Category: Life

No Pressure

“Once you’ve been bitten by a snake, the paranoia make you pop a lizard in the face” – Jidenna (A Bull’s Tale)

I just went out for a walk this evening and when that soft cool breeze hit me, I realised that almost everything (at least 90%) of what causes worry and anxiety is man-made. In fact, it’s self-made.

The human mind tricks us into creating scenarios and battle scenes that will probably never happen.  A case of being at war with ourselves and our senses.

And even though much of the paranoia that fuels anxiety and worry is based on trauma off of experience (ours and others), we forget one simple thing:

No two human beings have the same story.

Even if they end up having similar experiences while living their respective lives, they can never have the same outcomes at the end.

Understandably, you’re afraid because you’ve been here or you know someone else who’s been here before, but most of that changes nothing.

When we live life like this, we end up involuntarily pitting our future against our present based on information from the past. Incomplete information even.

History might repeat itself but nothing stays the same.

So, instead of being paralysed by anxiety and worry, I rather take the high road: Do everything I can and should and then leave everything to God.

I think you should too.

What Is Your Biggest Problem With Getting Things Done?

“Smoke good, eat good, live good” – Kendrick Lamar (Poe Man’s Dreams)

It’s a common theme nowadays to have a ton of half-done or unfinished projects.

So many times it’s from bursts of unsustained creativity. Other times it’s just down to a lack of organisation and cluttering an already overcrowded life and schedule.

But focus changes everything.

Focus and an emphasis on purpose totally simplifies your life.

It defines where you direct your priceless enegy – what you do and don’t do.

Unfocused people try to do too much – and this eventually leads to unnecessary stress, avoidable fatigue, and conflict with your inner self and with others.

Focus simplifies your life.

You concentrate your effort and energy on only what’s important. And so, you grow in every area of your life by simply being selective with a few parts of it.

There is nothing quite as potent as a focused life, one lived on purpose.

The men and women who have made the greatest difference in history were the most focused.

“Without a clear purpose, you will keep changing directions, jobs, relationships, churches, or other externals – hoping each change will settle the confusion or fill the emptiness in your heart. You think, Maybe this time it will be different, but it doesn’t solve your real problem-a lack of focus and purpose.” – Rick Warren

Instead of being involved in too many things at once, just simply spending one hour completely dedicated to a particular project could change your life.

Make a decision today to focus on what’s important. Not just only focusing, but also carrying it out to the end.

What It Means To Fight The Government.

I remember my earliest football memory.

It was the Korea/Japan 2002 World Cup. I was 7.

One of the World Cups with too many wonderful highlights: Ronaldo Da Lima’s haircut(I was rocking something similar, although less bizarre 🤣)
Klose scoring all of his five goals with his head. His HEAD only!!!

I remember that diving header against Saudi Arabia. How I described it to whoever cared to listen. I used to tell them he used his head to roll the ball over the line. Lmao

I even tried it a few times and thankfully never got kicked in the head.

But my most wonderful memory of that World Cup was the Turkish team.

That team had incredible ballers like Hasan Sas and Hakan Sukur.

I remember watching the third-place playoffs between them and South Korea at my Uncle’s house. Amazing stuff!

Their goalkeeper Rustu Recber (I didn’t even know his name till this morning) had anti-glare paint under his eyes.

It made him look like Oded Fehr in The Mummy. You have no idea how impressionable that meant to a child.

If you’ve seen The Mummy, you’ll surely remember a Samurai lookalike with pretty tattoos on his face.

So, I woke up last night and couldn’t go back to sleep again.

Somehow, my mind drifted to that team and I decided to do a quick Google search just to relive the experience.

That Google search led me down a rabbit hole and affirmed something that’s been on my mind for quite some time.

I started with Hasan Sas, but what I saw on Hakan Sukur shook me to the marrows!

From scoring the fastest goal ever in World Cup history to being the country’s all-time leading goalscorer to being named as the greatest Turkish player of the last fifty years, he built on that reputation and delved into politics becoming a Member of Parliament.

But guess what?

Nowadays, he’s wanted for arrest in Turkey after he was charged with insulting the Turkish President on Twitter.

It doesn’t even end there.

He’s being charged with being a member of a movement designated as a terrorist organisation in Turkey.

According to his Wikipedia, Şükür fled Turkey in November 2017, taking up self-exile in San Francisco, California and planning to become a restaurateur in Palo Alto. He left this job because “strange people kept coming into the bar”.

In January 2020, Şükür told Germany’s Welt am Sonntag that he was working as an Uber driver and selling books in the United States. He also said that his houses, businesses and bank accounts in Turkey had been seized by the government.

Imagine going from the greatest player in a country’s history to being on the run from the same country. Alarming.

