how do I explain this? it’s like the words dissolved in my hands before my fingers closed around them like salt in the rain. my hand is moving but I don’t know, the pen is just scratching dead skin off the page.

God help me, I don’t know what I am doing.

Subscribe now

this isn’t how it used to be, and I remember something else, at this point I am lying to myself. I replay last week wednesday, last year, that conversation on the stairs, and every version comes out different. like I’m editing my past in real time, cutting the parts where I looked like an idiot, amplifying the parts where I was right. right about what gangan?

I don’t even remember the question anymore.

I probably modelled it wrong. I thought I read the signal correctly, the tilt of her head, the pause before his reply, the silence that held too long in the group chat. I mapped out every incentive, predicted every possible outcome with the confidence of someone that has never been wrong.

the agents behaved irrationally, he said.

or I did. the rational man is a myth anyway. maybe I am too, maybe I am a myth, a lie I told myself so many times that I started believing the footnote was the story.

but why though? Tolu is that even a question anymore? now it’s just a sound, a grunt. the noise a machine makes when it’s running and nobody fed it input.

what are you even saying, writing….. I don’t even know.

I know certainty. certainty feels like a coat he left at a bar somewhere. he remembers wearing it, he remembers the feeling of warmth, but now he’s shivering and he doesn’t even know where he is.

I need to find myself, I feel so lost.

I see how they are looking at me. they look through me. not at me, through, like I’m invisible, I don’t understand why.

I’m in the midst of strangers, unknown bodies brushing my shoulders, laughter fizzing around, and I came here to drown the noise in my head with more noise. they all bounce off me like I’m not solid enough to leave a bruise.

I’m not even sure the alcohol helps anymore. did it ever? now it just leaves a headache and the same unsolved model.

It’s almost like everyone understands something I can’t see. like they were born knowing it. the script. the choreography. when to nod, when to laugh, when to tilt their glass just so. I watch them and I feel like a foreigner. like I missed the orientation on the first day of being human.

I am back home and I still don’t know what I’m doing.

still going at the bottle, my glass is now empty. my phone says 2:14 AM. my thumb hovers over a name I want to text, afraid she’d leave me hanging, she’s probably just sleeping. it would be worse if she replies cause I don’t know how to lay my heart bare.

I’m drunk and confused.

Subscribe now

like a door that won’t open,

or a clock that has forgotten how to move forward.

Abdulrazaq

His name sits in his mouth like a pebble

he no longer has the energy to spit out.

He is not dying.

He is only not living.

There is a difference, he thinks,

the way there is a difference

between a house and a home—

one is a wall, a structure that stands,

the other is a place that holds.

His parents’ house

has never held him.

It is a cage,

but not the dramatic kind with iron bars

and a villain pacing outside.

It is a cage of ordinary walls,

painted in shades of forgetting,

where time is not stolen

but simply repossessed,

like furniture that was never yours.

He wakes in a room

that feels like an afterthought.

His breath fogs nothing,

moves nothing.

The day stretches ahead

long and empty as a road

no one is driving on.

And yet he rises.

This is the cruelty of it.

His body, that liar, knows how to stand,

how to go to work,

how to ask

do you need me to go to the market?

His mother hands him a list.

His father hands him keys.

They hand him errands the way you hand a coat

to a hook on the wall

without looking,

without wondering if the hook

minds the weight.

He smiles.

He has become a master of the smile

that costs nothing,

the smile that functions as a wall

behind which nothing lives.

His face performs.

His voice performs.

Yes, I’ll go. No, I don’t mind. It’s fine.

And all the while, inside,

a small, quiet voice is practicing

the language of disappearance.

He thinks about not thinking.

He thinks about the long silence

of a body that stops.

The death wish is not loud.

It does not arrive with drums.

It comes as a whisper

while he is folding laundry,

while he is driving to buy groceries,

while he is nodding along

to another lecture about his failures.

It says:

you could just not be here.

It says:

what if this errand was the last thing?

It says:

a bridge, a rope, a bottle, a fall.

But the body,

this stubborn animal,

fears its own dismantling.

The process of dying

is a hallway too sharp to walk down.

So he stays.

Hovering in the unbearable mathematics

of wanting to leave

and being too afraid to travel.

Every day, he audits the cost of dying

the way one might study a bill

that cannot yet be paid.

Too much pain in the transaction.

Too much mess.

So he postpones.

And in the postponement,

he keeps serving people.

He shows his face at dinner.

He chews. He swallows.

He doesn’t care to say goodnight.

A ghost filling a chair.

A ghost with a to-do list

and a heart full of static.

He remembers being away.

His time at university—

a parenthesis of light.

He had walked across a campus

with the unbearable weightlessness

of having a self.

There, his mornings had edges.

His nights had reasons.

He laughed like a stone learning to skip.

He was not a failure there.

He was not

a problem to be solved.

But graduation was a spell breaking.

The parenthesis closed.

He packed his heartbeat back into boxes

and knocked on a door

that opened into his own erasure.

Now he is a ghost

in the hallway of his parents’ expectations.

They look at him and see

a project behind schedule,

a mirror that refuses to fully reflect

their own ambitions.

They do not see the pause

between his sentences

where the silence is screaming.

They do not see

that every completed job or chore

every time he gets back from work

is a negotiation with the void,

a small, exhausted victory

over the impulse to lie down

and never get up.

They speak in the language of should.

You should be working more.

You should be trying.

You should be someone

we can finally approve of.

They brag about his accomplishments to relatives and friends alike,

but indoors,

the atmosphere is different.

But their voices arrive as if from a great distance,

as if through water,

as if through the thick glass

of an aquarium

where Abdul floats,

unfed,

unseen,

bumping softly against the limits

of what he cannot want.

He does not think they hate him.

Hate would be a kind of passion,

a fire he could warm his hands over.

What they offer is something cooler,

more efficient:

a selfishness that wears the mask of care.

They love him the way someone loves a garden they never water

but still expect to bloom in.

They are living their lives through him,

threading their disappointments through his veins

and calling it guidance.

And Abdul,

Abdul is tired of being a needle

for someone else’s embroidery.

Tired of walking through the market

with death in his chest

and a shopping list in his hand.

Tired of the performance,

the long theater of okay-ness,

the way his mouth keeps saying yes

while his mind keeps saying stop.

His childhood is a room

someone has wallpapered over.

He presses his ear to the plaster

and hears nothing.

No laughter.

No music.

No small hands collecting stones or questions.

Just the dull hum of being managed,

being fed, being instructed, being judged.

He was a child who was kept,

not raised,

a plant in a pot too small,

roots circling the same dry soil,

never learning what it meant

to break ground.

And now,

at twenty-one,

he feels like a man

who has not yet happened.

His life is a sentence

waiting for a verb.

A train at a station

that no longer appears on the map.

A home

is a myth he once almost believed in.

But the door closed,

and the myth ended,

and the house swallowed him back

into its quiet machinery.

His reality.

Abdul.

Not yet dead,

not yet living,

a boy suspended

between the pain of staying

and the pain required to leave.

Every morning he puts on his body,

puts on his face,

and serves people

who do not know

he is already practicing

his own eulogy

in the aisle of the high way.

In the dark,

he is learning

the slow,

impossible grammar

of waiting

for a self to arrive

or for the courage

to stop waiting

altogether.

Some of you might have come across the name Abdulrazaq in a few of my old notes and one post, I think. Bro has been quiet lately. If you’re wondering who he is, I was actually struggling to explain who he is until I read Godesulloh’s post. The way he described his friend K is exactly who Abdul is.

So, Abdul is a friend of mine. He might be imaginary. He might be a fake personality that I invented to tell my own stories. He might also be a combination of stories I have heard from friends and other people. Abdul can simply be a mouthpiece for pieces I have completely made up. He can also legitimately be an individual I know. Abdul can be a combination of everything. He can be 21 years old today, 22 tomorrow and 16 the next day. This piece is from his journal.

Thank you for reading!!!

Subscribe now

The world is a lot right now.

What would you guys say about the evolution of conflict and war? Man started with sticks and stones, then swords, then arrows. Fast forward to guns, then bombs, different sizes and ranges of guns and bombs. Now we have missiles, nuclear bombs, chemical weapons, biological weapons, weapons of mass destruction and so on. And we call it technological progress.

One thing you’d notice as this went on is that each new generation of weapon creates distance. Now, with the push of a button from a cozy office, you can kill millions, billions even, and you don’t have to look any of them in the face. It removes empathy, removes guilt and any form of feeling. You might as well be playing COD.

In 10 minutes, 100 bombs, 100 places. They called them targets. These were people’s homes, families, children, fathers, mothers, loved ones. And in just 10 minutes......

What were you doing in those ten minutes? I’m genuinely asking. I was probably scrolling. Maybe you were making dinner. Maybe you were stuck in traffic, annoyed at the car in front of you. Maybe you were annoyed at your cat pissing on your notebook. Somewhere else, in that same ten-minute window, a lifetime was compacted into dust and a single high-pitched wail that no microphone truly captures.

How do we hold both realities in our heads at the same time? We can’t. So we don’t. We watch the funny video. We refresh the news. We say “that’s horrible” and then we check our emails.

I don’t know what to hope for anymore. I think what the world needs is a pause. Not a treaty. Not a ceasefire with conditions and footnotes. Just a pause. Long enough for a mother to find her son. Long enough for the dust to settle so we can see what we’ve done. Long enough for me to finish this sentence without wanting to throw my laptop at the wall.

