Words

 I love words. Long words, short words, bad words, curse words. Words that are difficult to pronounce, words that I sometimes forget their meanings. Perhaps, I love words because they are used to tell stories and I love stories. Perhaps, I love words because I love music, and people make music with words, but then, I've loved a lot of music that had no words in them. I love how words help us express emotions. Interestingly, when we run out of words, we give in to our primal urges like running, fighting, kissing, crying, shaking, etc.

Certain words just sound right. Every time I hear a Brazilian express shock and/or surprise by exclaiming ''Nossa!!!'', I smile and have a little orgasm in my ears. The first time I heard a Mozambican end a rhetorical question with ''Nei?'' instead of ''no?'', it was love at first sound. It just felt right, like there couldn't possibly be any other better word to use in its place.

I love multipurpose words and phrases; them ones that express a lot different things depending on context. I imagine them as very hardworking and muscular, you know, because of all the heavy-lifting they do in our sentences daily. We all know these words, words like ''omo'' and ''mad oh'', in Nigerian Pidgin. ''Nna eh'', in Igbo Language, and ''Mehn'' in American English. Sometimes these words even intertwine across languages, like the union of ''Nna mehn'' between the above Igbo and American English words.

Sometimes I feel sorry for the ones we call curse words. The Fucks, Merdes, Putas, Caralhos, and sheisses of this world. These beautiful words have done absolutely nothing wrong to us. All they have ever done is exist and we routinely condemn and confine them to usage behind closed doors, sexual encounters, toe stubs, outside office hours and unofficial emails. I suppose it could be argued that we reserve them for the most eventful moments of our lives. Good and bad.

My least favourite kinds of words are words that are left unsaid. They become graves for all the emotions, ideas and/or thoughts that we fail to express. Perhaps, the main reason they are my least favourites is because they help humans hide who they truly are. Now, I will admit that I know that in certain contexts, certain things are better left unsaid. Yet, I can't help but think that behind every unsaid word, lies some actions and/or inactions who are, usually, the real villains of these situations. So, technically, unsaid words aren't the problems; its not them it's us.

Some words just sound funny to me, like krankenhaus, krankenwaggen and krankenschwester, the German words for hospital, ambulance and female nurse, respectively. Shout out to words that exist, in my opinion, to give you time to think before talking. Words like ''donc'', ''pues'', ''eerrrr''. You can even put them together to get optimal thinking time, like ''donc...eerrrr...''. If you throw in a few head shakes and the right hand gestures, you could take a trip around the world and come back to people patiently waiting for you to conclude your sentence. I guess I love hand gestures and non-verbal communication too. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at using and understanding them. I suppose that's why I like words better; words are simply clear.

What do you think a world without words would be like?

Writing

I haven't been able to write anything long or serious for a long time now. I know there are a plethora of reasons for that, from lack of inspiration to anxiety, burn out and whatnot. Last night, I found myself thinking about all that. A part of me thought it was OK to go long periods without writing but another part of me thought it counter-productive.

I mean, on one hand, I don't want to write just for the sake of it. I want to write because I have something important to say, something meaningful, to me at least, to express. I want to write because I have a feeling, a thought, an idea that I have no better way of expressing. I don't want to write out of  an obligation to anything or anyone. I think I even mentioned this in my very first post on this blog.

On the other hand, I also know that writing, for some people, is like a muscle that needs to be exercised and trained to improve or even remain usable. I'm aware that some writers literally write their way out of the rut of lack of inspiration and burn out. I can't quite imagine myself doing that. I imagine it would feel so forced, but I respect people who do that, and clearly, it works for them. Frankly, I have a lot of respect for anyone who dares to write anything, publicly or privately, forced or unforced.

The best writing advice I ever got came from Dave(The Goonerholic), God rest his soul. I had just started this blog and asked him for advice because I was very new to writing stuff for public consumption and I had no idea how to start. He simply said ''Cent, write it as you would say it''. As short as that sentence is, it did a lot for me. Its simplicity was what made it so useful and great for me because it simplified writing to me. It made me approach writing as talking to a friend.

So while, at the time, I wasn't used to writing for public consumption, I was familiar with talking to people. I even considered myself good at it. Suddenly writing felt familiar to me too. Dave's advice united what I knew with what I didn't know. If you're familiar with any kind of teaching/learning, then you might already know or noticed that this is the best way of introducing people to new ideas and concepts. Once you connect people's prior knowledge to new knowledge, you can literally see their eyes light up. It's the moment people say things like ''ohhh, now I understand!''

