also making me understand that thinking is truly exhausting and this is why we resolve to mostly use our intuition, fast thinking instead of a conscious reflection, slow thinking.

But there’s something Alan says now that makes me pause.

He says that we can’t live life thinking about thinking as a way to overcome biases.

It’s a narrow way to think because it will never be enough and we cannot overcome all cognitive biases (I even indulge some, like the confirmation bias).

So how should we think?

It gets crazier because we also have this warped belief that we can truly think independently underestimating the impact of social thinking which is not really true.

Ah, I digress. Yes, reminders are good but they’re not enough just like thinking to overcome biases is not enough.

Some people tap on those reminders that I send.

Others do not because they truly do not care or because they have disabled app notifications so they miss out on the reminders.

So they continue in autopilot mode. Nothing changes. Different people, different lives.

Anyway, the air is now thickened with dryness, in a way that overtly announces Harmattan and I’m still here, thinking about how my life is largely like Firebase.

It’s time to send a push notification but before I send it, I glance over the copy.

It’s about treating oneself this weekend by tying it to the send feature.

I add a wink emoji to soften the delivery.

I want everyone to relax because it’s the weekend. Everyone loves the weekend.

I quickly send a test push notification to myself checking whether the notification title is truncated before sending it to everyone else.

It’s not. It looks good.

This particular reminder feels somewhat refreshing to me or maybe it’s the weather.

Who knows?

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There are some rooms that hold memories which linger like the metallic aftertaste of metronidazole tablets.

The mother’s room is one of them.

In the pediatric ward of the hospital, no one held my gaze longer than three seconds except the doctor only because she was talking to me.

We moved around and she asked me to wait, opposite The Mother’s Room.

The mother’s room was the room for mothers who had newly given birth but whose babies were in the neonatal ward and could not be discharged yet.

I figured that most of those newborns had some health conditions that required them to be admitted to the hospital.

The air was rank with unusual grief, like a loss of self.

Some of these women still had the typical paddle walk as if they were pregnant so they walked side to side, still evidently carrying extra baby weight with a wider stance and they seemed deeply uncomfortable.

The room seemed like it couldn’t take more than three beds so many women lay on the floor, some on their patterned wrappers, others on the bare cold tiles.

The doctor gestured with her hands and spoke to some of the mothers in the ward asking for more information.

To one woman whose child was severely malnourished, she asked her in Yoruba, her tone filled with jovial sarcasm ‘Is this your first or tenth child?’ to which the woman replied ‘first’.

You could tell that she needed help because the baby had no food to eat, with more bones than flesh, lying motionless with its tiny feet curled in defeat.

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It was the validity of her question that unruffled me because my eyes widened at the question.

While working in the hospital, I remembered hearing of women having multiple children because their husbands said they did not want ‘protection’.

Some would come to the pharmacy complaining bitterly about the money for medications and you would see them the next few months with another bump, asking for any free antimalarial medications.

My rage was usually full but my body stayed limp and my lips were immovable, so one time, the other pharmacist there asked a pregnant woman why she refused to go for family planning to which she smiled almost shyly.

She smiled as if it was not a matter that pushed her into deep waters of pain and deeper waters of anguish, as if she was unaware that she kept risking her life and the lives of these babies in an unfair way that announced that she and her husband couldn’t take care of these children.

‘I had one before but my husband said he doesn’t like it.’

‘IUD?’

She nodded again, shyly. It was the practiced tone of modesty that amused me.

‘Let this be your last time o, how many children now?’ the pharmacist asked

‘4’

‘After this one, don’t do again o’

‘Yes ma’ she responded with a knowing smile that immediately defeated the supposed veracity in her tone.

I didn’t need to but I could have sworn she would have another child.

After all, children were blessings from God.

I imagined her nodding her head while hearing this truly nuanced phrase that now seemed to almost absolve the responsibility that taking care of children required.

She looked like the kind of person to nod her head many times to show approval.

In the mothers’ room, the faces of the mothers were tired, their hair was either undone or carelessly packed.