One thing I never thought I’d see in my generation is tribalism. I thought that was the older generation and their nostalgia of regional politics and civil war and each of them thinking their culture is better. Now in 2026, this 23-year-old idiot is telling me “Tinubu is Yoruba, that’s why I’ll be voting for him in the next election. When last did a Yoruba person become president? Power has finally come to our side.” This made me so sick. Like bro, are you stupid?

It is a crazy thing how tribe and religion is more important than what a political candidate actually has to offer.

We have become so desensitized to bad news that it has become normal to hear something like, oh, about 150 people were kidnapped last week in so so so state, armed bandits entered a place of worship and opened fire, how are you? Everything is fine, it’s just that 15 people were killed the other day in that neighbourhood. This kind of news has become so normal and so frequent that most people don’t even react like it shouldn’t be happening. Some of it doesn’t even make the news. Lives are lost, snatched, and it’s not considered newsworthy.

The President went to see the relatives of the people lost in the Jos massacre and this man said “there’s no light, I’d have to fly out immediately.” I was watching the video on my phone and my phone dropped. I did not intend to drop it, it just left my hands. He gave them 10 minutes like he was blessing them with his presence. I just got my phone repaired not too long ago.

The primary responsibility of the Nigerian government is clearly stated in section 14(2)(b) of the constitution: “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” This government has failed on that count. We are recording terrifying death numbers for a country that is not at war. They have failed in virtually every other aspect and still have the nerve to campaign for another term. “Renewed hope.” Just kill me at this point.

I’m at home waiting for my NYSC call-up, praying for myself and my friends to be safe if we get posted to states we’re not familiar with. I’m just sick and tired.

Look around the world, all I see is double standards.

“Fuck international law. In geopolitics, might is right.”

— one idiot

As much as I disagree with the person that said that because he supports Israel, he has a point which is that the United Nations, International law is nonexistent.

That’s why that clown can threaten an entire civilization, threaten to bomb them back to the stone age, and every other country leader stays quiet like they’re dumb. A few months ago the excuse was saving the people from their tyrannical government.

Ukraine gets open borders, candlelight vigils, and a telethon. Palestine gets a body count and debates about whether what’s happening even qualifies as genocide. Same century. Same cameras. Different skin. Might is right, and sympathy has a passport.

The yahoo boy rots in kirikiri. The man who stole a budget gets a chieftaincy title, political appointment and a front row seat at the next inauguration. We know this. We’ve always known this. We just don’t say it out loud.

And that man on the next street, grooming his daughter for a man she hasn’t met yet, saying shit like she doesn’t get respect until she’s in her husband’s house. Nigga she’s 13. Thirteen!!! Let her be a child. They call that training. They call that discipline. They call that culture. They call that tradition. They call it a lot of things that isn’t what it is. It is bullshit.

I went inside the house around 9pm. I don’t remember exactly what I did between then and when I finally slept. I scrolled, stared at the ceiling. The same world was still happening outside. The world didn’t pause.

Everybody’s lives went on.

Freedom is the fundamental alignment between who you are and how you live. Freedom can also mean different things to different people, depending on their circumstances and how they choose to define it. For some, it is simply monetary, they believe money equals freedom. For others, it is the ability to live as they wish without persecution, as long as they don’t threaten others. It can just mean living in peace for some people, while for others, it is about not being discriminated against for their ideas, speech, or opinions.

To pursue freedom is to pursue everything that challenges the forces that seek to control us. The pursuit of truth. The pursuit of happiness, justice, free will, peace. The fight against oppression, corruption, inequality, injustice, racism, discrimination. All of it shaped by your morality, your experiences, and whatever chains have bound you.

In fiction, we see this complexity reflected in characters who embody different philosophies of freedom. Two of anime’s most iconic protagonists—Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece and Eren Yeager from Attack on Titan, both pursue freedom with every fiber of their being, yet their paths couldn’t be more different. One sees freedom as infinite possibility, the other sees it as the absence of threats. One liberates through joy, the other through annihilation. Their stories ask us: What does freedom really mean? And what are we willing to sacrifice or destroy to obtain it?

Two Sides of the Same Coin

At first glance, both Eren Yeager and Monkey D. Luffy are characters driven by an unyielding desire for freedom, but the nature of that freedom and what they’re willing to sacrifice to obtain it, couldn’t be more opposed.

Luffy sees freedom as the ability to live without restraint, to explore, to protect his friends, and to laugh. His freedom is expansive, it doesn’t require anyone else’s subjugation. In fact, he often liberates others along the way. His pursuit is joyful, almost naive in its purity, but that simplicity is its strength. Eren, by contrast, experiences freedom as something extractive. His vision of freedom is defined by the absence of threats, which eventually translates into the annihilation of anyone who poses one. Where Luffy breaks chains, Eren builds walls of corpses. Both want to be free, but Eren’s freedom demands that the world shrink while Luffy’s demands that it open up. What makes the comparison even more interesting is that both characters idea of success and the outcomes are radically different. Luffy’s freedom brings him closer to everyone he loves. Eren’s isolates him completely. It’s a testament to how the same ideal, filtered through different worldviews and traumas, can produce a hero in one story and a tragedy in another.

Subscribe now

Luffy: The Embodiment of Existential Liberty

The Philosophy of Positive Freedom

Luffy embodies what philosopher Isaiah Berlin called “positive liberty” not just freedom from interference, but freedom to self-determine and act authentically. Berlin distinguished between negative liberty (the absence of obstacles) and positive liberty (the capacity to be one’s own master). Luffy doesn’t just want to be left alone, he wants to actively shape his world according to his will. But Luffy’s freedom goes even deeper than political theory. He represents what Jean-Paul Sartre meant by radical existential freedom— the idea that we are “condemned to be free,” that we cannot escape the responsibility of choosing who we are and how we act. Sartre argued that humans have no predetermined essence; we create ourselves through our choices. Luffy lives this philosophy completely. He doesn’t follow anyone’s script. He doesn’t care about destiny or inherited will in a constraining sense. He simply is, moment to moment, choice by choice.

Freedom Through Anarchist Principles

Luffy’s approach to freedom also mirrors anarchist philosophy, particularly the concept of mutual aid articulated by Peter Kropotkin. Anarchism isn’t chaos, it’s voluntary cooperation without hierarchy. And that’s exactly how the Straw Hat crew operates. Luffy doesn’t command his crew, they choose to follow him.

There’s no formal hierarchy, no coercion. Zoro and Sanji are sttrong enough to have their own crews. Nami was a thief, Robin was hunted, Franky was a gang leader, Brook was alone for fifty years or so. Luffy gives each of them the freedom to chase their dreams while belonging to something larger. He freed them not by destroying their enemies (though he does that too), but by showing them they could exist exactly as they are. His freedom is contagious. Wherever Luffy goes, he breaks chains, sometimes literally, sometimes by simply existing in a way that shows people another option. His morality is intuitive, immediate, and uncalculated. He doesn’t philosophize about justice, he feels it and acts.

What makes Luffy’s instinctive morality so reliable is that it operates on what Aristotle would call virtue ethics. Unlike moral systems based on rules or calculations, Aristotelian virtue ethics says that right action flows from good character, a virtuous person doesn’t need to deliberate about what’s right because virtue has become their second nature. Aristotle called this phronesis, practical wisdom: the ability to know the right thing to do in the moment without conscious thought. When Luffy sees Nami crying or watches a Celestial Dragon abuse someone, he doesn’t pause to think through the ethics. His response is immediate and correct because his character is fundamentally good. His virtues are so deeply ingrained through consistent practice that helping others isn’t a choice, it's who he is.

is it possible to chase such kind of freedom in this world? drop your answers in the comments.

Leave a comment

For me, I’ve always admired and thought of Luffy as the epitome of freedom, but I’ve also understood that his kind of freedom is impossible to attain in the real world. Luffy embodies the most radical form of freedom: not just political or social liberty, but existential liberty. The ability to act exactly as you wish, unfiltered by laws, opinion, or fear of consequence. He embodies this perfectly in One Piece. But in our world, in this real life, that kind of freedom would make someone dangerous in the public eye. His moral instincts wouldn’t be seen as heroic when filtered through our laws, media, and politics.

Take Luffy punching a Celestial Dragon in the face, for example or declaring war on the world government for kidnapping his friend. That was something that had never been done before or even thought possible. Now in this world, who are the Celestial Dragons? These are the untouchable elites. The heirs to billion-dollar empires, the politically connected who operate above the law, the figures so entrenched in the global power structure that they are effectively shielded from consequence, the bastards in the epstein files.

If someone, no matter how charismatic were to physically assault one of these individuals on public television, the narrative would not be “Hero Stands Up to Oppressor.” And it wasn’t framed that way in the anime either, but it would be even more twisted in real life. We’d see headlines like “Terrorist Attack on Philanthropist” or “Radical Dangerous Anarchist Incites Violence” or “Cult Leader and Gang of Followers Cause Havoc.” The media would mobilize immediately. The person would be labeled a terrorist, threat to society, a danger to the peaceful order of the world, an example of what happens when people take justice into their own hands and be hunted. The craziest part is that the people of our world would side with the celestial dragons and the world government.