This post has nothing to do with Sukur’s political leanings, neither is it a demonstration of sympathy, but it’s always funny when people bash celebrities for not using their platforms to protest against the government, or not becoming the next Fela.

Fela was tortured and imprisoned repeatedly by different governments. His ageing mother was thrown from a balcony by soldiers, resulting in her death, just to prove a point to him.

Being Fela came with a prize.

Fighting a government is the hardest thing any single one individual can do.

It’s always an unending battle.

Ostracism, threat to life (yours and family), alienation, loss of money and property, and the list goes on.

There’ve been reports floating around already of DJ Switch being haunted for her Instagram Live broadcast of the #LekkiGenocide at the #EndSARS protest.

In certain quarters, DJ Switch is a hero.

In some, she’s the ultimate villain. And her crime? Exposing a government that opened fire on unarmed and harmless protesters.

At this point, being DJ Switch has a prize.

From Fela to Hakan Sukur to DJ Switch, the underlying theme is simple: fighting the government sounds easy in theory, but is not for faint of heart.

So, the next time you feel a certain urge to call out a celebrity for not speaking up with their platform, ask yourself if you’d truly do the same if you were in their shoes.

No need to rush into saying yes, self-awareness and soul searching doesn’t happen in a split second.

Random

“Fake niggas, mad snakes, snakes in the grass, let a nigga know he alive” – J. Cole (Love Yourz)

People will fail you. Family members, close friends and people you never expected will.

Maybe it’s fate or destiny, but getting no from a place you expected yes is all part of what makes life.

Forgiveness is simply accepting their part in the story.

People will go out on a limb for you too. Strangers, outsiders, acquaintances and people you never expected will.

Accept their part in the story too.

I think a lot about Judas.

It Will Happen, But It Might Just Take A Little Longer

“Don’t worry, it will come full circle” – Big Sean (Full Circle)

Hard to explain the concept of patience to someone who’s been waiting for something for a very long time.

It’s super hard not to be worried when it hasn’t happened yet.

But the beauty of patience is holding on until it finally happens. Until it comes full circle.

I have no idea who is reading this right now, but I just thought I should tell you that it always comes full circle. Just hold on

“Regret looks back. Fear looks around. Worry looks in. Faith looks up.” – Nicky Gumbel

Control

“Everything I touch may disintegrate into dust/Everything I trust may dishonour me in disgust” – Kendrick Lamar (Holy Key)

Most of the things you’re bothered by right now might not matter in a year – money in the bank, a spouse, a stalling career, your family – not because they weren’t important in the first place, but because time has a way of reordering things.

At every point of our lives we want to be in total control of everything happening to us, so, the absence of a spouse when you are lonely or a career stalling after putting so much time and effort into it makes you feel helpless.

No adult likes to feel vulnerable. One of the reasons people have a hard time falling in love.

Vulnerability and helplessness reminds us of a time in our lives when we were children and had to depend entirely on our parents for even things as simple as feeding ourselves.

And so we build buffers. Buffers for security – financial, mental, emotional et al.

But the uncertainty of life means those buffers might fail someday.

Knowing this, the anxiety goes from an inability to build these buffers (or build them quickly enough) to the ability of these buffers to hold when things go awry.

Worry becomes an endless cycle.

And this eventually spills over into your decisions, affecting everything it comes into contact with.

Do you need my advice?

Two sets of advice actually.
Hold on. Let go.

Holding on is a reminder that you should have an unshakable belief in yourself and in your abilities. A reminder that it gets better eventually.

Letting go is a reminder that you can only do so much. A reminder that there are a thousand other things beyond your sphere of control, and just letting the universe do its magic.

And you’ll find peace of mind from focusing on the things you can directly control.

True freedom comes with control. True control depends on knowing what to hold on to and what to let go. Because holding on to what you should let go is you simply creating unnecessary battle scenarios in your life.

The worst battles have to be the ones you intentionally or unintentionally create in your head. Saps all your energy, keeps you anxious, drains you mentally and physically and eventually weighs you down completely.

Better to be focused on what’s in front of you. A better use of your time and energy.

Your life doesn’t have to be in overdrive all the time. It pays to take your foot off the gas sometimes.

That is true control.

Advantages And The Importance Of The Small Things

“In trouble waters I had to learn how to float” – Jay Z (Oceans)

Many people don’t believe they are advantaged. And can you even blame them?

I mean, it’s hard to see any sort of advantage in being impoverished or coming from a hard place.

Yesterday, I was thinking about David’s epic battle with Goliath and something profound struck me.

I know the recurring theme is always about how a simple shepherd boy could down a well-seasoned war machine with just a common sling.

Many books have been written, sermons preached, millions of anecdotes told and analogies made concerning the difference in size between both parties, as that’s usually the most captivating part of the story.

But what if David’s brothers weren’t in the army?

