It’s interesting how time always provides a new perspective.

I discovered old plans I had forgotten about, most of which I wrote down when I was in a much different headspace in life.

Some of those plans have changed, others have evolved into other different things, and the rest are no longer relevant to my current outlook of the future.

I found old prayers too.

A lot of which God has already answered.

There were things I once desperately wanted that have now become part of my everyday life. And there were also things I thought I needed that I barely think about today.

Of course, there were also the prayers I’m still patiently waiting on answers for.

I found story ideas I never executed, fiction and non-fiction ideas I wrote down and never returned to. Some are terrible, and some are ridiculously good that I wonder why I even forgot about them.

As I scrolled through those many different notes accumulated over many days and weeks and months and years, I had two distinct feelings.

The first was nostalgia, because it felt like I was discovering a much older version of myself.

The other can be described as “anxiety”, I guess, because I felt like I had been missing out on something very critical by forgetting that much older version of myself.

How easily we forget the parts of us that don’t linger in our daily conscious/unconscious memories.

I’m not entirely sure if that’s a good thing or bad thing, but I know the gift of writing and documentation is one of the biggest privileges humanity has received.

I also know we often get so caught up in the present and so focused on the future that we sometimes forget that there is an us who once stood exactly the us of today is standing now.

An us that had different problems, different dreams, different fears, different prayers, and different expectations about where life would be by now.

One of the interesting things about revisiting the past is that you might find a sort of grounding there.

You might realise that you’ve grown in ways you never consciously noticed, or you might find things worth bringing back, like old dreams or old feelings or old friends or old desires.

Or maybe looking back might remind you that you’re now a shadow of your former self, nothing but an inverse mirror of all that you once wanted to do and become.

You might realise that you’ve let your fears, insecurities, or the words and actions of others drown out the part of you that was once excited and eager about certain things.

Maybe that’s why many people don’t like to look back.

Either way, I still think it’s a risk worth taking.

So, check your notes today.

You just might like what you see. Or you might hate it.

Regardless, just remember that you have the power to decide how the future you will feel about all the notes that you’re writing today.

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We, almost arrogantly, believe that we have more “wisdom” about certain ways life works than the people who came and were here before us, and this is glaringly obvious in the way we speak and make aggregations about certain topics.

And also in the way we boldly and fearlessly declare, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, that “I will do better when it’s my turn” or “I will never find myself in that situation”.

Interesting.

Well, I won’t deny the fact that we have a lot of “knowledge” in this generation, at least, on the surface level.

Fortunately and unfortunately, this is the peak age of media, and we have more access to information, past and present, than the world has ever seen.

We have access to books, podcasts, social media content, and shared experiences from many people from different works of life.

And, even better, we have access to tools and databases that can gather and summarise decades’ worth of information to use in just a few paragraphs generated under a few seconds.

So, because of all this, we now know many things our parents and people who were youths in the previous decades didn’t know, and we can name many things they couldn’t name and understand many things they didn’t understand.

We can also recognise some of their very obvious limitations, and we can point to many ways and aspects that they lacked and that we can “do better” than they did.

All that is well and good, but –

and this is a very big but (no pun intended)

- There is a very HUGE difference between knowing (or thinking you know) what to do about a situation and then actually doing it when you find yourself in the situation.

There’s also a difference between having the theoretical (or unlived) knowledge about parenting or raising a family or building wealth or balancing work and life or maintaining long-term relationships or building an impactful career or handling responsibility or withstanding life’s pressures, etc., and actually entering the situation where you will have to do one or all those things and then doing them and doing them well.

Well enough for your own children not to hold resentment against you in their hearts as they grow up and well enough for them not to come on the internet to declare loudly how much they despise you and how they could have done a much better job than you did.

Huge difference.

And this article is not an invalidation of anybody’s bad experiences with people of the older generation.

Neither is this article a defence of parents or the older generation for their many setbacks and errors.

Whilst I believe many of them didn’t do better because they didn’t know what better was and talk less of how to even do it, I’m also well aware of the fact that many of them were/are just outrightly terrible people.

So, my focus is not on them.

My focus is on us, and the scope I’m referring to goes much beyond marriage and family life and parenting, even though those will be my major talking points.

I’m concerned about us because despite the fact that we talk big, talk about things, and talk about how we can handle things, we have never experienced and excel at responsibilities we have not yet been given to handle…

I look around at the issues we are facing, the mindsets we have, and the daily actions we carry out, and I just shake my head.

If we put aside our sensitive emotions and quieten the prideful lies our sentiments tell us, we will realise that, right now, at this moment, many of us, whether we like it or not, are not ready, or even on track, to do better than the people who came before us.

And that is just the truth.

In the context of competitive sports, especially between two different teams, you can sometimes see a coach or a player talk after the game about how they had a strong plan for the match and how they were confident in their plan, but as soon as the game started, they were not just able to follow through with their plan, and that was why they lost or didn’t perform to expectations.

There are many reasons that could happen.

Sometimes, a player is sent off or an important player gets injured, or maybe Team A was not expecting the aggressiveness and tenacity that Team B brought to the game, or maybe Team A did not have the mental strength to handle the pressure of the matchup, or maybe Team B came with a tactic or a gameplan that Team A was not expecting.

Many different things could happen.

However, the point is that they had a plan before the game and they were confident in it, but as soon as the game started, they were not able to execute their plan, due to whatever reasons, and that was why they failed.

I coached my department’s football team in my final year in the university, and I can tell you firsthand how it feels to prepare for a match for hours across several days, only for the game to start and for everything to crumble right before your very eyes.

It is as horrifying as it is humbling.

Keep this analogy in mind and copy-paste it into the subject matter of this article because it is exactly what might happen to many of us.

The entire backbone of my argument is that you can have a lot of theoretical knowledge about something or a lot of one-sided knowledge based on your experienced experiences, and it can lead you to become very confident about the fact that you can handle the same thing if you ever have to.

And then when you enter that exact situation and you’re dealt with the stark reality of facing it, you might then realise that it wasn’t as straightforward as you initially thought.

One gives you the illusion of competence and feeds your ego; the other deals only with reality and is the differentiator between your potential success and your potential failure.

It’s something to ponder.

Before you continue, ask yourself:

Everything I criticise my parents or leaders or people who are older than I am for, do I know how exactly to do better?

Or do I just know what it is that is better?

Knowing “what” is good, I promise, but it can never be enough, and that’s the exact point I’m trying to get across.

Referring back to my earlier analogy, there are a lot of things that could happen in the context of a sports match that could derail every aspect of a team’s earlier preparation.

So just imagine how much the same can happen in life that is bigger, broader, and has many dependent and independent variables involved.

A lot of things can happen in the course of a man or woman’s life across a period of time.

There are many people you will meet, and when you remember where they once were or when they tell you about the plans they had for their lives 10 or 15 years ago, you will be shocked, and then you will wonder what exactly went wrong.

Sometimes they can tell you about how they made this mistake and that mistake, and sometimes it was just life and its circumstances being unfair to them, and that led them to finding themselves in situations they’d rather not be in.

This is why we shouldn’t always be so quick to judge and make conclusions about people and their situations, especially when we don’t have the full picture.