When I look at history and see figures who fought for liberation, who fought for the rights and freedom of their people, their country, and others, historical figures regarded as heroes, they were on the CIA and other government agencies most wanted lists. They were either assassinated, murdered in some awful way, thrown in prison, or systematically destroyed. A few examples include, Thomas Sankara, Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Patrice Lumumba, and many many more. These are people who directly challenged powerful systems. They had all the willpower and conviction in the universe.

They had “The Will of D” in abundance. They were precisely the kind of people who would punch a Celestial Dragon. And the system’s response was to paint them as villains and threats. Nelson Mandela was labeled a terrorist. Malcolm X was surveilled and later killed. Martin Luther King Jr. was monitored by the FBI and called a communist threat. Thomas Sankara was assassinated in a coup supported by foreign powers after he tried to make Burkina Faso self-sufficient. Patrice Lumumba was murdered with CIA involvement because he refused to let Congo be exploited. Angela Davis was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list and imprisoned for her activism.

These men and women had that unwavering commitment to freedom and justice, that willingness to stand up to power no matter the cost. But unlike in One Piece, where Luffy’s actions inspire revolutions and loyalty, in our world, the powerful have mechanisms to suppress, discredit, and eliminate anyone who threatens their position.

Our world is more insidious. The chains here aren’t just physical walls or literal slavery, they’re economic systems, sanctions, media narratives, surveillance states, and political machinery, weapons of all kinds, designed specifically to prevent anyone from accumulating enough power to threaten the status quo. That’s why Luffy’s freedom feels so liberating to watch and so impossible to live. He represents what I wish I could be, completely unburdened, acting purely from moral conviction, free from the compromises and calculations that survival in this world demands. He’s the dream of what human freedom could look like if the world were designed differently. That’s why we see the straw hats flag popping everywhere at protests all around the world. The straw hats jolly roger isn’t just merch anymore, it is a symbol against oppression.

Eren: Freedom Through Annihilation

The Birth of negative freedom

If Luffy represents positive liberty, the freedom to create and act, then Eren Yeager embodies negative liberty taken to its most extreme conclusion. The point of this article is not to say who is good or bad, or whose approach to freedom is better, I am just discussing this two characters how I have come to understand them based on their different life experiences. Berlin’s negative liberty is freedom from external constraints, freedom from interference. Eren’s entire journey is about removing obstacles, eliminating threats, destroying anything that could potentially limit him or his people.

But Eren’s conception of freedom didn’t start this way, it was forged in trauma.

The Walls and the Cage

Eren grew up in a literal cage. The walls of Paradis Island weren’t just physical barriers, they were psychological prisons that defined the limits of human possibility. For over a hundred years, humanity inside the walls lived in fear, constrained, told that the world beyond was death. The walls represented safety, but they also represented stagnation, limitation, and lies. When the Colossal Titan broke through Wall Maria, it didn’t just destroy Eren’s home it shattered the illusion of safety that the walls provided.

And in that destruction, Eren watched his mother get eaten alive, unable to do anything. That moment crystallized something in him: walls don’t protect you. Confinement isn’t safety. The only way to be free is to eliminate everything that threatens you. Kill or be killed. Eren’s trauma is the trauma of helplessness. He was powerless to save his mother. He was powerless to fight the Titans. He was born into a cage he didn’t choose. And once he gained power, he became obsessed with never being helpless again.

But the turning point for Eren wasn’t just his past trauma, it was his future knowledge. Through the Attack Titan’s ability to see across time, he received memories of future events: the Rumbling, the deaths of billions, his own path forward. And here’s where Eren’s tragedy deepens.

He saw that his freedom would require genocide. He saw that the outside world, having learned that Paradis Island existed, would eventually come to destroy it. He saw the cycle of hatred that had perpetuated for thousands of years through Eldian history. And he made a choice: the only way to break the cycle, the only way to ensure that his people would never be caged again, was to flatten the earth. Eren’s freedom became defined entirely by the absence of threats. If the world wanted to destroy Paradis, then the world must be destroyed.

His logic is almost mathematical in its brutality; X threatens Y, therefore X must be eliminated. There’s no negotiation, no compromise, no possibility of coexistence. Freedom, for Eren, is a zero-sum game. This is what trauma does. It collapses possibility into binary thinking. You’re either the victim or the victor, the oppressed or the oppressor, the one who’s caged or the one who breaks every cage by burning down the prison. Eren couldn’t imagine a world where threats could exist without eventually destroying him, so he chose to destroy them first.

The Prisoner of His Own Freedom

The cruel irony of Eren’s path is that in pursuing absolute freedom, he became completely enslaved to his future memories, to his ideology, to the inevitability of his own choices. Sartre wrote about “bad faith”—the act of lying to yourself about your freedom, of pretending you have no choice when you actually do. Eren’s bad faith: he convinced himself he had to do this, that there was no other path, that his future memories meant his choice was already made.

Eren wanted to be free more than anything, but his freedom required everyone else’s death. And in the end, he is completely alone, killed by the people who love him and claimed to be protecting, his freedom amounting to nothing but destruction and isolation. He succeeded in his goal and lost everything that made freedom meaningful.

What happens when your freedom becomes more important than people?

Eren’s willingness to slaughter 80% of the world for his goal created this question.

Share

Two Philosophies, Two Outcomes

One found freedom through opening up the world. The other found it through closing the world down to nothing.

Luffy’s freedom is joyful because it doesn’t require domination. He’s free because he refuses to be anything other than himself, and he extends that same possibility to everyone around him. His freedom is generative, it creates more freedom wherever it goes.

Eren’s freedom is tragic because it’s born from fear and sustained by violence. He’s free because he has eliminated everyone who could threaten him, but that freedom is hollow. It’s the freedom of a wasteland, of being the last man standing in a world you’ve destroyed.

Both characters remind us that freedom is not just about what you’re fighting for, it’s about how you fight for it. The means shape the ends. The path determines the destination. In the pursuit of freedom Eren became a slave to freedom, and Luffy? Luffy is freedom itself.

The question isn’t whether we want freedom, everyone does. The question is: what kind of freedom are we pursuing? And what are we willing to sacrifice or who are we willing to sacrifice to get it?

References, futher reading and watching

Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin), 2009-2021

Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, 1997-present

Isaiah Berlin’s essay “Two Concepts of Liberty” (available in Four Essays on Liberty, 1969)— foundational text on positive vs negative liberty

Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Existentialism is a Humanism” (1946)— introduction to his philosophy of radical freedom

Peter Kropotkin’s “The Conquest of Bread” (1892)— foundational anarchist text on mutual aid and voluntary cooperation

Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”— particularly Book II on virtue, habit, and human flourishing

Peter Gelderloos’ “Anarchy Works” (2010)— contemporary look at anarchist principles in practice

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (plato.stanford.edu)— excellent free resource with comprehensive articles on all the philosophers and concepts discussed here.

The story begins long ago, there was a ruthless and terrifying Oni who took pleasure in killing humans, butchering them, and destroying everything in their path. Then a hero appeared, a man named Momotaro, who stormed in and slaughtered countless oni. From that moment, the long wars began between the oni, the monsters, and the Momotaro, the so-called saviors. This is the origin story, or at least how I understand it, of the anime Tougen Anki.

Now, I wonder how the story is told from the Oni’s perspective because there are two sides to the story. Yes, they can loose control and become mindless monsters but they are still people, men, women, children, families being hunted, fighting to be respected, to have a sit on the table. Let’s put aside the “hero vs monster” narrative for a second then the question ceases to be “Who is good and who is bad?” and becomes something more profound and more difficult: What was, what is and how can we live together? Yes, it is a difficult question but we can’t just keep killing each other forever.

Subscribe now

This isn’t just about the anime. It’s the foundational flaw in how we understand conflict, history, and each other. The instinct to find the “evil race” to eradicate is just a genocidal fantasy. It solves nothing, for it ignores the truth that within any group are men, women, children, entire families, loved ones. The real work isn’t annihilation; it’s understanding. And understanding begins with one radical act: questioning who is telling the story, and where they choose to begin it.

The Danger of Starting with “Secondly”

The great novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave us the perfect key to this puzzle. In her seminar talk, The danger of a single story, she delivers a devastating simple formula for narrative injustice.

Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story.

This is the masterstroke of propaganda and simplistic history. To start “secondly” is to begin after the provocation, the invasion, the destabilizing act. It frames the victim’s reaction as the original sin, the cause of all trouble. It turns defense into aggression, and aggression into righteous order. I look at the world today and that’s what I see. A resistance group becomes a dangerous terrorist organization, speaking against genocide is a crime, an innocent woman is shot in the face at point blank range and is immediately tagged a “domestic terrorist”. The perspective from which a story is told isn’t just a point of view; it is a tool of power. It shapes reality. As I’ve come to believe, the story is written by the powerful and the side that wins.

This got me thinking seriously about how many stories are told. From whose perspective. I think about history and wars and my conclusion that the story is written by the powerful side or the side that wins. The perspective from which a story is told matters more than the story itself.

Case Study: Greece, Persia and the Hollywood Soundtrack

Nowhere is this clearer than in the tale of Greece and Persia, the Greco-Persian Wars, a story that has served for over 2,000 years as a foundational myth for the West. The standard telling, begun by Herodotus (a Greek, for Greeks), is elegant: noble, democratic, rational Greeks (the progenitors of “us”) defending freedom against the despotic, tyrannical hordes of Persia (the enduring “them”).