I don't know where I'm going with this post, perhaps it is an attempt to write myself out of a rut. Perhaps I'm just trying to share my thoughts with you in written form. Maybe I'm just trying to talk to a friend. Maybe I'm just writing for the sake it.

Heartbreaks

 To My Friend Currently Going Through A Heartbreak: It's (un)funny how something that once felt so good now hurts so bad, right? Unfortunately, it's the nature of our world. We can't have one without the other; we need valleys to be able to recognise mountains; heartbreaks hurts so much because loving and being loved is the best feeling known to our specie. In the immortal words of The Vision ''What is grief, if not love persevering?'' Think back to the moments before now when everything seemed alright with the world, hold on to the memories you made back then; don't regret them; ''don't be sad it ended, be glad it happened''. 

Don't allow this bump in the road make you cynical and bitter, that's not who you are. Don't wallow in misery, take all the time you need to heal and get over this so that you don't take it out on your next partner. Don't hurt your future with your past.

Don't sweat it; you deserve a love that accepts all of you and doesn't require you to change who you are to earn it. We all do!

To My Friend Who Is Afraid Of Heartbreaks: Three things are inevitable in this life: Death, Taxes and Heartbreaks. The thing with heartbreaks is that they don't come from romantic relationships alone. Football, for example, has given me more heartbreaks than any number of woman could ever give me. Hearts have muscles, literally and metaphorically. The thing with muscles is that you have to train them in order to get the best use out of them, that's why most people exercise. You see, the more you train the muscles of your heart the higher the pressures it can withstand. 

Don't be afraid to dip your feet in the high waters of romantic love. I specified romantic love because I believe you already have other kinds of love in your life. It's the thing I love about Love; there are many different versions of it, and when the waters of romantic love, for example, sweeps you off your feet and threatens to drown you, you can always counts on your other Loves to come through for you with lifeboats, lifeguards, life jackets, and sometimes even pleasant waves you can ride into another romantic love. 

Be brave; you deserve a love that excites all your five senses. We all do!

To My First Heartbreak: Sorry to break it to you but; I won! you deserve some credit though, you were a tough one, you hurt more than a kick to the balls, if that kick was delivered by a giant Kung Fu Master, whose sole purpose in life was to master how to kick people in the balls, just so they can deliver that kick to me after being told I killed their pet. Yet, I got over your pain and fell in love again. Over and over again.

To My Next Heartbreak: Even at the risk of sounding like a Masochist, I have to say I can't wait to meet you. I hope you hurt more than the ones that came before you, because that would mean that, before your arrival, I had loved and been loved more than ever before. If you are the one that breaks..., no, you could never break me because once I heal from you, I'm falling right back in love. Even if I had just more day to live, I'm sure I will find a way.  I'm confident like that, because I can't think of anything better to do in this painfilled existence of ours.

My Life Through Deaths

 One of the things I like about our world today is how popular psychotherapy has become and the introspection that comes with psychotherapy. Looking inwards for answers is very much my thing. I thought recently about how death and grief changes people. I tried to examine the ways, over the years, the deaths of people in my life has affected my life. This post is me briefly mulling over the ones that I think affected me the most. Try not to get too sad, that's not the point of this post.

We lost my direct younger brother to sickness and incompetent doctors when he was around a year and a few months old. I was about 3 years old then. I remember my mother being consoled by our neighbours on her way home from the hospital. I was playing in front of the house as she walked down the street crying. Somehow, I understood that my brother was gone for good, but every time I missed him and cried to the adults about it, I was told that he travelled and would be back soon. In the years that followed, some adults even went as far as trying to convince me that no one died. I suppose they thought I was too young to remember. Free advice: don't lie to kids, some of them remember and understand a lot more than you think. 

My maternal grandmother was a wonderful woman. She lived with us for months at a time, either to help when my younger siblings were born or to stay closer to better hospitals in the city as she battled with a really nasty and protracted illness. The only person who rivalled her storytelling skills was her husband. They told the best tales by moonlight. I love hearing stories so it's no surprise that they were both my favourite grandparents. Anyway, she succumbed to illness when I was 9 years old, but not before nature forced us to watch the illness drain the colour and flesh out of her. Illness never took her joy though; she was a delight of an old lady even to the last seconds of her little over 60 years on earth. I got drunk for the first time during her burial that same year. Don't worry about me, worry about my cousin who was a year younger than I was and got even drunker than I did.