Many things can happen to a person that could lead them to act the way they do or shape them into the person who they are. Many of which you and I may never know.

I’m not excusing moral or character failings or creating an avenue for every action/decision to be defensible.

I’m just presenting a balanced lens for us to view the past through because, one day, we will all be older and today will be our own past.

And if we are not careful, we will become exact mirrors of everything that we condemn today, and we will have a generation that will question us and resent us for doing the same thing to them that was done to us.

That’s just how patterns work.

I’ll show you an illustration:

Parents + Older generation - Ignorant of all their “what” (the problem), leading them to make mistakes and decisions that affected and still affect many of us today.

Our generation - Aware of the “what” (the problem), but are so grieved and hurt and resentful and angry that despite the fact that we have sworn not to repeat the “what” (the problem), we are not taking the humility and the patience and the discipline to learn the “how” of not repeating the “what” (solution to the problem).

What happens next? - We get to similar crossroads and realise that despite all our anger, we do not know exactly the “how” (solution) to do better. So, we don’t do any better, despite knowing better.

Down the line - Next generation gets angry at us for not applying the “how” (solution) and repeating the “what” (problem).

Then they swear they’ll never be like us.

But if they also don’t take the humility and the patience and the discipline to learn the “how” (solution), they’ll only have more knowledge about the “what” (problem) before they inevitably repeat it.

Pattern repeats, again and again and again and again...

Can you see it?

Yes, we all know the what’s, the many problems that we have suffered and the many ways we’ve been done wrong, bla bla – but how exactly do we plan on doing better?

Or are we only going to talk about them and tweet about them and make videos about them and write about them?

All which are akin to playing the victim forever.

Or do we have a body of knowledge that we are actively pursuing in our bid to do better?

Many of us don’t.

Like I said, you can know everything about the pain and the trauma and the hurt, but know nothing about how to not let it consume you or affect your life or end up using you as a vessel to transfer it to the next person after you.

The reason I said in the intro to this article that I don’t think we are ready to do better is because I look around – in conversations, on social media – and I see the average mindsets and actions and activities and desires, and I see the way we interact with ourselves, and it’s very worrying.

We don’t look like we can or want to even do better.

Because, yes, again, as much as we can recognise the flaws and castigate the mistakes of those who came before us, it would be hypocritical to deny that there are a lot of things that they also got right as a collective.

Many of which I honestly don’t see us getting right anytime soon.

One problem I’ve noticed is that a lot of us are still actively carrying things.

And by things, I mean things.

A lot of us are carrying so much hurt, anger, resentment, and even vengefulness due to the actions we have received from the people who came before us, and, yes, a lot of it is justified, I know.

But because we haven’t dealt properly with the bleeding we carry, what happens is that we end up bleeding heavily on everybody else, intentionally or otherwise.

That’s why I admire people who have recognised that they have unhealed wounds inside of them and have committed to ensuring that they are fully prepared and ready before they get into certain things.

However, there are many others who don’t even understand that they have something to deal with, yet they wonder why they get so angry and defensive and triggered when certain topics or situations are brought up.

And there are also others who are well aware of their “what”, but they refuse to go through the pain and discomfort of dealing with it.

So, by the time they find themselves in certain situations, they will have no idea what to do, other than to repeat what they once experienced and maybe even do worse.

Hurt people are usually often the ones who hurt people.

And, unfortunately, many of us, in 10, 15, or 20 years, have the likelihood of doing to our children the exact things we are angry with our parents for doing to us.

Even if we don’t know it now or we could never imagine it happening.

Another reason I believe this generation is not ready is because there’s a serious identity crisis at the moment.

A lot of people don’t know who they are, what they want, or what they even desire to do with their lives.

A lot of people don’t have any anchor that’s grounding them, so they just end up floating up and down, carried away by whatever is trending or whatever the latest sensational idea is.

And because, for some reason, there’s a societal expectation that once you reach a certain age, and you have this or have that, then you’re automatically ready to become a parent or raise a family, many people end up starting one without an idea of who they even are.

I don’t get it.

That’s why it’s one of the things I challenge fiercely because that life decision is not one that should be assumed or taken lightly.

Why should everybody who can be assumed to be able to be a good father or mother? Doesn’t make any sense.

Out of this identity crisis has also arisen the propagation and adaptation of many different mindsets, ranging from mildly disturbing (“why would you even think like that?”) to outright vile (“how on earth can anybody even think like that!?).

One mindset I personally don’t agree with is the extreme averseness to sacrifice and responsibility.

A lot of people in this generation are so averse to the idea of sacrificing for a partner, or a mother sacrificing for her children, or a person sacrificing for their career, or anybody sacrificing and being patient to reap the fruits of their sacrifices.

Instant gratification and self-indulgence are like opium to us, so we detest anybody or any ideology that comes and tries to attempt to take either away from us.

And yes, I understand that due to a lot of examples from the previous generation, we have seen how the concept of “sacrifice”, both in the context of career and family, can be taken to the extreme.

But still, we can’t let this be a case of knowing “what” (being sacrificial can end up ruining a person’s life), without knowing the solution (“how do I sacrifice for the things I want and the people I love whilst still having autonomy over my life?”).

There’s a need for balance, especially because sacrifice is a critical part of life.

This generation, I don’t know… I’m not even on a high horse of righteousness, honestly. I just observe a lot, and I don’t like the things I see.

I know a few people who think that “when the time comes”, they will figure it out, but if you don’t plant a tree today, you have no right to come back in five years and expect it to have fruits.

The seeds of today are the trees of tomorrow, so if we don’t plant anything now, we’re not getting any fruits when the time comes in the future that we will need them.

Now, this is the part where many people get angry and sensitive, but there is an extremely moral and value deficiency in this generation.

It. Is. BAD.

We are so plugged into vices, and we almost have no regard for any form of morality and uprightness.

And I’m not generalising; neither am I talking about “morality” in a strictly religious sense, but from conversations on the internet and the things you see people do…

The decadence is loud and shameless.

Dishonour is normalised. Fraud is celebrated. Infidelity is apparently “second nature” for some. Some people defend EVERY negative action without cause. Immorality has been so dumbed down, it’s even hard to know where the line is again. Let me not get into the culture of bitterness.

It’s all just a lot.

And I’m like, if we are the parents and the leaders and the entrepreneurs and the politicians and the religious leaders of tomorrow, then… I just really pity tomorrow.

If we are going to do better, if we are going to break patterns, if we are going to tear out of the grain, and if we are going to back up all our “wokeness” with actions, then it has to start now.

From our mindsets to our actions to the activities we engage in and to everything else that’s in-between.

One truth many of us won’t admit, either because we’re hurt or prone to dishonour, is that there are many, many things we can learn from the older generation that has gone before us.

Especially when it comes to practical wisdom.

Not the three-minute reel or the two-minute TikTok that an influencer made telling you all about how parenting is this and how parenting is that, or telling you what to expect as an adult in 20 or 25 years (said influencer being only 25 years old).

I believe that – and I know this is not 100% valid for all cases – until someone has experienced a particular situation or gone through a particular thing, they really have no right to try to “teach” or give you “wisdom” about it.