They wore a long gloom, their eyes open, but not dreamy.

I thought at first that maybe they needed a bigger room but what I later realized is that a bigger room could not replace their evident exhaustion, or the longing for their healthy babies.

They needed their babies to be fine.

Longing is a very strange feeling. It’s like yearning.

The theatre call room in the hospital for pharmacists on night duty used to evoke a similar feeling of longing.

The longing for my own space, my own bed.

The call room was a room that did not have the boundaries it claimed to have.

In it was a lone bed, with a lone pillow, with a drab curtain like an afterthought.

It lacked intentionality and existed purely to function. Just lie down and sleep when you’re tired.

The walls were brown and bare. It felt like a cage but a good kind of cage because at least you know that you can get out.

Every time a patient knocked, I would jolt, clamber away from the bed, and collect the patient’s prescription while still fighting mentally for stability, longing for peace.

Now that I think of it, it was a different type of longing.

Nothing like the longing of the mothers in the mothers’ room.

In the mother’s room, there was a silent war amidst the longing.

Life and death.

The mother’s room was a kind of war room.

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Maybe a loud alarm, a tectonic shift by 12:00am, or better still, a physical shedding of an old self so that it would be more dramatic.

Then, maybe the year will bolster my spark and my will to revel in the newness.

But it’s a pattern. We’ve had several New Years, countless reminders to be more intentional, many nudges to restart or restrategize or for some people, take things a step further.

A few days ago, I had a memory of a rude and uncivilized woman attending to me during my registration in the hospital.

I knew it wasn’t the rudeness that displeased me, it was the gigantic Bible on her table that made me almost lose my mind.

It felt wrong to have such a size of Bible on her table and still behave in a manner completely antithetical to everything she had seemingly projected.

What irritated me more was also the evident deference to the presence of a higher authority to whom she reported.

Suddenly, all the power she wielded was drained from her facial expressions, and gesticulations.

Her head was lowered in false submission, instead of the dismissive glance she kept for the people she registered for.

Her anger was subdued, she was more patient and she spoke softly in a way that made me surprised that her voice had the capacity of being low.

I thought she was born naturally with a loud voice. I thought her aim in life was to be a stentor.

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I remembered this woman simply because recently I was randomly burdened with a question that hung in the air for so long that I had to say it out loud: Why did the priest not help the stranger in the story of the good Samaritan?

He was a priest so it was expected. This is the usual way we hold teachers, priests and higher authorities to greater standards which may seem unfair yet practical.

In the story, the priest saw the man lying helplessly on the road and he passed by on the other side.

He saw him yet there was nothing that moved inside of him.

There was no compassion. It occurred to me that the priest would never know what he did was wrong. The priest was blinded by his indifference.

Maybe indifference is a pattern too. You know, the sheer nonchalance to everything else except oneself. I cannot fully blame the priest because what if I’m also guilty?

The priest was most likely dressed like a priest, since he identified as one.

Maybe he had a white garment on too with his regal aura dripping as he passed by on the other side.

But it’s not just indifference that repeats itself, maybe excessive grace giving does too.

At a point, I heedlessly found myself giving people grace like it was a profession, a trait I subconsciously took from a friend.

‘Why is the woman shouting at me?’ I would fume and my friend would respond ‘Maybe she’s having a bad day’, and I would not stop fuming but I would stop rehashing the issue.

Maybe she was having a bad day, and maybe I was having a bad day too but at least, I was not cursing her out.

But since we’re professional Grace-givers now, maybe the next time a drug addict punches you in the face, instead of getting pissed, maybe give him grace by recoiling first so that you recover from the impact of the blow before you kiss his knuckles and admit that the drugs made him angry so it’s fine.

Or maybe when someone steals everything from you, you let them go and say that they didn’t have any other choice but to steal from you? No?

Now, I’m wondering where the fine balance of grace-giving and grace-retracting should be.

Maybe this pattern recognition is making more things evident to me because there are more, like silence, self-sabotage, shame, shame and more shame.