The summer of 2004 was magical for me; one of the happiest times of my life. I was coming off a very tough year in boarding school and had huge doubts about who I was and who I wanted to be. Life threw me a bone and I met my very first girlfriend; one of the most intelligent and beautiful people I have ever known. We hit it off immediately. She was fourteen and I was thirteen years old. Like most first, young, non-familial love, it was so pure, electric and exciting. That whole summer and the following months, we were inseparable and spent as much time as we could together during holidays. 

In January 2005, the weekend before we were to return to our respective schools, we arranged to meet at a Cyber Cafe. For a long time, I blamed myself for her death because, to be honest, it kind of looks like I sent her to her death. She, repeatedly, sent her friend to tell me to, please, come meet her outside so we could talk for a bit then walk in together because she was shy. I wanted to show my friend who I was there with that I was in charge so I, STUPIDLY, asked her friend to tell her to either come in or go home. Well, we never got to see or talk that day, or any other day. She took my suggestion, and got on a bike to go home. Minutes later the bike was hit by a lorry with bad brakes. She died in the hospital while I was still at that Cafe raising my shoulders to the ceiling with ego and stupid pride. 

It took years of work and help from other people for me to stop blaming myself, though I still wonder if coming out to meet her wouldn't have at least gotten her a less painful death, if even we assume that she was always destined to die around that point in her life and it would have happened one way or another. 

I never met my paternal grandmother, she died before I was born. yet I feel like I would have gotten along so well with her. I feel like she must have been an amazing woman. I mean she had to be; my father is her offspring. Additionally, all the people I've met who knew her all end up saying they wish she was still alive and, unfailingly, list a bunch nice things they wish she was alive to have and enjoy. They say she deserved to live a long and fulfilled life. I have never even seen a picture of her, yet, of everybody I never met, she's the person I think of the most.

When her husband died, something eerie happened to me. In my last two years in the University, I only ever excused myself to leave a lecture once(my policy was; either the lecture and lecturer were interesting enough for me to arrive on time and sit through the whole thing or they weren't and I simply didn't attend because I didn't want to attract lecturers' attention by leaving midway through a lecture). The one day I left a lecture midway, it was because I couldn't seem to sit still or concentrate on anything one of my favourite lectures was saying that day. I mean I had always had issues with concentration but, by that time, I had already developed coping mechanisms and could sit through hours of lecture without having to physically leave the room. That day, I just couldn't cope. Nothing worked, it felt like I just had to, needed to, leave that room. I got Goosebumps and random chilly feelings down my spine. I left the class and a few minutes later, just as I walked into my hostel, I got the call. He didn't have any sickness that required constant medical attention or anything like that. He could still move about and manage his farms by himself with no assistance, he simply died quietly in his nap that afternoon. We had just started getting along a few years before that and, maybe even became close friends. I wished we became closer earlier in our lives.

My roommate during my one year of national service was a great guy, everybody who met him, loved him. We were two very different people from two very different backgrounds, he was almost 10 years older than me, but somehow we found it very easy to get along. I think it was mainly because he was great at most things I was awful at, and I was decent at some things he wasn't so good at. Every month, without fail, I watched him faithfully send half of his allowance to his mother, for his daughter's upkeep. He would say ''you never plan for situations like this, but when they happen, you step up and do what you need to do''. A few years after service, just as he resumed the job that was supposed to set him up for life, he got sick and died of a very treatable disease.

One of my maternal uncles died recently. He was one of those larger than life characters, who always seems so full of life and energy. When I was a kid, he was the fun uncle. He was funny, daring, and to my younger eyes, pretty much invincible. The illness that killed him thought otherwise. Once it got hold of him, it never stopped squeezing. Knowing him, I'm sure what he hated the most throughout his years of ill health was losing his independence needing other people's help to get through daily life activities. I tell myself that at least, he is no longer suffering. I could have visited him in September, like I usually did anytime I was home but I convinced myself there would be a next time. Stupid again.

So how have these deaths changed me? Firstly, time is the most valuable resource in the world, in my opinion. I wish I got more time with all these people; to talk, to share a joke or silence, to take pictures, and most importantly, to love them and be loved by them. Additionally, I have a hard time having confrontations with people I care about and/or staying angry at them because ''what if I never get to talk to them or see them again?''. I understand everybody kinda has this fear, but I'm sure you can see why it's heightened in my head. Secondly, perhaps I wouldn't have developed such a high level of distrust for adults and authority figures if the adults in my life didn't try to lie to me about my brother's death.