I know we can learn from different sources and infer knowledge from different places, but there are still many things we can’t really understand until we step into and live in those shoes.

A lot of us are getting wisdom and advice and inspiration and perspectives from people who have not even gone through the things that they are talking about.

Or from people who have gone through them, but because they had a bad experience, have now made a generalisation, and are now speaking and teaching from their hurt or their regrets.

For some of us, as we get older as well and understand life more, as we experience things more and as we go through certain things more, we might even realise that we owe our parents apologies about certain things, or that we owe the people that came before us an apology some more measure of understanding because we didn’t really understand the reason why they made some mistakes, or the reasons why they did certain things, or the reason why they were prone to certain actions.

We might not rationalise, we might not justify, and we might not make excuses, but to an extent we might realise that “okay, this is this, because of this”, and then we might forgive them and strive in our own hearts to do better.

I say “might” because, once again, it’s never a straightforward, one-size-fits-all situation.

The entire summation of this article is that you can know about something, you can know the do’s and don’ts, you can know the theoretical knowledge, you can know the objective knowledge or the “on-paper” knowledge about different things, and you will still not have the practical knowledge to get the results that you want from that thing or situation.

So, we have to be very careful.

There’s no automatically doing better. It takes work. And if we’re really going to do that work, some of us have double work to do.

We first have to heal from what we have suffered, and then take extra steps to go further, and now chart a new course.

Easier said than done, I know, but it’s something to keep in mind.

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New Counter Cultural-

Counter Cultural

From the Club to Church on a Sunday Morning?

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10 days ago · 32 likes · 3 comments · Ebun

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It’s in the Bible:

^“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he…” - Proverbs 23:7.

Long before modern psychology even began investigating the relationship between cognition and behaviour, Scripture had already presented the inner musings of a person as the foundational pillar of their true personality.

Teaching us that what a person repeatedly thinks about shapes what they believe, how they perceive the world, and ultimately how they conduct themselves within it.

Science too has agreed with this notion:

Modern research has repeatedly shown that thoughts and expectations can influence behaviour and physiological responses.

The study of self-efficacy, pioneered by psychologist Albert Bandura, demonstrated that a person’s belief in their ability to accomplish a task affects the effort they exert, their persistence in difficulty, and their eventual performance.

This principle also appears in research on placebo effects, where a person’s expectations can produce measurable changes in their experience of pain, symptoms, and other physiological outcomes.

The mind does not possess magical control over reality, but our mental processes clearly participate in determining how we experience reality and how we respond to it.

Psychologists have also concurred:

American psychologist William James, one of the founders of modern psychology, famously wrote:

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.”

Successful athletes also agree:

Basketball legend Michael Jordan once said:

“You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.”

And finally, God Himself integrated this principle into nature in how animals constantly respond to their perception of their environment:

A gazelle that detects a predator does not merely think about danger; its perception triggers a physiological stress response, causing it to flee.

A bird builds a nest because its instincts and environmental signals direct its behaviour, while a predator identifies an opportunity, assesses it, and acts.

Animals do not possess the same reflective consciousness that human beings do, but nature repeatedly demonstrates the connection between perception, internal processing, behaviour, and consequences.

The broader principle is therefore observable across different domains, and we can surmise it as:

What exists within an organism influences how it responds to what exists around it, and those responses produce consequences.

For human beings, this relationship becomes considerably more complex because we possess the capacity to reflect upon our thoughts, evaluate them, accept or reject them, and deliberately cultivate new patterns of thinking.

A thought becomes a belief; a belief influences a decision; repeated decisions become habits; habits accumulate into character and behaviour; and behaviour, repeated over time, contributes significantly to the direction of a person’s life.

This is why the condition of our minds matters greatly.

The things we think are important because they reinforce, within us, the identity we have about ourselves, others, and the world around us.

This identity then determines how we treat and perceive ourselves, others, and the world around us.

Then the consequences or the reactions that we get from ourselves, others, and the world around us will now be based on the way we had treated and perceived all three individual parties.

Simple enough to understand?

I’ll share an interesting analogy about thoughts that I internalised a long time ago because, in all seriousness, it really changed my life:

If you wear a shirt that you think is ugly, every uncertain or neutral external impulse that you encounter in that day will most likely be interpreted by you through the lens of that thought.

So let’s say you pass by a group of people who look in your direction and then laugh amongst themselves; what happens is that there’s a good chance that the first thing you’ll think is “They’re laughing at my ugly shirt.”

Are they laughing at the shirt? Maybe, maybe not. Is the shirt ugly? Maybe, maybe not. Did those people even notice you? Maybe, maybe not.

Regardless, these are three NEUTRAL and UNCERTAIN variables that you have no concrete evidence for which you can establish your conviction on, but because of your already existing THOUGHTS about the shirt, your reaction to those variables will be skewed greatly to the side of the negative.

Even though they could all be positive as well.

Apart from showing just how self-exalted many of us are in our interpretation of the world around us, it also explains the practical way insecurities work.

It now becomes instinctive for you to rationalise every statement or action or impulse that you don’t understand or have complete knowledge about through the mirror of that insecurity that is now your identity.

“She rejected me because I’m short.”

“I didn’t get the job because I’m not smart enough.”

“God hates me because I’m a terrible sinner.”

How do you know any of this?

If she didn’t give you a reason for turning you down, and the job didn’t tell you why they rejected your application, and God didn’t reveal to you that He hates you, then do you really have any right to make categorical assumptions and believe them with all your heart?

You don’t.

But you have reinforced those thoughts in your mind to the point that they’ve become the lens with which you now see the world and everything that happens in it.

You believe you’re ugly, so that’s the reason for every romantic rejection.

You believe you’re not intelligent or skilful enough, so that’s the reason for every failed job attempt.

You believe you’re a condemned addict who can never live righteously, and that’s the reason God is so far from you.

Nobody told you this, but you believe it firmly, simply because it’s just what you THINK.

And we often can’t differentiate between the things we think are true, and the things that are actually true.

Our human minds hate housing empty spaces of vacuum when it comes to uncertainties, so we tend to fill up those spaces with things we already believe about ourselves, others, and the world around us.

Even in situations that are primarily positive, established thoughts have a way of discolouring inputs and skewing the way we perceive and react to them.

Some people have been so beaten down by their own negative thoughts and experiences that they can no longer believe statements or actions that are positioned positively in their direction.

No matter what that guy does for you, you just refuse to believe that he’s being honest with you because “all men are liars”.

No matter how many accolades you gather in life, you still feel like you’re not doing enough because your parents used to criticise you harshly for not taking the first position in your class when you were younger.

No matter how consistent you become spiritually, it still feels like you’re lacking because you keep comparing yourself to everybody around you and how “well” you believe they’re performing.

You see the pattern?

The worst part is that many of your rationalisations can be outright lies, but because you’ve internalised them for a long time, you believe them with so much veracity.

Ironically, the way negative thoughts are dragging some people down is the way some others are using positive thoughts to propel their lives forward.

The things we think hold significant power in determining our life experiences, they really do.

I see some people speak about themselves with such much negativity and defeat, and it always gets me disturbed.