It is also why toxic positivity scares me.

When I ask overly religious people how they feel about something, not in the indifferent courteous way the question is usually flung, not to pore needlessly but to care, and they say ‘God is in control’, I pause because for a moment, I can see this pattern masquerading itself.

Maybe toxic positivity will help you cope but it is not sustainable. It cannot be.

How long will you keep running from your negative emotions when you can acknowledge them and express them in a way that aligns with your values?

It’s somewhat crazy, this subtle art of pattern recognition.

It’s also oddly ironic because it’s a new year but there are old patterns but it doesn’t matter, does it?

It’s a new year, regardless.

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Not the loud kind of love, or the kind that demands attention, but the steady kind.

Beauty comes in different forms, from concepts and seasons to humans. Like Christmas, for example.

Everything about Christmas is beautiful; even its commercialization is beautiful to watch.

Even the flamboyance of matching pyjamas is full of the warmth of the season.

Warmth. It is what Christmas exudes, alongside a longing and a sense of stability. A perceived sense of stability.

Christmas feels like you’re at the cusp of the year and you are forced to choose a path sooner or later but you can also just pause and not choose yet.

It tells you what is coming but it also lets you enjoy the moment.

It may be because it’s an imminent sign of the end of the year too, sometimes like a threat, other times like a reminder.

Funnily, this time, Christmas is also a reminder of a sense of mutual bond. Two souls, three souls, four souls, many souls coming together.

Like my mothers. Every time I see the crinkle in my mother’s eyes, I am surprised I can see the same crinkle in her twin’s eyes.

I wonder how everything is a striking resemblance, from the shared mannerisms, gesticulations, outfits, laughter, and wittiness. Everything is shared.

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It’s like an inexplicable bond that can never be replaced, a timeless one.

I’ve laughed several times at their many stories.

From one twin writing an exam for the other twin because the other one was ill, people randomly stopping them on the road willing them to pray for them to also have twins (even people that already have many children still want twins), to a deep seated sense of telepathy, completing each other sentences, wearing the same clothes unconsciously, and even inventing their own special language to communicate with each other.

Sometimes I would swear that I heard my aunt’s voice but it would be my mother and she would laugh in that knowing laugh.

The familiarity had become trite to her and she wore it like an old brooch fastening their joint memories.

But there are scary moments, because this timeless bond sometimes encapsulates almost everything, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Everything is truly shared, even their health conditions, and their misery.

It’s unbelievable. I ask my mother how they are this close and if she knows why but she says that she thinks their misery also contributed to their closeness.

I don’t know why Christmas reminds me of my mothers.

But it must be the bond that truly keeps me in awe.

To share such depth with someone else, to be extremely bare and visible, to be loved regardless.

Even their fights are settled with a sense of consideration, to grudgingly check on the other in a weirdly loving way.

Ah, and they fit so well like the last pieces of a stubborn jigsaw puzzle.

One hot-headed, the other one cool. One impatient, the other patient. One stubborn, the other diplomatic.

How did the universe know they needed each other?

Christmas reminds me of this type of bond, typically because it’s easy to forget the reason for the season.

It’s like a custom-made love.

Christmas is a reminder of many beautiful things because beauty comes in many forms.

I like this familial form. For now.

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Typically, it is to feel discomfort in social situations due to clumsiness, self-consciousness or difficulty knowing what to say or do.

It is not a fancy badge, or a flex. It is just an observation, nothing more. I don’t think it also has to affect other aspects of your life and it’s not insurmountable.

It’s fine, really.

To be awkward is just to be awkward. It’s like having a moniker you barely use.

It’s just there hanging in the air without disturbing anything until someone creates a fuss out of it.

To be awkward may stem from inexperience, anxiety or being reserved but the origin matters less than asking why the word ‘monosyllable’ has more than one syllable? It’s just a thing.

Awkward people may reply ‘I’m fine, thank you’ to a simple good morning greeting.