In the 21st century, this ancient narrative got a pulsating, populist remake: Zack Snyder’s film “300”. Here, the Herodotean framework is amplified into a visceral, visual myth. The Spartans are sculpted, laconic freedom-fighters bathed in heroic light. The Persians are a monstrous, exotic “other” a faceless “slave army” led by a decadent, god-king Xerxes. It is history as a heavy-metal album cover: thrilling, simple, and profoundly biased.

As scholars like Kaveh Farrokh have noted, the movie 300 reduces a complex geopolitical conflict to a simplistic binary: “the democratic, good, rational ‘Us’ versus the tyrannical, evil and irrational, ‘other’”. It starts the story with “secondly”, with the Persian invasion at Thermopylae. It entirely ignores the context: the sophisticated, multicultural Achaemenid Empire, a state so advanced that its founder, Cyrus the Great, issued what is considered one of history’s first charters of human rights. The film’s imagery deliberately echoes modern anxieties, linking ancient Persians to contemporary Middle Eastern “threats.”

This is not innocent entertainment. It is cultural programming. Persia is modern-day Iran. The stories we tell about their ancient empire directly shape how we perceive the nation and its people today. The demonizing narrative, polished by Hollywood, makes it easier to accept new chapters of conflict, to see not a nation with a profound history, but a permanent “oni” of the world stage.

The Stories of Modern Power

We can apply the same lens to the modern geopolitical script. Consider the standard story: The United States spreads democracy and fights tyranny across the globe.

Now, let’s find the true “firstly.” If history is being taught as it was, we would see a more consistent pattern: that the U.S. has often supported dictatorships and overthrown democracies—from Iran (1953) to Chile (1973) to countless others as long as it served strategic or economic interests. The story, however, is often told starting with “secondly”—with the reaction to U.S. power. The original intervention, the coup, the destabilization, is erased from the mainstream narrative. Who tells the story matters, because it may be biased, it may be a lie. When the history told is not the truth, then it is not history, it is propaganda.

I still don’t understand how you spread democracy and freedom by bombing the shit out of the people and stealing their resources.

In the Classrooms: How do we discuss wars?

All this got me wondering how wars are taught. If perspective is everything, then how we teach wars is the ultimate act of narrative control. The old adage is proven true: history is written by the victors.

Let’s perform a chilling thought experiment. If the Axis had won World War II, would we today speak of Hitler as a great unifier and conqueror, his atrocities minimized or erased from the mainstream record? Would he be in the pantheon of “great” leaders? It’s not unthinkable. We already do this for other victorious conquerors.

We revere Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan. Both built empires through relentless warfare, massacre, and cultural devastation. Yet, Alexander is often remembered in the West as a heroic visionary who spread Hellenistic culture. Genghis Khan, whose empire was larger, is more frequently depicted as a ruthless destroyer. The difference isn’t primarily in their actions, but in who ultimately told their story. Alexander’s legacy was curated by Greek and Roman historians who admired him; Genghis Khan’s was often recorded by the scribes of the settled civilizations he ravaged. Alexander won, Hitler lost. And Genghis Khan’s story was written from another’s perspective.

I wonder how schools in the United States, Germany and Russia for example teach the World Wars. Walk with me I’m just wondering. Maybe in Germany, the curriculum emphasizes responsibility, a sense of guilt, the Holocaust, and democracy. It is a national story of confronting dark history. Then we have the United States of America haa, on their high horses the story of the “Greatest Generation,” righteous liberators fighting the “good war.” I wonder if they really see their selves as the “good guys”, then the world is really in trouble especially now with that “board of peace”. Last but not the least, Russia, the “Great Patriotic War,” a story of immense, singular sacrifice that defeated fascism, often downplaying allied efforts. I’m just saying, not that this is what is being taught in their schools.

In each case, the nation’s role is centered, justified, and sanctified. Whoever wins becomes justice. Whoever wins can claim to be morally superior, even when the opposite could be the case. The grim, universal truth of war is that it is not noble, not good, but a furnace of suffering for the innocent on all sides is laundered through the cleansing narrative of victory.

The Path Forward: Learning “What Was” to understand “What is”

This is not an argument for cynical relativism, where all sides are equally right or wrong. It is an argument for intellectual rigor and moral empathy. It is a refusal to start with “secondly.”

I often advocate for people to learn what was, in order to understand what is. This means reading the Persian chronicles alongside the Greek ones. Listening to the histories written by the colonized, not just the colonizers. It means complicating the story. It means seeking truth.

The goal of Momotaro should not be the eradication of the Oni. It should be the harder, more profound work of building a peaceful world that includes them. The same is true for our world. Lasting peace cannot be built on foundational lies, on stories designed to flatter one side and demonize another. It can only be built on the messy, complicated, and shared truth of our collective experience.

When we chase that truth, we do more than correct the historical record. We choose to see the human in the other. We disarm the story that was meant to be a weapon. And we take the first, real step toward coming together.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

I used to think my thoughts are mine. But are they? Truly?

Now I wonder where they’re from. The cautionary words of my parents, echoing long after childhood. The rigid framework of the Nigerian educational system, which taught me what to think, not how. The persuasive, relatable cadence of a content creator I like, whose opinions I’ve unconsciously downloaded. The heavy, invisible hand of society—the collective voice of “what will people say?” that dictates everything from career paths to curfews.

And I am left asking: in this tangled web of influences, how much of my thoughts are truly, authentically, mine?

This question came to me not as a philosophical exercise, but as a quiet, unsettling tremor in the middle of an ordinary day. I was scrolling, or maybe I was worrying, or perhaps I was replaying an argument in my head, and that new, unfamiliar voice whispered:

Whose voice is this, really?

It felt like the floor of my mind gave way. I began to audit the noise in my head, and the result was a profound embarrassment. I found a committee of ghosts running the meeting. I started asking myself why i believe certain things, why I do certain things in certain ways, why, why, why.

Here was the stern, annoying tone of a teacher from 6 years ago, still lecturing me on what constitutes “success”. There was the worried cadence of my parents, their fears for my safety now masquerading as my own anxiety. Over in the corner, a slick, algorithmically-calibrated influencer was pitching a lifestyle I never consciously desired. And the news cycle, that relentless drumbeat, was setting the rhythm for my outrage all telling me what to think and believe.

I’d estimate a very very significant percentage of my thoughts are rented. Borrowed. Inherited. Absorbed through the osmosis of living in a world that is always selling, always preaching, always defining. I have been living in a house of thoughts where I am merely the tenant, dutifully paying rent in the currency of my attention and my peace.

And then, there are the other thoughts. The primal, biological static. The horny thoughts man. Man sometimes, many times be daydreaming about the most erotic shit ever. They crash through like a weather event, undeniable and demanding, shifting the entire atmospheric pressure of my mind and body.

The realization wasn't liberating at first. It was terrifying. If I am not this committee, who am I? If I strip away what I was told to believe, what I was conditioned to want, and the raw noise of biology, what remains? For a moment, it felt like staring into a void. To have no autopilot is to feel like you’re falling.

Subscribe now

But in that fall, there is a chance for flight.

My rebellion now is not noisy. It is the quiet act of observation. I am learning to sit in the theater of my own mind and watch the play, without immediately buying a ticket. I see a judgement arise, and I ask: “Is this mine? Does this feel true to my lived experience, or is this a hand-me-down morality?” I feel a desire spark, and I trace its origin: “Is this an authentic longing of my soul, or the ghost of an advertisement?”

This is the project of a lifetime: to build a self from the inside out. To form my own ethics, not from a fear of hell or a craving for praise, but from a deeply considered understanding of what it means to be human, to be connected, to be kind. I want to meet the world with questions, not borrowed answers. I want to look at a “tradition” and ask if it nurtures or stifles. I want to examine a “fact” and understand who benefits from it being seen as truth. Who benefits from me believing this “truth”?

Liberation doesn’t mean the committee disbands. The ghosts will always murmur. The weather of the body will always roll through. The culture will always whisper, and sometimes shout. The goal is not a sterile, empty mind.

The goal is to become the chairperson of that noisy committee. The goal is to build a sovereign self strong enough to listen to all the reports and then, from a place of conscious awareness, cast the deciding vote.

I don’t want to be a slave to my thoughts anymore. I want to be their curator. Their interrogator. Sometimes, their compassionate warden. The work begins with a single, repeated question in the silence between the noises:

Is this my truth, or someone else’s?

And in the space it takes to ask, a sliver of freedom appears. That sliver is where I begin to build a home for my own mind, one authentic, examined thought at a time.

Thank you for reading.

It turns out the term Middle East is a colonial term, like Third World, post- colonial, developing countries, and so on. It wasn’t some neutral geographical fact. It was coined in the 19th and 20th centuries, when European powers, especially Britain, were thinking about the world in terms of distance relative to Europe.

They divided Asia into three rough zones. The Near East, which was closest to Europe and mostly referred to the Ottoman Empire. The Middle East, which sat somewhere further east, including places like Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, and Persia. And then the Far East, which was basically East Asia. All of this only makes sense if Europe is the reference point.

The term first appeared in the 1850s within the British India Office. It was a strategic administration label to decribe the lands between the Ottoman empire and British India.

And I don’t know why, but realizing this made me feel some kind of way. Not because the term exists, but because I never questioned it. I just accepted it, lived with it, repeated it. Now I’m wondering how many other things I’ve absorbed without ever stopping to ask who named them and why.