It’s like what happened to you? Who or what hurt you? Why are you so broken and so lax in your brokenness?

Why can’t you see that you’ll never get out of that pit you’re wallowing in until you believe that you don’t deserve to be in it?

If you think you’ll never be great, trust me, you never will.

You’ll hate yourself, others will treat you as inferior, and even the world will never present you with opportunities to reach greatness.

And even if it does, you’ll never have the courage or the audacity to grab them because you already believe that it’s not for you.

The number of practical situations I can copy-paste this simple tent into is just so unfortunate.

Think about the thoughts you have about your life right now, and I’ll tell you for free, just in case you don’t know, that is your future.

And you won’t be able to blame anybody else for it when it happens because you were the one who desired it in the first place.

One of the worst issues plaguing this generation is “mass identity”, or the “hive mindset”, if you will.

There’s a serious identity crisis on the ground, and it’s been propagated primarily by social media and the internet.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with identifying with a group or a community, but my focus is more on the internal side of said identity crisis because that’s what reflects on the outside.

Every day or with every major new trend, many people are adopting and internalising thoughts and belief systems that have nothing to do with them or their convictions, simply because they just see other people doing so.

The most unfortunate part is that many people go even further to adopt issues and struggles and traumas that don’t belong to them, and then they start projecting it onto their lives.

Take the case of a woman who followed a “story time” from a TikTok creator who narrated how her boyfriend of 9 years ended up dumping her for a woman he recently met and marrying her in less than 6 months.

Tragic? Very.

But rather than it end as a sad story for this woman, she instantly grew paranoid in her own long-term relationship and started to have serious trust issues that she had never had before.

She did this right up until the point that her boyfriend got frustrated and hurt – because he had never done anything to betray her trust – and he had to end the relationship and even file a restraining order against her because she was getting violent.

You see the point?

I’m not decrying empathy, no, and I’m also not saying that we can’t pick up lessons and new mindsets from the stories around us and the things we observe in our environment.

However, your empathy must be compassion that is coming from an alignment of the subject matter with your already established outlook on life or an alignment with your convictions.

If not, you’ll end up internalising every struggle and every movement that you come across simply because it touched your emotions and you feel guilty, sad, or angry.

The same applies to drawing lessons and forming mindsets from the thoughts and experiences you see around you.

Our minds are too important for us to surrender them to every touching “story time” or every sad narrative, especially because we can’t even always know for sure who is lying or who is telling the truth.

The internet, for example, is full of people who have been hurt and broken and are now using whatever outlet they have to channel out their frustration and their hurt to anybody who would listen.

Don’t become a basket for someone else’s pain.

The moment you do, you subject your mind to become a reflection of their world views and their beliefs, even when they clearly don’t serve you or the direction you’re headed in life.

Someone else’s experiences don’t always have to be your own.

Your thoughts are critical to the outlook and output of your life, both present and future, so you need to take them with all seriousness.

And guard your heart with all diligence.

It takes the same energy to be positive and negative, so why always be negative?

(That was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but I think I understand one of the reasons why.)

Apart from external impulses, past experiences like hurt and trauma have a way of defining the identity of a person until their thought processes concerning a particular area of life or their lives are skewed forever.

This is something that must never be understated.

It’s not everybody that you see holding a perspective or following a movement that is doing so because they just want to “feel among”.

Some people have very justified reasons for their grievances and their low self-perception.

Are some of those experiences painful and powerful enough to define the rest of your life? Yes, many times, yes.

But is the trade-off worth it? Absolutely not.

Giving up 3/4 because 1/4 was unpleasant is a proportionally terrible deal.

You have not yet exhausted all your chances in life to succeed, so why are you giving up now?

You have not yet met every potential romantic partner yet, so why have you concluded that “love isn’t for me”?

You have not yet experienced every moment and situation in life that will open your mind to new burdens and new ideas, so how can you conclude that you have no purpose in life?

Your life hasn’t ended yet, so how are you so sure with all of your mind and heart that things cannot get better? Isn’t that a bit too harsh?

Come on, think about it.

As long as you’re here and breathing, you can still win if you’re willing to.

It’s just up to you to fight for what you want.

But you already know this.

The problem is that you’re probably just so used to being where you are that you’ve romanticised the pain so much and made it a fabric of your identity.

You can’t even imagine going through the even harder pain of redefining who you think you are, because doing so seems like tearing away the core of your being itself.

But the truth is that, deep down, like everybody else, you honestly want to live a better life.

However, you can be hungry for change but not have the appetite to do what it takes to bring about that change.

And until you do, well, you will just remain in the same rut, lamenting and complaining about it.

Or even worse, rotting away slowly in it, in silence and acceptance.

There’s nothing new or extremely revolutionary about what I’ve written in this article.

What you think about yourself is what you will become, and what we think about and expect from life is what will largely determine most of the things life will bring our way.

Change your thoughts, change your life.

And you must be aggressive about it too; never joke or take lightly the statements you say after “I am…” or your subconscious response to the statements and actions you’re exposed to on a daily basis.

Each reinforced thought is building an identity in your mind, and whatever that identity is will determine the way you treat yourself, others, and the world around you, and vice versa.

So, the principle is simple:

Change your thoughts, change your life.

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“Slow and steady wins the race.”

How?

Apart from that ONE folktale, one that is already very unrealistic, by the way, when has going slow ever won anyone a race before?

Even in said story, the tortoise did not prove that being slow is better than being fast or a foolproof strategy to success.

He only proved that you can still win a race if your faster competitor is foolish enough to stop running and to take a nap simply because he could see the finish line in sight.

And that’s not even a very profound lesson because how many times in life does that happen?

How many times in business, academics, or any other competitive endeavour, does/do your opponent/opponents prefer to sleep than to win simply because you’re far behind them?

I’ll tell you… NEVER.

It never, ever happens, and for no other reason apart from the fact that to do so is simply foolish, yet this story has been peddled from generation to generation in an attempt to teach children “patience”.

But was the tortoise in that story really patient, or was he moving as slowly as he was because that was literally all he could do?

Even if he was moving patiently, is that why he won the race in the end?

It just makes no sense.

And the most annoying part is that the real lesson of the story is there in plain sight for all to see, but, for some reason, it was and it’s still never paid any attention to.

The hare in that story did not lose the race because he was fast, he lost because he was arrogant, became distracted, and because, for some reason, he just stopped running.

If the hare had remained focused and continued running at the same speed he had started with, then that poorly constructed motivational quote would not even exist today.

Even if he decided to slow down and start to walk, he would still have won a landslide victory.

The tortoise would have been far behind him, trudging slowly toward the finish line while the hare would have already been at home, resting.

Being “fast” was not the problem of the hare; his problem was that he stopped being “steady”, and yet, all the attention and criticism is always placed on his speed.

I wonder why.

What exactly is the tactical advantage of being “slow and steady” in a race? Why can’t you be fast and steady?

Like I said, the actual moral lesson of this story is simple:

Never celebrate too early.

Or if you want to sound a bit more philosophical:

Don’t become so confident in your advantage that you stop using it, or become so arrogant in your results that you lose sight of your end game.