Like I wrote earlier, this post isn't all doom and gloom. As soon as I became independent enough to make my dietary decisions, the fact my grandmother died of diabetes, a possibly genetic disease, became my main consideration when thinking of what to eat. Consequently, I have, obsessively and progressively, eaten healthier diets and avoided processed sugar more than certain religions avoid pork, for over a decade now. It also motivates me to lead a very active lifestyle and always be up for trying new sports, exercises and adventures.

Basically, these deaths have made me appreciate people and the time and space I share with them more. Constantly having death at the back of my mind makes me get out of my head and live more in the present. It eliminates all unreasonable fear from my mind, because what could possibly be worse and/or more imminent than death? Also, perhaps ironically, the instabilities and uncertainties of our world also makes the certainty of death for all comforting because, last last, no matter what happens, no matter how difficult life gets, one day, like a reliable friend, death will give us a break from it all.

Please, Speak Ill Of The Dead

 I spend, what I realise now may be an unhealthy amount of time, thinking about what I would say about the people in my life, if I had to say something at their funeral. It's usually not necessarily a full eulogy, just like a single sentence that would sum up their life. For example, for a certain person, it would be ''He always did his best, and if he knew better, he would have done better''. For another, it's ''everyone needs a (redacted) that loves them as much as (redacted) loved me''. For yet another person, it is ''our friendship is a perfect illustrator that love is sometimes best shared from a distance''. One of my not so good ones is ''maybe they will finally listen to me, just maybe''.

This courtesy is not one I extend only to my friends and acquaintances, I'm not stingy with it. I have time even for people I don't know personally. Arsene Wenger would get ''He was a cocktail of all the things I like most in humans'', Jose Mourinho, on the other hand, would get ''He was everything that is wrong in football, sports and modern life in general''. Elizabeth of Windsor and her likes would all get a generic, yet equally effective ''good riddance'', and that's if I was in a good mood.

In African traditions, generally, a lot of value is placed on respect for the elderly, and the dead. While I understand the need to give more respect to people who are more experienced than us and people who are not there to defend themselves, I maintain that respect is due to everyone, as long as they respect other people. I see no reason to afford respect to people who, clearly, do not respect other people. I have always made this position clear at every point in my life; and I have a long list of older uncles, aunties, other relatives and non-relatives who avoid me to show for it. There are very few things I am more proud of than this metaphorical list. (Of course, it's a metaphorical list, I don't respect them enough to make out time to actually write their names on anything. Although writing their names on a pile of dung has a certain appeal to it.)

I believe that this tradition of given respect to people who do not deserve it is a huge part of the reason our continent, governments, and countries are the way they are; underdeveloped, stripped of dignity and up shit's creek with not a single paddle in sight. We have maintained a system that refuses to name and shame, even the worst among us, just because they have a few grey hair and/or choked on their greed in their sleep. This is now so engrained in our societies that at a very young age, children are taught to not question anybody, from teachers to caregivers and religious people. Those children then grow up to become adults who lack even the most basic scientific and everyday curiosity that our specie has always needed to develop and evolve.

The biggest conmen on our continent today are people in religious and political positions. They abuse and loot the commonwealth of the people in their care on a daily basis and get away with it because not enough voices speak up in condemnation of the ills they do in their lifetime. Once they die, their acolytes, children and relatives stand on mountains of their share of the loot and lecture us all on why it isn't proper to speak ill of the dead. They find obscure good deeds done by these thieves and conmen and point to them as evidence that they had good intentions.

That's why some idiots had the guts to say that the money Abacha looted and stashed in Swiss banks was his way of saving money for Nigeria. That's why we still have airports, hospitals, streets, stadiums and other public monuments, even cities, named after known genocidal maniacs, thieves, rapists and paedophiles.

Yet, every time this issue is brought up, lots of people say don't speak ill of the dead. Here's an idea; if you don't want people to speak ill of your friends, family members, heroes and/or religious models, hold them accountable while they are still alive and get them to do things right and stop abusing the power and offices they occupy. Either do this or hang your head in shame and suck it up when they are named and shamed, even after they die. You have to understand that while these people may have been great parents, relatives and/or role models to you, their corruption, greed, ineptitude and general lack of respect of other people's humanity cause lasting damages long after they die. Speaking ill of them is the least that can be done.

Would I be happy if people wrote or said hurtful or mean things about me when I die? Firstly, I would be too dead to care about the affairs of the living. Secondly, if, intentionally or unintentionally, I hurt anyone enough to make them feel that way at my death, then, by all means, let them speak ill of me. Let them dance on my grave and party like it's '99, it would be my pleasure.

I Don't Understand...