Egypt is called middle east relative to London and India is called far east relative to London. This is the same as calling London “Middle West” and calling The United States “Far West”.

For those who already knew this, forgive me and give me space to learn.

Leave a comment

The YouTube short that got me thinking was an interview clip of some sort with Nawal El Saadawi. I was immediately struck by how she spoke and what she spoke about. I liked her presence, her clarity, everything. She gave a class on decolonization, criticizing the word “Middle East”. I ran to Google her name and somehow became even more impressed.

She was an Egyptian writer, feminist, activist, and physician who wrote extensively about women, religion, class, sexuality, patriarchy, colonialism, and the struggles of women in what’s often called the Global South. Until i slept off with my phone in my hands, I kept on watching clips of her speaking on different things and here I am this morning after a good sleep writing what I just learned. I haven’t read any of her books yet, but it’s something I’m really looking forward to doing. She criticized the use of the term and advocated for names based on the region's own geography, like North Africa or West Asia. These aren't just different labels; they are continental terms, like Southeast Asia, that describe where a place actually is on the map, not where it stands relative to a distant European capital.

Subscribe now

I think that’s where I’m landing for now. Not with answers, just with more questions. About language, about history, about how easily words slip into our mouths and settle there, how we should question everything we’ve been taught, everything we see everywhere and believe.

“Middle East” is just one term, but it opened a door. And now I’m paying a little more attention to the names I use and the stories hiding inside them. So now every time I hear “Middle East,” I hear London in the background. Not geography, not neutrality, but perspective. Someone else’s map, someone else’s center. And once you see that, you can’t unsee it.

Abdulrazaq: Whatever is troubling me? That sounds…. I don’t know. There are a million things boggling my mind.

Tolu: Then pick one. Let’s skip mental health labels today. Just tell me what’s been sitting in your head.

Abdulrazaq: Right, I’ve been stuck on this journaling prompt. What if money were not a problem? what kind of life would you live or aspire to live?

Tolu: Are you asking me? Helloo, I’m the therapist here. 😂 But fine. When you say that, do you mean endless money or just enough that survival isn’t the main project of your life anymore?

Abdulrazaq: I don’t know the difference matters. Let’s say money simply stops being the obstacle. That’s the point.

Tolu: Money problem doesn’t exist in your life anymore. What do you see?

Abdulrazaq: uuhmmmm

Tolu: Okay let’s break it down, I’m going to be asking specific questions, like what would do with your time, what passions of yours would you chase? What would be your day job if you were to have one? And you still haven’t answered my question “what made you think about this in the first place?”

Abdulrazaq: You are not a very good therapist. You know that right? Ask one question at a time.

Tolu: That’s if I’m a therapist at all, we’re in the same head you fool.

Abdulrazaq: What made me think of this? I guess I observe how you can’t go through life without money. Almost every crime is committed in the name of needing it, unless you’re Jack the Ripper or some evil psycho who does bad things for pleasure.

This is a crazy world we live in where almost everyone is a slave to the paper, or some number on a screen. Even good things can’t be done without it. I see talented minds, children inventing mind-blowing things, but they don’t have the money to go bigger. Adults who want the best for their families but are limited by it. I see people work their entire lives for money and forget to live. And then, there are people who get this money and lose themselves in it.

Tolu: What do you mean, loose their selves in it?

Abdulrazaq: I’ll give you a list for this one;

1. Their identity becomes synonymous with wealth. The question “Who am I?” is answered only with their financial status. Instead of thinking, “I am a parent, an artist, a friend, someone’s sibling,” their primary identity becomes “I am rich”.

2. Relationships become transactional. it becomes “What can this person do for me?” “Is this friendship worth the financial risk?” “Will this family member just ask me for money?” And yes, I understand black tax and every other type of tax and keeping boundaries and all but c’mon now, what the point of being rich when your family ain’t? It’s like flying first class in a crashing plane.

3. They start to have a distorted perception of reality, thinking money solves all problems not effort or growth. A personal conflict? Send an expensive gift. Bored? Buy a new toy. Unhappy? Hire someone to fix it. This stunts emotional development and resilience.

4. It becomes more, more, more. The pursuit of more becomes an addictive, empty game. The initial goal (security, comfort, a specific dream) is reached, but the machinery of acquisition doesn’t turn off. A bigger yacht, a rarer painting and so on.

5. Paranoia and a fortress mentality. The wealth sought for security becomes its own source of profound security. An example of this is that they start to worry about being used or loosing their new found riches.

6. And arguably the worst one in my opinion, they lose interest in simple things. A walk in the park, a home cooked meal with friends and family, the satisfaction of fixing something with your own two hands can seem trivial or “beneath” them. They lose touch with the small, non-monetary things that make life meaningful.

In essence, losing themselves in it means the money ceases to be a tool they use to live a better life. Instead, it becomes the master, and they become its instrument.

Tolu: Interesting points you laid out there. Given our hypothetical question, do you think you’d lose yourself in it?

Abdulrazaq: No

Tolu: That sounds…...confident and affirmative. What makes you say so?

Abdulrazaq: For me, I think it’s about purpose.

Whether that’s creating a family, dedicating your life to helping others, or pursuing a deep personal passion, the key is to let your “WHY” guide your life.

Tolu: So, for people who lose themselves, is it because they didn’t have purpose?

Abdulrazaq: I would say it’s because money became the purpose itself. That’s the problem. So, it became all about money, greed, power and not with the intent of making the world a better place. There’s this guy that’s known as the richest man in the world and he’s obsessed with colonising the stars while the planet they extracted their wealth from bleeds and burns. It’s like a distraction from what is going on here.

It is easier for us to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. The popular fantasy of escaping the earth to colonise mars is a prime example of this, serving as a technological distraction from our problems on the ground, Jameson suggests that this sci-fi “solution” acts as a convenient excuse, letting us avoid the harder political work of changing the economic system that’s driving the planetary crisis.

— Fredrick Jameson.

But honestly, this “what if” question would be answered diferently by everybody in ways that would blow your mind.

Tolu: But we’re not talking about everybody else here, Abdul. We are talking about you. Let’s go back to the basics; No bills. No survival math. No fear of running out. What kind of life shows up for you?

Abdulrazaq: I don’t know. Peaceful, I guess. A life where I’m not constantly thinking “how much is that going to cost?”

Tolu: Peaceful is vague. Try again. What would your mornings look like?

Abdulrazaq: I’d wake up without panic. No alarms screaming. Just sunlight. Maybe I’d make breakfast without rushing. Something small, like bread and eggs with tea. 😅

Tolu: Good. Slow down with it. Where are you waking up?

Abdulrazaq: A place that feels warm. If you ask me where exactly or what part of the world, I don’t know, I can move around but somewhere I feel calm and happy, somewhere with people, somewhere that doesn’t drain me. Maybe near water, I don’t know.

Tolu: So, freedom and calm matter to you more than luxury. Interesting. What would you do with your days? You mentioned having purpose earlier, what is your own purpose? What is your goal?

Abdulrazaq: Yeah i’d say freedom and calm matters more. At this point, money is not a problem for me, I am not about showing off or in competition with anybody.

In short, having control over my life.

Tolu: You don’t feel you have that now?

Abdulrazaq: if I do, it doesn’t feel like it. There are things I control and many more things I don’t. Lack of money is the weapon fashioned against me. 😂 It feels like everyone’s constraint from doing remarkable things.

Tolu: I’ve told you to leave everybody out of this

Abdulrazaq: Fine.

Everybody knows or have this idea of what they want from Abdul, what they expect from Abdul, and he is meant to live his life accordingly like a script written by family and society. I hate the pressure. What makes me hate it more is that nobody gives a fuck what i want. Absolutely nobody. My parents maybe have an idea of what they think is best for me. Not once has anybody asked me “What do you want?” It is just sad.

Tolu: You mentioned purpose could be anything. Like creating a family, service, or passion. Which of these would you do? I’m curious to know the ‘why’ that will guide what you do with your life.

Abdulrazaq: why can’t it be all three? With family, I mean, your spouse is the only family member you get to pick, there’s no way I’m fucking that up. Making family means forging something like a sacred pact, it is the deliberate creation of your own small tribe, the people you are bound to, who become the reason to live more bravely, and your cause to die for. I love children and I’d love to have at least… well I guess I’d have to find a woman that loves children as well.

Now, that second one I’d find people. I can start with one kid. A specific kid. One who draws incredible pictures on scraps of paper or builds complex machines from trash. I wouldn’t just give their family money. I’d become... like a patron. I’d get them the real tools, the encouragement, the quiet space to create. I’d protect their time. I’d make sure the world’s noise doesn’t crush that spark.

Tolu: That’s beautiful. It’s called stewardship. It’s about guarding potential. Now, scale it. Is that your day? Every day? You find these sparks and you shelter them?

Abdulrazaq: It could be. Part of it. But it’s not just about genius kids. It’s about... the quiet despair. The adult who’s given up. The person who thinks their story is over at 35 because they’re in a job that kills their spirit. I’d want to... create exits. Not grand, dramatic ones. Back doors. Small grants that let someone take a six-month sabbatical to re-train. To breathe. To remember who they were before the world put a price on their head. To remember the creative and curious minded individual they once were.

Something like that.