This, I believe, is a much more useful and valuable lesson than the unreasonable patience that story is trying to encourage because, if you really think about it, there’s nothing about slowness, or patience, that automatically translates to wisdom.

What’s wise about being slow in a race?

You can be slow and steady in the wrong direction for years, and when you finally arrive, you’ll discover that the race had already ended three years ago.

So, you took all your time and all that patience just to achieve nothing.

Isn’t that pitiful?

At least if you had been fast and steady, you would have discovered that you were on the wrong path and you would have realigned yourself earlier.

I’ll repeat: Speed is not always the problem.

If you isolate the phrase of our focus from the children’s story and examine it properly, you’ll see just how strange it is.

“Slow and steady wins the race.”

What kind of “race” is it even? How slow are we talking about here? How “steady” is steady? Who exactly is your opponent? For how long will this “patient” tactic be employed?

Yes, maybe it’s not that deep, but this is exactly how mindsets and narratives get passed down for years with people just internalising them without thinking about it.

We don’t ask what happens if the other person in the race is also steady but much faster than you? Or what happens if losing the race means that you literally die? Or what happens if the person you’re competing against doesn’t wait for you to catch up?

Unlike that story, life is not always so kind to everyone who falls behind in whatever endeavour they’re engaged in.

Just ask BlackBerry and Nokia what happened to their dominance in the smartphone industry.

Sometimes there is only one position or one contract or one scholarship or one publishing deal or one job or one investor or one audience or one opening or one chance, and only one person will be able to get it.

Once they do, the race ends, and everybody else goes home empty-handed.

You can have an impressive speech about how beautiful your journey was and how steadily you slowly took your time to get to the finish line, but the opportunity doesn’t care.

It won’t even be there to listen to you because it would have already been taken by the person who was much faster than you.

And people might “aww” and “wow” at your touching story of perseverance and endurance, but, at the end of the day, stories without results remain just that. Stories.

I understand that in certain things, like investing, for example, being successful requires patient compounding, but in many other things in life, there’s nothing inherently virtuous or profitable about being slow or taking longer time just for the sake of it.

A lot of people romanticise the struggle of the time and effort that it took them to become or achieve certain things, but if it took you three years to learn what I can learnt in three months, you’re not automatically “better” because it took you longer.

In fact, you can even make a point about the reverse being the case.

Yes, there’s the place of experience, but who said that experience MUST always be synonymous with longer time spent?

Those two things are not mutually exclusive; the same way being old does not automatically connote being wise.

I can gain more knowledge about a concept in one week than someone else did about the same thing in one year.

The answer is obvious to me.

If I can test an idea, discover that it doesn’t work, adjust and try again while you spend that exact time doing nothing but planning your perfect launch, I haven’t been reckless simply because I moved faster.

If we’re going to give a lesson on the importance of patience, then we must not forget to mention a more vital facet, which is direction.

At the end of the day, whether you’re patiently jogging or aggressively sprinting, or whether you’re taking one month or ten years, if you’re headed in the wrong direction, the result will still be the same in the end.

Failure.

Direction without speed CAN be useless, but speed without direction is DEFINITELY useless, and I’ll be digressing from the central point to explain why.

Imagine two people are trying to reach the same destination, and one runs in the wrong direction while the other walks very slowly in the right direction.

You will agree with me that if you absolutely HAD to choose to be one of those two, you would prefer to be the latter than the former. Right?

But imagine a third person joins the race and starts running really fast in the right direction. Who do you think will end up winning the race?

The third runner, right?

Exactly, and that is exactly who you and I must strive to be.

People make it seem like the price to pay for precision is speed, but who says we always have to choose?

Your goal should always be to be fast and precise.

Figure out where you’re going, understand how to get there, and then move as fast as possible without looking back for once.

Move quickly to take advantage of opportunities, as you move carefully not to make mistakes, and you move decisively so that fear doesn’t make you sacrifice your ambition.

I repeat, you do not have to sacrifice SPEED for PRECISION every single time. You don’t.

You can’t even afford to live life with this mindset of “slow and steady always wins”, especially if you’re aspiring for any form of greatness or impact that transcends yourself.

If you’re doing your own thing by yourself, on your own timeline, with nobody depending on you and nobody competing with you, then maybe you can have a good life by always taking your time, waiting till you’ve planned to the details, and building patiently.

Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that.

However, if you’re in a fast-moving industry where hundreds of people are competing for the same opportunities, you’ll quickly understand why the philosophy of that tortoise can’t get you anywhere.

As you’re being “patient”, many other people are learning, launching, testing, publishing, networking, trying everything and anything, and taking all the opportunities that you are still biding your time to take.

While you’re telling yourself that “everything happens at the right time”, somebody else is making sure that their time happens as soon as they want it.

“Life is not a competition” yes, but many things in life are, and you cannot always respond to a competitive environment with a mindset that’s akin to taking a leisurely stroll.

Sometimes, environment demands urgency, making hesitation become expensive because windows close all the time, humans evolve, markets move, and desires shift.

Imagine trying to launch a new smartphone brand in 2026; there’s just not much point to it now, is there?

And even if you are to find a market edge, if you don’t act fast to exploit it before it disappears, you’ll lose the opportunity forever.

Let’s say a company has been slowly working on “touchscreen technology” for 20 years and they launch their first phone today, will anybody pay them any attention?

Industries like technology, business, media, entertainment, sports, or anywhere else competition is intense are rife with examples that prove that the people who succeed aren’t necessarily the ones who move “slowly” and “steadily”.

They are usually the people who can move quickly without becoming careless or relenting along the way.

Or the people who don’t even wait to be “steady” before they move; they just dart out in the direction they desire and figure out their balance on the way.

There is a huge difference between:

“I need to slow down because I’m moving in the wrong direction.”

and

“I need to slow down because good things always take time.”

The first one is wisdom, and the second is just an outright lie.

One thing humans will always do is to find people, quotes, and examples that they can use as “copium” to appease their consciences in certain situations.

Most of the time you’ll hear someone talking about “slow and steady”, and you’ll see that it’s not even about patience.

Many times they are just scared or afraid of failing or afraid of looking stupid or, probably the most common, afraid of starting badly and looking clueless.

So they tell themselves things like, “I’m taking my time”, “I’m building gradually”, or “I believe in slow growth”.

Are they saying the truth? Maybe.

Or maybe they’re just making excuses to avoid all the fears, doubts, and uncertainties that come with moving forward.

I find it quite unfortunate that there are people who have spent years preparing for a life they could have started living many years ago simply because they keep hesitating and refuse to just move.

Meanwhile, somebody less talented or even less “deserving” than them is living the life that they desire because he or she was more willing to act.

It honestly doesn’t matter how much you want something; you can and probably will always be overtaken by someone who is moving toward your goal with more intentionality than you are.

I know a few people who finished writing their books in much lesser time than it took me to because while I was planning out the details and procrastinating, they were just simply writing.

You can be more intelligent, more educated, more talented, more experienced, and you can even have the better idea, but if someone is consistently taking action while you’re consistently preparing to take action, eventually the gap between you and that person will become very clear.