They may also quip ‘same to you’ when you wish them a happy birthday in person. So what?

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Sometimes awkward people need to prepare for everything in advance including what to say and how to say it.

So they may spend some time practicing their limited social interactive measures, like pursed lips, a one-sided smile or a universal response that answers every question.

Awkward people must not be caught unawares. It’s not a surprise. Don’t surprise awkward people or you may be surprised.

Things have to happen within their control because if not, they may well… behave awkwardly.

If you ask an awkward person whether they’re going out even when you meet them fully dressed, they may say no.

They’re not trying to be sarcastic. It’s just a thing that happens where you say the first thing that comes to your mind. It’s not intentional.

After they realize they said the wrong answer, they may try to keep up with what they said just because they blurted it out.

Is it crazy? Not to me. But is it awkward? Maybe.

What should awkward people do? Nothing

According to Naval Ravikant, the only way to escape competition is through authenticity so maybe awkward people have to embrace their awkwardness genuinely.

To be awkward is one thing. To be seen in full-blown awkward mode is something else but awkward people must be seen so that other awkward people can find hope too, and be happy in their awkwardness.

Awkward people are not crazy. Sometimes they’re huddled at the corner, staring into their phones for no reason.

Sometimes they’re tapping their right foot on the ground and you can tell they’re uneasy in public.

You can tell that the unfamiliar has made them uncomfortable.

Some awkward people may fit in very easily because they’ve mastered the art of blending in.

They’re not tapping their feet nervously. They’re not huddled against the wall. They’re laughing loudly, maybe even asking for more food or drinks.

But somehow when you see them you know, even if they’re having a good time. You can just tell.

Awkward people know awkward people, and like the nature of life, awkward people like awkward people.

That’s expected because in ‘The Art of Thinking Clearly’, Rolf Dobelli explains that people like people for three reasons:

• If they’re outwardly attractive (people somehow associate attractiveness with positive traits like kindness)

• If they share similarities (background, personality, shared experiences)

• If they like them (we like people who like us. The power of reciprocity is crazy)

So like attracts like. Awkward people may attract awkward people too.

What should awkward people do? I don’t know

We may all have perks and that’s fine.

Awkwardness is also relative but awkward people should be themselves.

Awkward people should not be given special treatment. They should also be left alone like other people.

There’s no need to make them feel more awkward.

Unless you genuinely want to talk to them, there’s no point asking if they’re okay multiple times in a row.

They most likely are.

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Freedom has always felt like an alien thing, something distant, like extended family members.

Sometimes, it’s vague. Freedom from what?

Other times, I prefer the synonym, liberation. It sounds more serious.

It sends a signal of a battle beyond myself. As if liberation is what happens after a revolution, and you know revolution is not a small word. ‘Revolution’ is what you see in history books.

Perhaps it is even revolution I seek. That violent overthrow, the forcefulness. Maybe that is what I need.

I’m digressive but that’s okay. After all, that is what it means to be an overthinker.

This is not a badge I wear proudly. I want none of it.

Maybe if I could get rid of it, my freedom would be quicker. I will be free from the bondage of my desires, needs, wants and everything else.

I will tell you what triggered this.

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It was a substack post from Green where he said that ‘When you allow your thoughts, your worries and your hopes to be seen, you become more of yourself. You allow yourself to be heard.’

When I first read this, compassion rose from my diaphragm, before it transitioned into fear and stopped at my throat.

It’s like a permission to be myself.

Same self I’m running from. If not, why am I still struggling to read Joe Dispenza’s book on ‘Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself’?

I am running from myself.

Maybe I think that if I break the habit of being myself then I’ll truly be free, or is it liberated now?

But Joe doesn’t speak without facts so he’s now talking about the quantum field.

My bias against physics and its imminent complexity has my brain in a blur so that my eyes become foggy and I cannot continue reading.

Before Joe is done, I know his point, You can be anything you want to be.

It is because this line has now become trite so the veracity doesn’t hit me anymore.

It has become ordinary, like the way people say ‘just believe’ or ‘don’t give up’.