Tolu: So, this purpose of yours is a form of liberation. Freeing potential in the young, and freeing trapped selves in the adults. That’s a massive undertaking. It sounds like a full-time mission. Would you call that work?

Abdulrazaq: Yes. But not a job. A job is something you do for someone else’s purpose, for a wage. This... this would be a vocation. My own. I’d be terrible at the admin, probably. I’d just oversee how things are handled. But I could do the human part. The seeing, the listening, the believing in someone when they’ve stopped believing in themselves. I would build systems that help people in unthinkable ways.

Tolu: Now we’re getting to the marrow. Let’s turn the microscope around. You’re so clear about what you’d do for others. What about Abdul? If you’re freeing others to pursue their stifled passions, what is the yours that’s currently stifled? What is the thing you would do if no one was watching, no one was paying, and failure didn’t mean ruin?

Abdulrazaq: I... write. I think. I talk to you; we have these sessions. I have these... thoughts. Cascades of them, about the world, about this crushing, beautiful, absurd experiment of being human. I have fragments of stories that feel true. There’s just so many things that… (takes a deep breath)

I like the idea of creating something. So, whatever it is that I would do for myself, I would create things, do things that make me feel seen, make me feel good

I would be learning things out of curiosity. Maybe picking up a language, two or three. Reading without checking the time. Long walks. Time with people I love. Real connection, not rushed small talk. Learn musical instruments and make beautiful music. I’d travel the world, learn about all these different cultures and people. Imagine how big this world is, and I haven’t been outside the south western region of Nigeria. I would do so much that I can’t even begin to say right now.

Tolu: Let’s go further, if money wasn’t part of the stress, what fear would disappear first?

Abdulrazaq: Fear of failing publicly. Because half the shame comes from worrying that I won’t be “successful enough.”

Tolu: And what fear would stay?

Abdulrazaq: Maybe the fear of wasting my potential. That’s not tied to money. That’s just me wrestling with myself.

Tolu: If survival wasn’t your daily concern, who is the version of you that finally steps forward?

Abdulrazaq: Someone calmer, more confident, more generous. Someone who isn’t always bracing for the next problem, bracing for the next disappointment.

Tolu: What would you stop doing instantly?

Abdulrazaq: Overworking my mind worrying about shit I can’t control. Pretending I’m fine. Saying yes because I’m scared of disappointing people.

Tolu: You know you can stop those things right now.

Abdulrazaq: I know. Leave me alone.

Tolu: And what would you start doing without hesitation?

Abdulrazaq: Living slower. Creating more. Resting without guilt. Building the life, I want instead of the one I feel forced into.

Tolu: Then maybe that’s the real question. Not what you’d do with infinite money, but what’s stopping you from living slower, creating more, and resting without guilt, right here, with what you have. The money fantasy just removes the excuses, doesn’t it? It shows you the shape of your desire.

Abdulrazaq: …So you’re saying the answer to “What if money were not a problem?” is the same as “What matters to me?”

Tolu: I’m saying you’ve just spent an hour describing a life built on purpose, calm, creativity, and stewardship. The currency was irrelevant. You designed a life. The only thing left to ask is what the first step of that design looks like, starting tomorrow. Not with a billion dollars. But with this hour. This clarity.

Abdulrazaq: But I can’t do many of the things I mentioned example travel the world or help people like I said. And there are many other factors currently in my life that hinder me from starting to live like you suggest. You know what I am talking about, we’ll need like four or five more sessions to unpack that alone.

Tolu: Start small. Yes, I understand more than anybody, there are other factors we can’t begin to discuss, but start from somewhere with the life you have now. With the life you have now, start building the life you want. Day by day, always try your best to make each day better than the one before and more intentional than the previous one. I know it is not easy and you are going to slack a lot, there are going to be a lot of distractions from the entire world, but do not lose yourself always remember. Yes, you can’t travel the world now or wake up by the ocean, but you can wake up with intention. You don’t have to wait for the perfect conditions, you live the parts that are available now, and you prepare for the parts that aren’t.

Abdulrazaq: The question has now shifted from “what if?” to “what now?”

Tolu: I want you to take your time with that question. No rush. Our session ends here.

Subscribe now

swore the best for me, allegedly.

would never hurt me, allegedly.

would always be here with me, allegedly.

you said be wary of sharks, till you became one.

allegedly, you said…

till you broke my fucking heart.

fuck you and your fake promises.

too many sharks in the water.

i am the ocean now. let them be wary

i still feel the shape of your absence,

like a bruise that never learned to fade.

it is allegedly my own silhouette.

i say i survived you, obviously.

i want the best for me, actually, and

i will never forget this for eternity.

i learnt the shark’s lesson, now i’m the bloody ocean.

factually, i said,

watch me keep my real promises.

Subscribe now

Thank you for reading!

TOLU.

Why can’t we print more money and distribute it equitably? Maybe then, there wouldn’t be world hunger? I study economics, I know why that wouldn’t work, but we can do better as humans in terms of wealth distribution. The money invested in wars and weapons of destruction could feed people and build decent lives. People would think clearly, create, and build for the generations after us not out of greed, but love.

Why can’t we create systems or have governments that actually care about the welfare of people, instead of just occupying political seats and gaining power for the sake of a few private individuals? I repeat: I wish there was only good in this world.

In economics, there’s a concept called scarcity. Of course, I can define it for you and explain why there’s lack and bla bla bla, but there’s no fucking way I look at this world and do not see abundance. Abundance of food, water, land, and every other resource. I mean, God has given us everything. It confuses me still. This is the world we made. And everybody’s life comes to an end when God says it’s time, so why don’t we spend this time living and loving each other? It confuses me still.

And maybe and Madara are both right, maybe we need some form of Infinite Tsukuyomi in this world. I open my Instagram, I’m scrolling, watching reels; right after Gilmore’s video, I’m seeing the rubble that Gaza has been turned into, starving childen, sometimes a woman or child not older than me who’s lost their family, crying their eyes out, or I see a post about what is going on in Sudan, Congo and even Nigeria my country. I’m just heartbroken. This is someone that somtimes uses social media as an escape from the pain of reality. I ask why, but get nothing, just silence, or disturbing noises that do not seek to end the suffering. I see something like that and don’t know how to go about the rest of my day.

Subscribe now

I don’t even want to start on the crisis we have in this world when it comes to the lack of empathy. It’s painful to see the willful ignorance of so many people on matters that concern us as a people as a country, a continent, as humans. I’m not perfect but I care and feel and I’m not blind either. It hurts watching the world crumble while eeryone scrolls on. And then there are the Nigerians who believe Trump cares about them and is coming to save them just clearly shows how much we have been brainwashed, the level of ignorance and Islamophobia.

Of course there are many things to be grateful for but there’s so much pain everywhere. I just decided to vent out some of the things in my head on here, I guess that’s why I started substack in the first place. Please, indulge me. God help us.

Leave a comment

But thing is that; this guy has been punching clowns, mobsters and criminals alike for eighty years, and the city is still a sewer. I’d even argue it has become worse. At some point, you start to wonder if Batman is the hero or the infestation. Because after decades of reading and watching him as a child and while growing up he just sulks on rooftops and beat people half to death, and I’ve come to realise I don’t actually understand what Batman’s goal is or if he even has one.

BITCH WAYNE: THE FAILED PHILANTROPIST

Bruce Wayne or, as I like to call him, Bitch Wayne. The man has more money than some countries, but instead of actually fixing Gotham, he’s out there throwing batarangs at desperate people stealing bread. You can’t tell me a guy with Wayne Enterprises’ resources can’t do better than beating up the poor. He could be building houses, funding mental health programs, paying living wages, hell, buy Arkham Asylum and turn it into a real hospital instead of a revolving door for maniacs. But no Bruce Bitch would rather spend billions on military-grade toys and a cave full of trauma trophies. It’s easier to punch crime in the face than to deal with why it exists. That’s the part that drives me insane: Batman isn’t fighting to change Gotham. He’s fighting to keep it just broken enough to need him. With his near infinite wealth and resources, he could e doing so much more tackling the root causes of Gotham’s problem: systemic poverty, political corruption, a broken educational system and others. Instead, he spends money and time on a personal war that treats the symptoms (super crime) while the disease (a failed society) festers.

HE’S INTO CHILDREN

He is obsessed with his making of a child soldier factory. Batman doesn’t have a family he runs a paramilitary operation staffed by traumatized children he recruited from crime scenes and with other means. Don’t shy from how creepy this is. Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne — all minors recruited by a billionaire orphan who then trains them to fight his personal wars at night and he calls them Robin some side kick. He claims to be saving them but the only thing he is doing is perpetuating their trauma to justify his own. He is grooming the next generation of damaged vigilantes to make sure he’s never alone in his misery. He gives them Kevlar and combat training instead of therapy and a stable home. He turned a grieving circus acrobat (Dick Grayson) into a weapon to avenge his own parents’ death. This isn’t a one-off mistake it is a cycle of abuse. It’s a consistent pattern of seeking out emotionally vulnerable boys at young ages between 9 and 13 and then moulding them into soldiers. And somehow, we still call him a hero. I’m sure we all remember what happened to Jason Todd. Look closer, and you’ll see he’s not saving Gotham but breaking it further.