And many times that gap becomes impossible to close because, unlike in that story, people won’t always sit back and wait for you to catch up with them.

I’m not wholly interested in living a “fast” life, but nothing about a “slow” life appeals to me either.

What I would rather do is to trust the process and follow whatever it requires in every moment.

If it requires patience or endurance, as many things often will because things will often have a natural process that cannot be bullied or rushed, then that is the kind of waiting I can respect.

The kind where my hands remain busy and every day is actually taking me somewhere.

What I won’t subscribe to is waiting without action in the name of “patience”, or moving at a slow pace just for the sake of it, when I could be moving much faster.

Doing that is just simply letting time pass by, and time will always pass whether we’re doing anything with it or not.

Why waste it?

So, to conclude, no, I don’t believe slow and steady will win you any races in life.

At least, it won’t win you most races in life.

Sometimes slow and steady will win; many other times fast and steady will win.

The hare’s mistake was not that he was fast; his problem was that he stopped focusing on this objective, and he lost the race because of it.

Now he has become a subject or mockery for God knows how many centuries.

Meanwhile, the tortoise gets praised for doing literally nothing.

Too bad.

For the sake of balance, we should all just know our destination, understand the terrain of getting there, and move accordingly to it.

And if we can get to our desired destination fast without losing precision, then why on Earth should we choose to arrive slowly?

Leave a comment

In lieu of the 2-year “anniversary” of this newsletter on Thursday, I’m discounting digital copies of Write Like Ebun to 2000 Naira ($2/£2) for the first 20 people to get it.

If you’ve ever wondered how to write articles that feel clear, balanced, engaging, and human, Write Like Ebun walks you through the process step by step.

You’ll learn how to think before you write, create compelling titles and openings, generate endless ideas, build authority through honesty, write consistently, and use AI strategically.

This practical guide breaks down my real writing process through structured modules, real examples, and writing frameworks you can apply immediately.

Whether you write on Substack, LinkedIn, or anywhere online, I can guarantee that Write Like Ebun will help you develop a clearer, more confident approach to writing.

I’ve already gotten a lot of great reviews and I can’t wait to get more. Enjoy.

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So, a lot of emphasis is placed on people always saying the truth.

We have sayings like “the truth will set you free”, “honesty is the best policy”, and many others.

On the surface level, I agree with these statements, but I also wonder why people don’t talk about the fact that telling the truth can also be used to achieve the same end result as telling a lie.

If the goal of a lie is to mislead and to deceive, then sometimes saying something that is technically true, or presenting the reality of a situation in a certain manner, can also achieve that exact same goal.

When the devil spoke to Eve in the Garden of Eden, he told her that eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would make her wise.

And it did.

He also assured her that she had nothing to fear by eating it because she would not “die”.

And she did not, not in the physical sense that she thought he meant anyways.

So, technically, you can make a case for the Devil and claim that he didn’t “lie” to Eve.

But did he deceive her? Yes, he did.

When we zoom out into the broader picture, we see that although parts of what the devil said contained truth, the overall message functioned as a lie because it achieved its real purpose, which was to deceive the man and the woman and lead them into rebellion against God.

This analysis tells us something important.

And it is that, when it comes to categorising statements as “truths” or “lies”, or categorising actions as “wrong” or “right, we cannot always examine the words/actions alone and conclude that they are absolutely one or the other.

We also have to consider the context, the timing, the framing, and, most importantly, the intention behind the words being spoken or the actions being carried out.

This, I believe, is something worth deeply pondering.

When a mother tells her young daughter, “If a man touches you, you’ll become pregnant,” is she lying?

Well... yes, because it’s just not that straightforward.

But when we weigh her admittedly skewed wording against the overall context and the intention behind the statement, can we honestly say the mother’s goal is to deceive her daughter?

Of course not.

In the same way, when an investment manager tells you that you can make x100 your financial investment, is he saying something that’s true?

Yes, because getting that kind of return is technically not impossible.

However, if he leaves out vital information like the volatility of market conditions, the amount of time it could realistically take to reach such a return, and the fact that you could lose all your money before even making a single dime of profit, then he is, in fact, lying to you.

Two different scenarios:

One is a lie that contains a foundational truth.

The other is a potential truth that became a lie through presentation.

Do you understand it?

When we’re dealing with people, the statements they make, and the actions they carry out, we can’t always force everything into neat black-and-white categories.

Sometimes, things really are black and white, but many other times, they aren’t nearly so straightforward.

Lies can be told to achieve positive outcomes, the same way truths can be framed to achieve deception.

This same idea applies to actions.

Good actions can be carried out with bad intentions, the same way bad actions can be carried out with good intentions.

Let’s take some examples.

If a guy takes a girl on dates, says all the right things, and behaves exactly as she hoped he would, it could appear that he is being “good”.

But if she eventually marries him and he goes on to abuse her and subjugate her until she becomes a shadow of her former self...

And we later discover that he always intended to do this to her because he hated how confident and ambitious she was...

Can we still describe his earlier actions as “good”?

On the other hand, if a father takes a dangerous object away from his little child, the child cries, screams, and throws tantrums.

From the child’s perspective, the father can be seen as “bad”.

However, years later, when the child is older and understands that the object could have caused him or her serious harm...

Would they still consider the father’s actions as “bad”?

Think about it.

In understanding certain statements or actions, sometimes we simply need more context, sometimes we need greater understanding, and sometimes we need more patience to wait and see the result before making sweeping moral judgements and conclusions.

Obviously, this doesn’t apply to everything because some things are inherently evil regardless of intention, and some other things are inherently good regardless of intention.

However, this quick and conclusive judgement is certainly not a one-size-fits-every-situation case.

This is why I believe time is one of the greatest vindicators of people and actions.

Sometimes it takes five years, sometimes ten, sometimes fifty, and sometimes even hundreds, but…

Only then are the words and actions of certain people finally recognised as wisdom or bravery.

And only then are the words and actions of others finally exposed as foolishness and condemned as wrong.

Time is the ultimate vindicator.

Unfortunately, human beings are rarely patient with things they do not understand, which is why I’ll add this:

If you’re trying to build something that nobody around you has seen before...

Or if you’re trying to pursue ambitions that don’t yet have a reference point...

Then you must be ready to be seen as a “liar” for a long time, even when your intentions are true.

Similarly, if you’re in a place where everybody praises everything you do as “true”, you need to check again.

Are they doing so because that’s actually the reality?

Or are they only telling you that comfortable “lie” because they prefer the way your dreams and plans are relatable to them and easy for them to understand?

Before you get confused by my words, just zoom out and pay close attention.

Whenever people introduce something new, unfamiliar, or disruptive, they are usually first fought and resisted.

Look throughout history and you’ll see many great people, many great ideas, and many great inventions that were initially dismissed as “lies” by the people of that generation.

It’s only after those ideas became reality, and those inventions changed the world, and those people achieved what everyone said was impossible... that those same “lies” became accepted as truth.

My point is simple.

If you’re going to live a consequential life, you must be willing and be open to being misunderstood.

Even by the people who care about you, and perhaps even harder to accept, especially by the very people you’re trying to help.