 

I don't understand women who are not feminists. I mean, how can you not be on your own side? It's like Turkeys voting for thanksgiving to be celebrated every day; It would be fun for everyone else except Turkeys.

I don't understand Black people who are not feminists. Bruh, do you really hate racial discrimination or are you just upset because you are not always the race with the power to racially discriminate against other races?

I can understand men who are not feminists. Its very difficult for groups who have privileges that are denied others to acknowledge their privileges, talk more of working towards giving up those privileges. Yet, I can't help but wonder if these men actually realise how much better their lives would be in a world where everybody is equal on the basis of gender.

The latest demographic census of the world indicates that there more than double the number of women in the world than men. Do you realise that this world, as developed and advanced as it is today, has, historically, barely utilised up to 50% of the human potential it has seen? Basically, by restricting how and where women can contribute to the society, our world has been running a marathon with its hands firmly tied behind its back.

Think of how close we came to never experiencing Emily Dickinson's writings. Imagine if J.K. Rowling was born a century earlier and as result never got to publish Harry Porter. Think of the millions of equally talented women who would have made equally significant strides in many other fields of endeavours if they were not shut out of those fields, because certain people decided that certain jobs and studies were for men only. Can you even begin to comprehend this waste of human potential calculated across the years our world has been in existence?

Now, I know that extremists exist, and there are misogynists who disguise their hatred for men under feminism, but when have we ever allowed extremism to stop us? Religious extremists, for example, have always existed, from the church burning people accused of witchcraft to ISWAP and ISIS murdering people for lunch, but has that stopped anyone from preaching Christianity and Islam?

Things I wish People Asked Me About

I find that I don't have common interests with most people I meet. Unsurprisingly, this means that my conversations with most people never go beyond salutations and and mundane stuff I care very little about. A lot of times, people misinterpret our lack of common interests as me being a snob, shy and/or awkward; the low hanging fruits. Admittedly, things can quickly get awkward when I'm involved because I don't always understand social cues, but that's besides the point, for today at least.

Today, I want to highlight some of the things I actually do like to talk about. Human nature and the human condition, history, happiness, love, life and death, sex and sexuality, languages, aging, religion, football, politics, Africa, philosophy, feminism and need for a more equal and equitable world are just some of topics that get me going. Having written that down, I realise that most people talk about these things anyway. Now I'm thinking that perhaps my challenge is not quite the topic that is discussed, but more about how it's discussed and what aspects of it are discussed.

Most conversations focus on love, for example, as a limited resource that must be reserved for a handful of people in our lives. Personally, I think of love as unlimited. I think that love should not, can not be earned because, frankly, if love was to be earned, none of us would be worthy of it. Now ''likes'' on the other hand, them bitches need to be earned. let me explain. I had a xenophobic co-worker who did his best to make my life difficult at every turn, but if he was on fire next to my house, which was also on fire, I would save him first before thinking of saving my most valued possessions. Now, would I ever invite him to lunch in my half-burnt house? Not in six life times! See, I don't like that motherfucker's behaviour but I care about him enough save his xenophobic ass from a fire, at the expense of my prized possessions.

I know that's nothing special because most people would do the same in those circumstances. Why? Because we are humans and we naturally value, care about and extend love to our kind, even the ones we detest most. Making sacrifices is a huge part of loving people. If you chose to sacrifice your possessions, no matter how little, to help another person, that's love right there. Obviously, this isn't quite the same level of love one would have for a parent, child or spouse but it's love all the same.

On life, I think that it's quite confusing and can become overwhelming when you clock the sheer depth of this confusion of existing in this space with billions of other people, such advanced technology and thousands of years of recorded history of human brilliance yet no one has ever being able to say for sure how we got here and what we are really doing here. I mean there is the big bang theory and religious explanations but, to me, its all still theories with no definite, satisfying answer. There will probably never be one. And so it makes me see death as comfort, a light at the end of our individual tunnels, because by Hella's perfect ass, I would be miserable if I had to live this existence forever without a satisfying answer to how we came to be and what we are doing here.

As you can see, I have a lot to say about a lot of things and it hard for me to stop when I get going. That's actually one of the reasons my real life conversations with most people are get awkward fast - I don't always know when to stop. Anyway, I'm guessing this is a good place to stop for now.

I want to try something; I'm asking people to send me questions about any of the topics I listed above, actually, send questions about anything, and I will try and write blog posts to answer them. I mean I could write posts and talk about these things without any prompt but the reason I want other people to get involved is just so I feel accountable to people and get off my lazy ass and write more. Questions can be sent in via the comments section here or my social media accounts. Thanks.