Subscribe now

BATMAN IS NOTHING BUT A GLORIFIED CRIMINAL

Batman is nothing but a glorified criminal with better PR. The guy operates with zero oversight, no accountability, and not a single ounce of due process. He’s judge, jury, and very often, torturer. He commits countless crimes like assault, property damage, unlawful surveillance, kidnapping and illegal detainment, torture, obstruction of justice, psychological warfare and many more and that’s just on a slow Tuesday. The irony is Batman gets away with all this because “he’s on the good side.” Gotham just lets it happen because he’s supposedly the good guy. The cops turn a blind eye; the city gives him a spotlight. And somehow, everyone still worships him. Because as long as Batman’s violence is framed as “necessary,” everyone’s fine pretending it’s justice. But call it what it is: sanctioned brutality dressed up in billionaire trauma.

GOTHAM’S BIGGEST ENABLER

Batman doesn’t fix Gotham; he maintains it. He doesn’t want peace, he wants purpose. Without crime, he is nothing so instead of taking actions that would improve the city for the better, he maintains the corrupt system as it is. The city’s chaos is the only thing that justifies his existence. I call him “Gotham’s biggest enabler”. Gotham needs to stay broken, because every broken thing in it gives him someone new to punch. He doesn’t want rehabilitation; he wants repetition—the endless loop of villain escapes, villain captured, villain escapes again. Every time he drags the Joker back to Arkham instead of ending it, more innocent people die, and the cycle continues because deep down, Batman doesn’t want to win. He just wants the fight.

THE HYPOCRISY OF THE “NO KILL RULE”

His “no kill rule” is a flimsy moral shield he hides behind to justify every atrocity short of murder. Batman loves to say he doesn’t kill, but what he does instead is often worse than death. He cripples people for life, shatters their bones, and leaves them bleeding in alleys for the cops to find if they’re lucky. He breaks bodies, minds, and futures, then sleeps soundly because technically, they’re still breathing. It’s moral gymnastics of the highest order. He’ll paralyze a man, burn half his face, or traumatize a fifteen-year-old sidekick beyond repair, but somehow, he’s still the ethical one. The rule isn’t about mercy, it’s about ego. Killing would end the game, and Batman doesn’t want the game to end. His morality only exists because the villains do, and if he ever really cleaned up Gotham, he’d have to confront the one monster he can’t fight: himself.

Subscribe now

MADNESS IS PERMANENT IN GOTHAM

A place can be dark and still be hopeful or have a moral core. Gotham has neither. It is a cycle where justice is absent and the “hero” is part of the system that keeps it that way. Gotham is a reflection of Batman’s own mind, perpetually dark, unhealed, and cyclically violent. Batman doesn’t want light in Gotham because light would mean moving on from trauma, and Batman is nothing without trauma. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, just Batman’s shadow.

Our hearts and souls have synced, a single, steady beat,

and now my world feels incomplete—adrift without your thought.

You have my heart, and my heart is yours.

But unlike most, I’m sure this one would find its way back home.

For you are my home, and hearts don’t break around here.

I don’t want a flawless, serene love;

I crave the storms that shaped you, every mark

the silver scar you carry on your knee,

the hidden fractures you hold within your heart.

I want to learn the stories they all tell.

So let me trace a map with my patient hands,

a slow pilgrimage from head to toe,

across the soft terrain where shoulder meets the neck,

let me kiss you, slow and sure,

and memorize the places that make you feel the most and bring you peace.

Let me love every inch back into light.

I’ll build two rocking chairs,

carve your name in one and mine in the other,

and be the shelter where your heart can rest and mend.

To my dream wife, the most perfect woman, I’ll love you in eevry lifetime.

Subscribe now

let me love you,

let me be the one you are safe with.

I yearn for you,

I ache for you,

I want you.

But then silence crept in,

and I thought:

why the hell would she love me

when she can have anyone else?

when she can have someone

who isn’t broken,

who isn’t me?

I shrink into silence

learning that some prayers

are meant to go unanswered.

Love is a cruel joke.

Subscribe now

We no longer know how to sit still. Meals are eaten in motion, songs are skipped before the chorus, conversations are half-held while eyes drift to glowing screens. The world has trained us to equate speed with value: faster is better, instant is success, waiting is waste. Somewhere along the line, slowness died and with it, something deeply human slipped away too.

What do we loose when a culture forgets slowness? It forgets how to grieve, how to wonder, it produces people who are efficient, but hollow, we loose the ability to taste life — meals, books, music, silence. When everything is a race even joy feels like something to check off.

I know that in many cases slowness feels like luxury for example when you’re hustling for rent, school fees, and food, or Lagos traffic where people wake at 4 a.m. to beat the gridlock, taking a slow morning could mean losing your job, or you see your mates on the internet doing well for theirselves and you’re starting to think that you are running out of time.

Subscribe now

You can’t rush trust, healing or understanding. They only live in time. Slowness gives room to fail, reflect and grow. In speed, every mistake is fatal. Without slowness, we become knowledgeable but not wise. Slow thinking is where real insight comes from. Without it, we skim surfaces, repeat slogans, and mistake quickness for intelligence.

The way society operates just makes my anxiety worse because I have to try my best to move just as fast or be left behind but still, I feel like I have not accomplished anything and feel so lost. Quick takes, hustle culture, instant delivery, shallow attention spans: it’s blur, not life.

Maybe it’s time to reclaim slowness even if it’s just a little: a long walk, a book read without rushing, just sitting still in silence or with music, a conversation held without looking at your phone, trust me you can’t offer greater respect than putting your phone away and giving someone your full attention.

Reclaiming slowness isn’t nostalgia. Its survival.

I think I’m in love. I can’t stop thinking about her, but she’s with someone else. Should I tell her how I feel? Should I tell her and let her know that knowing each other like this, as friends, is not healthy for my heart? I want her to know how i feel.

I can never forget the first time I saw her. I was like, mama, look what God made. She was leaning against the railing in front of a classroom, sunlight cutting across her face. I was lost.

Her skin caught the light like dusk folding into night, smooth and warm, as if the day itself wanted to linger on her. Dark skin like silk dipped in dusk, she stood wrapped in a long gown with flowing sleeves and a matching head tie. I tried to look away, not wanting her to catch me staring, but it was useless. My eyes kept returning to her, drawn as if by some pull I couldn’t explain. I hadn’t come here searching for anything, and yet somehow I had stumbled upon her — something I didn’t know I was looking for until that moment.

She was standing next to my friend, and I could already see myself cornering her later, asking a million questions. Who is she? Where has she been hiding? I knew my friend would laugh, but I didn’t care — the mystery girl had taken off with my heart before I even got her name, the one who had stolen my heart without even knowing it.

My friend said something that set her laughing, a quick bright sound that seemed to ripple through the air and pull every eye her way. She tilted her head slightly as she laughed, her hand brushing at her gown as if to steady herself. The way the sunlight touched her face made it hard to tell where the glow ended and her smile began.

She was a direct entry student and I didn’t know her name. I hadn’t even heard her speak beyond that laugh, yet I knew, dangerously fast, that I wanted to. My chest tightened, not with panic but with the strange, disarming weight of stumbling upon something I had never felt before. I have seen beautiful women before, but this was different. This was a kind of beauty that unsettled me, the kind that makes you wonder if you’ve just stepped into the beginning of something you don’t yet understand.

Is there such a thing as love at first sight? I couldn’t explain how I was feeling.

After seeing her for the first time, I ambushed my friend and pressed for every detail. She teased me, laughed at me, said she had not seen me behave like this over a girl, she did not believe I was behaving like this. But eventually she told me everything I wanted to know: her name, where she’s from, the fact that she’s with someone. That last detail hit me like a punch, but instead of cooling my feelings, it deepened the ache.

From that day I noticed I was always finding myself near her — at the library, at the cafeteria, at random gatherings. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident. I never spoke, but I watched quietly, memorizing the little things: her laugh, the way she folded her sleeves, the tilt of her head when she listened, how calmly she speaks. Don’t judge me. I know what I am. A finished man. Does this qualify as stalking? Thinking about it now it sounds creepy, but sha, let’s move on.

One day I was sitting with our friend when the most beautiful girl in the world walked in and came straight toward our table. I watched her approach and felt like I might faint. Our mutual friend stood up to hug her and I saw that smile again — the one that made me feel like I didn’t want anything else in this life. Then, unexpectedly, she said hi. I said hi back, doing my best to look okay, and in that moment I felt like the happiest person alive. Then I remembered she had a boyfriend and came back to my senses.

That single word opened everything. We talked and ate, and believe me when I say she is more beautiful on the inside than she is on the outside. The way she talks, thinks, and cares about little things gave me a sense of calmness and peace when i am around her. I love her vibe and she loves music as much as I do.

She’s everything any man could ever wish for, and I mean that literally, not just as a phrase people throw around. Slowly, friendship grew, casual conversations, shared jokes, lingering moments. I feel alive in her presence but terrified of breaking the fragile closeness by saying too much.

Then there was the day I met her so-called boyfriend. He was not a student at our school. I met him outside one late afternoon. I was walking her home after a group study; she stay’s off campus. The two of us joking and dragging our feet, as if neither of us wanted the walk to end. Then, there he was, leaning against the hood of a car parked by the road side, scrolling his phone. He looked up when he saw us and smiled at her

She lit up in a way that made my chest tighten badly, like i was having a heartattack, crossing the distance quickly and greeting him with a playful shove. He smiled an ordinary smile, nothing dazzling, nothing remarkable. Just a smile. He wasn’t ugly, not clumsy either, he was just there. Average. Plain. Is this my jealousy talking? I don’t think so.