It’s probably the reason Earl Nightingale keeps emphasizing the word ‘attitude’ in his recordings.

He emphasizes it enough for me to remember that emotions deepen by repetition.

It is why Bob Proctor won’t leave me alone, with his line too, something about constant spaced repetition or practice.

I think this is what Joe Dispenza is trying to tell me but maybe I’ve formed the habit of predicting things too quickly. But I promise, I’m right sometimes.

When I recently told my manager that I was burnt out and it seemed like critical thinking doesn’t matter anymore because of the robotic system we are all forced to adhere to, I quickly added that I knew that he was going to say I shouldn’t stop thinking critically, that the reason I felt that way was because, we were more focused on our current priorities.

I caught his surprise and it pleased me because I knew I had predicted correctly before he acknowledged it.

That 86% prediction accuracy is what I feel for Joe’s advice, which I fear I have heard before.

It may be like the time Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, advised about the Morning Pages, as a system for artists which is a daily practice of writing by hand, three pages of stream-of-consciousness thoughts first thing in the morning.

My fingers bled on paper every morning for a few weeks.

Raw emotions on paper, with my sister’s wedding jotter souvenir staring back at me from their initials at the corner of the pages.

I bled out. I stopped. I just couldn’t face myself every day with that intensity.

My mind is burning but it’s a good thing I’m a master of escapism.

So I know the next TikTok video will inject my soul with another cheap dopamine to keep me going again.

But till when? Till another wave of emotion hits me randomly enough to trap me and deny me this same freedom I seek?

Again I digress but you must be used to it now so I’m unapologetic.

But you must know this, Joe says for real change to happen, you need new knowledge.

It is this knowledge that leads to transformation. Now I can’t even remember if this is what Joe said or if I’m also now hallucinating.

Anyway, this is the part that makes me realize that I have become undone.

Because I worry that the hindsight bias that I so much glamorize and cherish is what is against me.

If Joe promises new knowledge and my prediction is based on the premise of old knowledge, how can I be free?

I think that, to seek this freedom, I may have to restart my life since I have begun to lose control.

I will tell you how.

‘It is well’ is the new slimy phrase that I use to end conversations about situations I’m frustrated about.

It is the final form of surrender, to express my soul’s exhaustion.

It is in fact not well but have you not heard that you must speak positively?

It is not well but wouldn’t that be more concerning?

So it is well, even though this phrase is nestled between deep melancholy, and uncertainty.

Even though it escapes through my lips mindlessly.

Sometimes, I say it twice in hope that I mean it but I don’t.

Other times, I use a slightly better alternative ’God is in control’ but even that also reminds me of my powerlessness.

It’s a good thing that God is in control but now I wonder what my role is.

Florence Scovel Shinn said in her book, The Game of Life and How to Play It, that man must make the first move.

In the story of Jesus walking on water, before Jesus told Peter to come, Peter first asked ‘Lord if it’s truly you, tell me to come to you on the water’.

Maybe that was Peter’s first move. His desire was the first move.

It’s a good thing the lord checks the heart because how do I know what my desire stems from?

Maybe it’s a vain representation or glorification of self. Maybe not.

Maybe it’s a genuine desire to reflect the glory of God. Maybe not or maybe both?

Maybe I’m also addicted to my suffering.

Maybe I’ve identified with conflict in my mind for too long and maybe that’s what I’ve chosen because it secretly gives me the comfort that comes from familiarity. I cannot tell.

Maybe when I say ‘it is well’, maybe I should be more mindful, wrapping the phrase with more optimism.

If Earl Nightingale thinks attitude is important then maybe I should try.

Maybe be more present, acknowledge my feelings but still push forward with a resolve so hopeful that it scares me to the bone.

Maybe then, it will be truly well.

Who knows?

But you see, intimacy is a risk, this shedding of self.

It’s the same way overthinking is a risk. You may figure it out or not.

Everything is a risk.

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I hate feeling helpless.