Let me tell you all the things that might have happened.

1. His father would have never sent him on that errand.

2. He’d never have heard of Goliath’s challenge.

3. His brothers’ initial resistance had to be enough to cause a furore that attracted Saul’s attention.

4. He might never have had access to Saul’s presence to even present his case about taking on Goliath.

5. And just to prove God’s providence, Saul’s armour was too big for David. He’d never had been able to sling a single stone wearing something that heavy.

These all go on to prove how crazy life is.

Having brothers in the army was the opportunity David needed to showcase his talents and God’s grace in his life. But being rejected and a lack of acknowledgement of his abilities by them was the final piece of the puzzle.

What about the experience he got from tending sheep, sleeping in the blistering cold and hunting down lions and from bears?

Aside from helping hone his military abilities, these were the tools he needed to go guerilla mode and evade Saul when his life was in danger.

Can you see the pattern?

No experience, no matter how innocuous or mundane or even painful and heartbreaking should be counted out.

Everything and everyone matters.

But it goes to show you that some of the levels you might eventually reach in life won’t be entirely on your own. And that is regardless of how much you push yourself.

Someone or something will have to push you. And it might be under the most unlikely circumstances.

Which means some of the advantages you’ll enjoy through your journey in life would be from knowing other people.

And this is not me promoting an already selfish culture of networking and connecting with people based on personal interests or WIIFM (what’s in it for me). In fact, your advantage might end up being from the ‘small and unimportant’ things.

Never count them out. That’s what builds you up.

Were Our Parents Really A Silent Generation?

“I just need to clear my mind now/It’s been racin’ since the summertime” – Kanye West (Blood on the Leaves)

Our biggest rallying cry when these protests started was that we didn’t inherit the silence of our parents.

Maybe it was just plain narcissism typical of young people, or it was our youthful energy and enthusiasm, zero reluctance to speak truth to power, piled up frustration or our ability to crowdfund and support systems within a very short time and at scale, powerful acts of kindness over the last few days, all of these mostly possible because we had the Internet on our side, something our parents never had.

After an exhaustive call on Wednesday morning with my mother and then logging on to Twitter in the evening to see Oke with a bullet hole in his neck, shot dead by the Nigerian Police, his parents cradling their baby’s dead body in their hands – his mother screaming her lungs out. His father quiet, with pain written all over his face, the exact way men grieve. – probably thinking about how they failed him, I realised we were wrong all along.

It was from reading about Pericles from Robert Greene’s The Laws of Human Nature that I understood that our parents weren’t silent out of convenience or because they loved the idea of a toxic relationship. They were silent because they had come to understand how the system worked.

A generation that experienced a civil war, military rule, coups and counter-coups, genocides, militancy, civil unrests, pogroms, insecurity, election violence, riots, broken promises, poverty, a rotten system, an irate military and countless of targeted killings.

I always wondered why my father always insisted on exercising restraint.

But for someone who was born around the time the first guns sounded for the Nigerian Civil War, experienced all the horrors of war, saw Ghana and many other African countries capitulate under bad leadership, heard about South Africa, saw people disappear and never seen again, now I understand.

They were broken spirits and their silence was just plain PTSD.

They were so used to bad things happening that nothing even remotely felt out of place.

The reason our parents held on so strongly to prayers and religion was simply to numb the pain from the trauma. It was opium and morphine to them. A coping mechanism.

I saw too many videos of dead people over the last few days, but nothing broke me like Lucy’s and Oke’s.

I really was sweating my blood pressure watching Chelsea in the UCL on Tuesday night not knowing a genocide was on.

Lucy was dancing hours earlier, laughing and meeting new people, only to have her face cut in half by bullets bought with her own taxes.

Cried like a child with snort running down my nose. Couldn’t work or work out. Couldn’t sleep.

I broke down from watching Oke’s girlfriend post pictures and talk about their dreams.

People who knew him called him a whiz and an overall great human being.

3 hours earlier, he posted “Nigeria won’t end me’ on his Twitter.

Nigeria ended him 2 hours later.

That boy was essentially his family’s breadwinner and Nigeria might have just managed to derail his family’s future.

That boy was going to be someone’s future husband and father. Nigeria just killed someone’s present and future happiness.

Nigeria ended that man’s dreams and whatever seeds he had inside of him, whether seeds of greatness or progenies.

Your government might have just killed the next Paystack.

I really used to think that this country was supposed to test you and make you prove your mettle – the same way fire removes dross from silver, heat purifies gold or pressure turns coal to diamonds. Isn’t that why Nigerians excel everywhere?

But nahhhhh!!! Our parents understood from the get-go.

This country was programmed to kill you, and everything you hold dear, your dreams, hopes and aspirations.