And yet he was the one she wrapped her arms around. He was the one she leaned into, laughing at something he muttered that I couldn’t hear. I stood apart, pretending to adjust my bag strap, watching the exchange as if from outside a glass wall.

When she finally turned back she said casually, “Oh, this is my friend. Remember I told you about him?” I nodded, forced a polite smile, extended my hand and said, “How far, bro?” He gave it a lazy shake, barely looking at me before he turned his attention back to her. In that instant I was angry, and the pain I felt looking at them is hard to explain. He already had who I wanted most. Walking away alone afterward, I replayed the moment over and over.

I think about her before I sleep. Sometimes I don’t sleep imagining the guy with her and having some kind of intrusive, evil thoughts. I’d prefer to keep those thoughts to myself trust me you do not want to know. I can write more, describing more in detail about how each and every moment and time spent with her felt, but the more I reflect on those memories, the more it hurts that she’s with another.

She’s got me thinking about my words, typing, deleting my messages then rewriting, all in the hope that I can make her smile when she reads them. But we’re just friends and she trusts me as a friend. What should I do?

There are times I almost tell her how I really feel. I write messages and delete them. I rehearse words that never leave my lips. Maybe I should send her a song that explains how I feel hoping she gets the message. Each time, the silence grows heavier. I can’t decide if keeping it hidden is loyalty to our friendship or cowardice. Or maybe I am just hurting myself.

I call this piece she’s not mine because as i write this J Cole’s song she’s mine part 1&2 is playing and the lyrics of these songs are the words I would say everyday if she was mine but she‘s not.

Subscribe now

I’ve fallen in love for the first time.

Does she know how I feel about her? Or perhaps she feels the same? Or maybe I should even send her this note? I’m in trouble. I am going to sacrifice our friendship because the weight of everything unsaid presses me down, but I also know it’s the only way I can keep her in my life, even if it breaks me.

She’s not mine. But God, I wish she knew.

Take this bed and pillow, for example. I come back from wherever, whenever, whether it has been a long day or a fun one, and my pillow is the first to speak. It sighs softly every night when my head sinks into it, relieved that after a long day of waiting in silence, it finally has a purpose again.

The bed follows, steady and patient, carrying both me and my restless thoughts without complaint.

I think I can hear my chair speaking: “Every time you come back home, you toss your clothes on me and I catch them. Though I’ve forgotten what I actually look like under all this fabric.”

Across the room, the table clears its throat, reminding me that it has carried my notebooks, my cups, my clutter, and still manages to give me a corner to read, to write, work or sometimes just to sit and be. The chair joins in, proud of being more than a shirt hanger, saying: “At least when you’re serious, you sit on me. I hold your back when you lean, I steady you when you lose focus, and I’m here when you simply want to rest.”

In the mornings, my slippers sulk because I step on them without even looking. The ceiling fan might be complaining about spinning endlessly while no one thanks it.

My tea mug feels important, convinced it is loved, yet it doesn’t know that without the tea there would be no use for it. My phone charger stares at the mug, proud and smug, whispering: “You should be more humble, because I am more important. He can’t go anywhere without me.”

Then laughter echoes in the room, and someone replies: “You’re only remembered when the favorite actually needs a power-up.”

At that, the phone clears its throat with a half-smile, as if to say: “Favorite? You can argue all you want, but you know he checks me first thing in the morning and last thing at night.”

My hair comb, almost overlooked, mutters softly: “At least I bring order to him when he’s scattered. My job may be quiet, but it always shows.”

And in the corner, the mirror watches in quiet duty, holding my reflection without judgment. It sees everything, stores every expression, every pause, and never tells a soul what it has witnessed.

They live beside me, unnoticed. I wonder if I will ever see them the way they seem to see me.

Subscribe now

We’re often told happiness is something waiting for us in the future. Like there is light at the end of the tunnel. You hear it everywhere: “I’ll be happy when I graduate… when I get the job… when I get married… when I leave this country.” It’s always tied to the next milestone, the next achievement, the next escape. Happiness becomes a finish line at the end of a race. But the funny thing about life is that the line keeps moving. The moment you arrive, it shifts further away.

Looking at society, it feels like joy is always postponed, like we’re all waiting for the grand arrival. But when I pay attention, I see happiness showing up in smaller, quieter places. It’s like water pooling in unexpected corners, a street trader’s joke that makes danfo passengers laugh in traffic, or the way neighbours gather outside during a blackout, conversations stretching late into the night because there’s nothing else to do. Or in children playing football on the streets, finding joy in something so simple it doesn’t cost a thing. It flickers like a match in those moments, quick but warm enough to be remembered.

And sometimes, it’s in the joy of people close to us. There’s a certain happiness that comes just from seeing the people we love light up, a sibling getting good news, a friend laughing so hard about something they can’t breathe, or it could be your parents dancing at a party. Their joy spills into ours. It’s like a reminder that happiness is something we share, not just something we chase alone.

Some milestones don’t carry the weight we think they do. Graduation ceremonies, job offers, weddings, they’re bright, yes, but what makes them meaningful are the smaller moments hidden within them. The memories that linger are like sunlight breaking through clouds, brief but powerful. Or like background music you barely notice until suddenly it carries the whole mood of the day.

When I think about it, the memories that stick with me the most are those quiet, unplanned moments that seemed ordinary at the time but later stitched themselves into something meaningful. The kind of happiness you can’t really prepare for. It just sneaks in, often when you’re not paying attention.

But at the same time, I think we sometimes create our own happiness too. A phone call to a friend, cooking a meal you love, choosing to spoil yourself on occasion, these small decisions can turn an ordinary day into something brighter. Sometimes we carve it out for ourselves.

Maybe that’s the part we keep missing. Happiness was never meant to be a destination. It’s not a mountain you climb to finally stand on top of. It’s more like the thread running through our days, woven out of little pieces of laughter, connection, and time with loved ones. The question isn’t whether we’ll ever arrive there. It’s whether we’ll recognise it in the small stitches before it slips past us.

That’s a phrase I’ve caught myself saying a lot. In conversations about money, school, football or just life, whenever comparison comes in, those words leave my mouth.

Lately, the phrase has stuck in my head, and I keep thinking about inequality. It’s like a staircase where everyone stands at a different point. Most people only look up, trying to climb higher, but almost no one looks down. The truth is, someone would trade places with you in a heartbeat. To some people, I am privileged. To myself, I’m just comfortable, and sometimes even struggling to get by. And to those above me, I barely exist.

I look around society and the gap is clear: the rich, the poor, and everyone in between. To think that there are people that have billions and there are also people that are dying of hunger. Once, a friend teased me, saying, “Your papa get money na,” just because I attend a private university. He wasn’t entirely wrong, at least from where he stood. I don’t understand that stereotype placed on all Nigerian private university students sha but what he didn’t know is how my parents sometimes take loans to pay my fees or send me allowance. I smiled at his joke, but in my head, I was like if only you knew, this guy has no idea.

The thing about inequality is that perspective shapes everything. My friend couldn’t see the sacrifices behind my so called privilege. I can’t fully see the struggles of those who never made it to university at all. And those who sit at the very top? Most of them don’t even see us.

When I think about inequality, a few questions keep circling in my mind. Inequality of what, exactly? Income, education, gender, healthcare, justice? Who set this system up? Things didn’t just randomly fall this way, someone built these systems and there are policies that keep people where they are. And who benefits from this imbalance? Because the truth is, inequality isn’t an accident. There are people who profit from it.

There are also things we don’t see. The obvious differences are easy to point out: wealth, schools, lifestyles. But the hidden ones the way institutions are designed, the policies, laws and subtle rules that advantage one group over another, those are harder to name. That’s why many people live blind, naive and ignorant to how deep inequality runs.

And here’s the part that unsettles me: do the people at the very top even notice? Or have they normalized their privilege so much that the unfairness beneath them is invisible?

Not all differences are injustice. Life will always have levels, and people will always be at different points on the staircase. But there’s a difference between natural variation and systems that trap people in place. To me, the unfairness lies in the systems that decide who gets stuck at the bottom, who struggles in the middle, and who coasts at the top without ever looking down.

I can’t stop thinking about it like a staircase. You can climb, you can fall, but no matter where you stand, someone else is looking up at you, they would switch places with you without thinking. This is not to say you shouldn’t aim for the steps above but be grateful for where you are

So I come back to the phrase I can’t stop saying: there’s levels to everything. The question isn’t whether the staircase exists, I think it always will. The real question is: do we only climb, or do we ever stop to look at where we stand, who’s below us, and how much the staircase itself was rigged long before we set foot on it?

Subscribe now

I decided to open this space as a way of sharing my thoughts more openly and consistently. I think a lot, but I often struggle to properly express these thoughts, whether through speaking or writing.

Put simply, I think better than I talk or write. Since I opened this Substack, however, I’ve been so happy and impressed with how safe and welcoming this space feels for writers, readers, and even people who just want to talk about how they are feeling. It has inspired and motivated me to start writing more, so you can expect from me. Nothing polished to perfection, just honest writing and reflections that I hope will resonate.

If you’ve subscribed, thank you for being here from the beginning. Thank you for being part of my journey. I truly appreciate you.