It’s also reminding me of times when I was working in the accident and emergency unit watching people wail loudly because someone had died.

Limp bodies. Real bodies

I would sit in the tiny pharmacy building, watching them from a distance.

I could only watch them cry.

I couldn’t cry with them. It would have been unprofessional.

It is the same helplessness that made me somewhat immune to tragedy because the fifth time I saw a dead body in the ward, I did not feel any urge to cry.

Yesterday, I texted my friend ‘I’m seeking a distraction. I can’t stay still’.

Without waiting for a response, I found something, abandoned books.

There are three books I’ve been struggling to read or finish: Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows and the Absent Father Effect on Daughters by Susan Schwartz.

If I’m struggling with a book, it’s because there is a form of fear, either because of the complexity or because of the feelings the book uncovers.

I’m never under any pressure to read, finish or like a book. Naval made me understand that it’s a vanity metric.

Today, I will face my fears and go ahead to read a chapter from each book and explain what I think and feel.

I will explain how I feel. I don’t have to but I want to.

Father’s desire

The title of this book, Absent Father Effect on Daughters by Susan Schwartz already tells me what to expect.

However, I did not expect to be met with Jephthah’s story in the Bible.

He had come back from a victorious battle and had made a vow to God to sacrifice as a burnt offering whatever first came out to meet him upon his return.

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Maybe there are a couple of things to note.

Firstly, when he saw his daughter, he blamed her for coming to welcome him.

Victim-blaming. Count one.

It is also striking how his daughter was quick to accept her fate without a fight.

Even more, she chooses to spend her last days with her friends, with people she trusts.

It is even sadder that she doesn’t have a name.

She is referred to as ‘his daughter’.

I am reminded that this is one of the reasons for the pseudo-covering that daughters eventually make, a persona formation, a shell, disconnected from the inside.

A persona to fill a role.

Before now, I had no idea that a father’s mental representation can be this internalised in one’s psyche.

It goes further to explain that once a daughter is uncertain of who she is because she is uncertain of how she is seen, she experiences anxiety.

Socially, and personally, she learns denial and avoidance of feelings while her desires are dampened.

The wound continues to bleed.

There is a distance between the father and the family that leads to an emptiness.

Both parental figures inhabit the psyche but it genuinely surprises me that the silence around the father’s absence is this loud.

It is almost funny to me. Funny in a sad way.

Thinking in systems

Why systems work so well

I know I won’t finish this chapter because it’s boring.

Systems work so well because of one or three characteristics: resilience, self-organisation or hierarchy.

I’m more interested in the definition of resilience because I want to be resilient not in the I-want-to-experience-things-that-make-me-resilient but in a I-just-want-to-understand-it-so-you-can-keep-the-experience-because-I’ve-had-enough.

Resilience is the ability to bounce or spring back into shape or position after being pressed or stretched while elasticity is the ability to recover strength, spirits, or good humour quickly

So typically resilience is how a system can survive and persist within a variable environment

I feel impatient most times so I like the idea of elasticity. The quickness.

I want to recover quickly.

Resilience guarantees I’ll bounce back but elasticity assures me that it will be quicker.

Okay, enough English lessons.

This is not even the point of this chapter but this is what is staying with me.

I want to learn how to think in systems because I think it will help me but I’m struggling with this book and I hate struggling with things, like reading.

Life is hard enough, reading should be easy. I’ll stop here.

Nassim is winking at me in Black Swan and I hate to ignore him.

Black shwan

Nassim is the only serious author I know who is funny.

Like he genuinely makes me smile while reading.

I can’t keep reading Black Swan because it truly drives me crazy.

The point of a black swan event is to show the unpredictability of life or events and all the nuances attached with it. Period.

But there are different contexts.

Last time I read a chapter, I began questioning everything around me and it gave me such a headache.

It is why I’ve never finished reading the book.

My attention span is weak and Nassim leaves me with a headache.

I don’t like headaches.

Maybe I’m not resilient enough?

I know because I can even barely read a chapter.

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