Our military came out and shot protesters in the full glare of the world and then went on to deny it claiming it was photoshopped. An event seen by over 100,000 people live on Instagram? Makes you wonder how much evil has been swept under the rug all these years.

Our parents were always right, and we really ought to apologise to them.

This wasn’t the Nigeria I grew up to love, believe in and be proud of. Maybe it’s better to be an alien in someone else’s country and killed by a white cop on the account of racism than being killed in your own motherland just for demanding for the right to live.

Whatever I felt for this country will never be the same again.

I’m done!

Is Our Attention Span Killing Our Relationships

“Talkin’ ’bout how the weather’s changing/The ice is meltin’ as if the world is ending” – Drake (Heat Of The Moment)

Working in advertising in this generation has been termed as one of the hardest jobs to do, especially when you are contending with what celebrated journo David Hundeyin refers to as ‘the attention span of a goldfish’.

Catching someone’s attention and holding it long enough up to the point where they bring out their wallets to buy whatever you’re selling has become harder every day.

Attention is the new cocaine.

People have to get their fix somehow.

From push notifications to social media feeds and trending topics to a myriad of apps to go through every day, our attention is fragmented across a thousand things.

This has led to an attention deficit syndrome and an inability to concentrate on a particular area or thing for long.

This has affected our lives as one on one communication without mobile interfaces have become harder. People are so terrible at communicating nowadays.

We’ve lost our confidence and ability to talk to people face to face.

When together we’d rather take pictures instead of soaking in a moment.

Awkward silences which are natural for punctuating interactions are made worse by people looking at their phones trying to escape them.

Dates feel like interviews. Question and answer sessions.

The time that should be spent figuring out your partner’s quirks are lost to the apps on your phone.

Whatever magic that was in waiting has completely fizzled out. Everyone is speed dating in the DMs.

A typical modern-day relationship works with two people who are miles apart and instead of waiting for those treasured monthly letters scented with talcum powder or perfume, lipstick kisses and starting with prim and proper headers like ‘Calvary Greetings, dearly beloved’ sent by post, you could easily go online at any time of the day, cut right to the chase and just say, “Hey, baby.” Damn the old and proprietary. Vive la Nueva!

You could say this same thing to 50,000 other people too (depending on which side of the fence you swing), and this might be the biggest problem.

Too many options. There’s a completely extensive and exhausting menu out here.

And the common mistake we’ve made over the years has been assuming a few options mean you’d be settling for less. And so we’d rather more.

But what about the quality of these options?

It is one thing to have just four good eggs in your kitchen cupboard. It is another level of trauma to have 30 eggs, 24 bad and 6 good. The heartbreak and paranoia might make you throw everything away. You may never look at eggs the same way again.

Online relationship experiences have blighted many lives and they forever remain scarred. Future interactions poisoned and possibly dead on arrival.

There’s an entire vacuum between online and offline interactions.

“…the Internet was meant to make the world a smaller place, but it actually feels smaller without it…”, narrates Paul Bettany playing Max Waters in sci-fi film Transcendence.

Re: People inadvertently feel smaller without their phones, and all the fault lines in their abilities to communicate offline just bleed through with inexperience.

We’ve always had shy people. But the Internet made it easier for them.

Now imagine taking that phone away.

People have never been this close and yet so alone in the history of the world.

It’s crazy!

Contentment Is So Underrated And It Sucks!

“I grew up, a fuckin’ screw up/Tie my shoe up, wish they was newer…You everything I wanna be that’s why I fucks with you/So how you looking up to me, when I look up to you?…I felt ashamed to have ever complained about my lack of gear/And thought about how far we done came/From trailer park to a front yard with trees in the sky” – J. Cole (03′ Adolescence)

There’s a thin line between greed and ambition.

This line gets blurred and redrawn over and over again in different circumstances and situations.

The idea of contentment sits uncomfortably on this line.

To the overly ambitious, contentment could mean the absence of ambition or lack thereof.

A typical definition of settling and a lack of motivation.

To the lazy, contentment is an excuse to hide and therefore settle.

Contentment is sitting in a dark room in a rundown apartment while thinking about better options, but still enjoying it in the present.

Contentment is being in a hard place, but still finding reasons to laugh at yourself and about it.

Contentment is the conquering of self.

The true definition of being present and living in the moment.

All the base desires that come from being overly ambitious like envy, jealousy and discontentment are put in check.

Contentment is true happiness, with achievements or not.

Working to be the best version of yourself and not to prove a point or to revenge.

Contentment is the root of true gratitude and appreciation.

It is the realisation that life is a journey and not some utopian destination and being happy with whatever point you are at, while not settling for less or mediocrity.

Contentment is everything. But it’s shameful most of us lack it. Especially in a world calibrated by milestones, overachieving and an incessant dick measuring contest.

J. Cole reminded me why I had to be content this weekend.