Till today, people still condemn God for wiping out the earth with a flood during Noah’s time, but if He hadn’t, the Nephilim race would have continued to wreck havoc and continued to spread their evil until the Earth was in total chaos.

Meaning that all of humanity would have eventually become hybrids like them (half-man and half-giant), leading to the end of the human race as we know it and the end of any form of redemption for humankind.

So… God had a choice.

Intervene and be seen as cruel, or

Do nothing and appear loving while allowing the destruction to continue.

We all know the choice He made.

Like I said, because we often lack context, are impatient with timing, are influenced by framing, and are ignorant of intention, we can easily mistake truths for lies and lies for truths.

I believe that the absence of all those things is one reason God remains the most misunderstood Being in the universe.

It is very intriguing.

If you’re going to become anything consequential, you must develop this same immunity to external opinion and perception.

Whether it is criticism or validation from people who do not understand what you’re building, or people who cannot do what you do, or people who have never dared to dream as big as you have.

If you truly believe in what you’re doing, then do it with all that is in, and leave time to do its job of vindicating your words and your actions.

And even if it never does, well, at least you made sure you still did all the things you wanted to do.

To conclude this article, please, let us kill the belief that “every rumour has an iota of truth in it.”

My friend, that is very false.

Some rumours are simply lies, plain and simple.

Not every gossip spreads because it resembles reality; sometimes a lie is simply just that, a lie.

So be careful of internalising and believing all the “truths” you hear every day on the internet, on the news, from people you love, from teachers, from influencers, from leaders, and from everywhere else.

The truth can deceive you too.

Be vigilant.

You may never truly know who is speaking truth and who is speaking deception until time has finished its work, so be careful.

One last thing:

If a “truth” can ever change, then it was never really true in the first place.

The truth is true and always true.

That’s why we tell the truth, and we can tell a lie, not the lie.

One is always constant; one can change depending on a number of factors.

Keep that in mind.

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Note - This is not an advert.

Or a stylish way to pump my own ego.

Not that doing either would necessarily be a bad thing, but… that’s just not what this is.

This article is… I don’t know what it is, honestly.

But you’re here reading it already, so I don’t think it matters that much.

Enjoy.

1 - I’m Real.

What does it mean to be “real”?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, to be “real” is to be - “Not artificial, fraudulent, or illusory”; or “occurring or existing in actuality”; or “behaving or presented in a way that feels true, honest, or familiar and without pretension or affectation”.

Sounds like me.

According to ChatGPT, to be “real” is to be - “Authentic, genuine, and consistent”.

That also sounds like me.

According to Pulitzer Prize-winning philosopher and critically acclaimed poet Kendrick Duckworth Lamar, “Real is responsibility. Real is taking care of your family. Real is God.”

I definitely see myself in that.

So, with these three definitions considered, I think I fall into the category of someone you’d describe as “real”.

Don’t believe me? Feel free to ask around.

The problem with most people who announce their “realness” is that, most times, they have no actions or track record to back up their claim; they just say it as a word cause it sounds “cool”.

For me, that authenticity ultimately boils down to being an honest man of your word and backing all your talk with the appropriate actions.

And in the context of a romantic situation, this attribute can be very vital.

Is doing this always easy or convenient? No.

But when it’s something you strive for at all times, that striving itself serves as enough proof that you’re someone that’s worth being with or someone that’s worth having their time, emotions, and energy committed to by another person.

And this is the first reason why I’m convinced without a doubt that I’d be an amazing partner.

Or boyfriend, or husband.

For this article, they all mean the same thing.

2 - I Won’t Ask For Anything I Can’t Give.

The fact that I’ll never ask anybody to give me what I can’t offer if I were asked to do the same is the foundational justification for all the “standards” I’ve set for myself in friendships and potential romantic connections over the years.

This is something I take very, very seriously, and, for me, it’s a non-negotiable dealbreaker.

If I’m ever asking someone for something, it’s either I’m already doing the same for them and I’d like some basic reciprocity or I’m trying to ensure there’s a mutual ground of understanding before I start to do it.

As a partner, my woman can rest assured that she’s not going to be dealing with a hypocrite who is going to be expecting the world from her whilst doing the bare minimum.

No, not here.

And this is not merely about gifts or tangible items.

If I ask for honest communication, it’s because I’m always honest when I communicate with you.

If I ask for intentionality and sacrifice, it’s because I’m always intentional about how I sacrifice for you.

If I ask for… anything at all, just know that the day you ask me to do the same, I will be willing to do so to the best of my ability, if I’m not doing it already.

When I’m in close relationships with people, I tend to move with my actions first, and then I expect some level of mutual reciprocation once I believe a certain vibe has been established.

If I don’t get it, maybe I’ll let it slide if it’s not that big of a deal.

But if it is, and I mention it, and there are not changes, well… I’m just going to take it as a sign to step back since I’m clearly now doing too much.

It’s so embarrassing to be doing something for someone and then almost having to beg for them to match your energy.

Ugh. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

Luckily for my woman, she will almost never have to worry about that.

3 - I Embrace Difficult Conversations.

Ahhh… my forte.

I think I would fall into the “strict boyfriend” category, and it makes me very proud. No shame in it at all.

In this my relatively short life so far, I have seen the worst-case and best-case scenarios that could happen when people keep things to themselves in order to avoid uncomfortable conversations and difficult feelings.

And I have also seen the worst and best scenarios of what could happen when people take that chance to have uncomfortable conversations and express difficult feelings.

Pros and cons of both angles considered, I would pick taking the chance on having the hard conversations every single time.

Especially in this context of a romantic union between two people.

In a normal, healthy situation, the worst thing that could mostly happen after having a difficult situation with your partner is that nothing will change.

And the best thing that could happen is that things could indeed change.

Anything else is tethering on the line of danger.

If after having a difficult conversation with your partner – one where you had to address some uncomfortable feelings – you’re left feeling worse than you were before, that’s a serious red flag.

And you should probably examine the situation you’re in again properly.

However, all things being equal, what’s not to embrace about this 50-50 outcome situation?

The fact that some feelings might be hurt? The fact that some tears might be shed? The fact that someone’s ego might be bruised? The fact that you might feel naked and exposed and vulnerable? The fact that you might come face-to-face with your errors and have to admit them? The fact that some compromise might have to be made? The fact that pride might need to be swallowed and apologies made?

That’s all?

Come on, is that so bad when you consider the broader picture?

Fine, I know it’s not so easy, but they are called “difficult” conversations for a reason, and the potential upsides dwarf every momentary dissonance by a ridiculous margin.

The good thing is that all these distressing feelings and emotions that make us seem like we will die during the conversation only exist in the present as the said conversation is being had.

Afterward, once everything is settled, they will often matter less and appear inconsequential in hindsight.

For me and my beautiful partner, one thing she will realise very early is that there is no running away from us talking about how we feel, especially in relation to each other.

If it will serve to make us stronger, then we will do it as often as possible and as much as is necessary.

We might cringe, we might choke on the words, and we might maybe even have puffy eyes every now and then, but as long as we address what needs to be addressed, then every uncomfortable feeling will pass and we will be better for it.

I have seen what resentment and unspoken negative feelings can do to even the best of relationships and the strongest of bonds, and I’d never, ever want to be in that situation again.

4 - I’m Conscious of God In My Heart and My Actions.

“You don’t need God to be a good person” is a statement I strongly agree with, but what happens when I have exhausted all my human tolerance?

What do I do then?

From the current state of my friendships, I can categorically say that in recent times, my stronger consciousness of God has made me a much better friend because it has held me to a higher layer of responsibility and accountability.

I still struggle every now and then, but compared to previous times, I can see the marked difference.

Nowadays I’m not just stifling harsh remarks when I’m upset or engaging in reconciliation faster simply because I want to be a good friend or because it’s so easy for me; I’m also doing it because I’m aware that God always wants me to act that way.

It involves a lot of self-denial of pride and self and ego that, on my own, I probably wouldn’t be so interested in doing.

If I yell at you or make you feel bad, I can trust my spirit to immediately convict me or to bring it back to my remembrance later, and I would, more or less, have no choice but to make amends.

Because of this consciousness I have, as a partner, my moral actions will not just be anchored to me or to my feelings or to the limits of my human will, but also to God and the strength I can draw from his help.

This is a stronger anchor than many people imagine, and, in fact, I believe it’s the whole reason Jesus spoke so much about love and forgiveness.

God should never be a justification for bad behaviour in a relationship but a conduit to always try to do better.

Having this consciousness also means I can pray for my partner when I need to and encourage her with the word of God when I need to, and we will also both have an extra person to tag along with us for spiritual activities if and when we want to.

It would be an invaluable part of our relationship.

So, can I be with someone who is not on the same spiritual wavelength as I am and is not interested in ever being there?

I highly doubt it.

5 - I Listen More Than I Speak.

This is one trait that some of the women I’ve been… involved with in the past did not like, and I really don’t understand why.

Unless the present situation calls for it, I’m not going to be talking 24/7.

I very much prefer to listen to her and the things she has to say.

I think this is a good thing because it’s the reason I’ll remember many details about even the most minute things that she has said, making it easier to reference them or act on them in the future.

It’s the reason I’ll be able to gain an express view into her mind and the way it works and the things that make her tick and cringe and get excited and happy and sad.

It’s the reason she will understand that I am a safe space and that I’m always available to listen to her when she wants to talk, cry, gist, yap, or vent.

If I can’t do any of these things as her partner, then what exactly am I doing?

It’s not like she’s always going to be doing this talking, because I absolutely love an engaging, back-and-forth conversation myself.

What I will have no interest in is always imposing my interests or opinions or perspectives on her head.

If I believe that there’s something necessary or beneficial to my words, then I will speak, but other than that, you have the floor, my love; talk to me as you wish.

Plus, speaking less gives me enough mental room to take in all the details of her face, her lips, her smile, her cheekbones, and every other visible body part that’s in action as she’s talking...

What’s there not to love?

6 - I’m More “Logical” Than I Am “Emotional”.

One day, one of my friends was telling me about a situation she was in with this guy that she liked, and as she was narrating the timeline of events, I was simultaneously explaining to her what she needed to do.

In my mind, I was proud to once again be the ever-reliable, “always has the right answers” friend, so imagine my surprise when she groaned and said:

“Ughh, I don’t care, Ebun. Just allow me to finish ranting first.”

What?

That exact scenario played out again multiple times in different other ways after then, and I have come to learn over time that sometimes women just want to be listened to and to be heard and to express how they’re feeling without being presented a full spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation on how to handle what they’re complaining about.

I get that now to some extent; I do. I see how this impulse can sometimes be misinterpreted as me being dismissive, and I understand that balance is needed.

However…

I still believe this logic-first, solution-driven mindset is one of my most redeeming qualities and one my partner would greatly benefit from, even if it doesn’t gratify her emotions every single time.

And it goes beyond just listening to her rants or emotional outbursts or complaints.

In fact, the problem isn’t even listening because, as I said earlier, I’m a great listener and I do enjoy it.

The “problem” (quoted because I really don’t think it’s one) is that I am just not the kind of guy to sit and cry with my partner in the middle of a burning house.

Some people say it’s a bad thing and brand it as “nonchalance”; some other people say it’s a good thing and brand it as “forward-thinking”, but I believe it’s a VITAL thing, and I brand it as “Why cry when we can act?”

If my partner were to call me in the middle of the night because she’s stranded and scared, my first instinct and priority would be to ensure that she’s safe and that she gets home as soon as possible.

It doesn’t mean that I won’t empathise with her or try to console her if she’s distressed; it just means I won’t do the latter at the expense of the former.

There’s no benefit to it outside of the present gratification, and in that situation, it’s best to delay that till the larger issue is solved.

But in a situation where I have to choose between an immediate “logical” response that can have me branded as “nonchalant” (getting her to safety as soon as possible)

or

an immediate “emotional” response that can have me branded as “loving and intentional” (spending minutes trying to tell her she’ll be okay),

I’ll definitely go with the “logical” one.

Maybe this example is a bit skewed because in this case I can calm her nerves by telling her she’ll be okay whilst still trying to figure out how best to get her to safety.

But let’s say I could only do ONE of the two, like choose between hanging up on her in order to call one of my friends to pick her up (logical) or staying with her on the phone because she’s scared and doesn’t want me to leave her alone by hanging up (emotional)…

It’s clear which one I’ll pick.

Like I explained in the paragraph about having difficult conversations, sometimes we just have to endure “harsh” emotional moments in order to get to the other side that will be more beneficial to us in the long term.

As a partner, I won’t be unnecessarily insensitive to the emotions of my woman, God forbid.

But in the times when I have to ignore her immediate emotional gratification to achieve something that will be more beneficial to her at a delayed pace, then I’d always be willing to do so.

Why cry when we can act?

7 - I Always Go Above and Beyond.

In addition to demanding only what I can give, I also tend to sometimes do and overdo things for the people I care about.

This is the primary reason I hesitate greatly before introducing certain extra things into my relationship with people because I don’t want to be in a situation where I’m doing 100 for someone who is only doing 20.

And just to be clear, the purpose of giving and doing should never be to receive or to get back.

When I do things for people, I try to ensure that I do so from the genuineness of my heart, so in case they don’t appreciate it enough or in case something else happens and it doesn’t go as I wanted, then I won’t allow space for regret.

However, I’ve now come to that point where I’m willing to allow this trait to thrive ONLY for the people who have shown through their past and present actions that they deserve this EXTRA effort, and extra sacrifice, and extra extra that I have in mind to do for them.

And that’s why I believe that one thing my partner will enjoy the most is the fact that I’m always going to be doing the extra for her.

And why wouldn’t I?

For us to have gotten to that point, it means that I’ve decided that she’s someone who is worth all the “most” that I have to give.

And if she does do it in return, you can trust me to already be thinking of how to do even better in return again.

My ultimate love language, against all my guiding and my reservations and the scars it has caused in the past, is always going to be me pouring into the people I love.

8 - I’m Patient.

The King James Version of the Bible calls this “longsuffering”, but I think that is a bit too extreme for what I’m trying to describe here.

It’s hard to upset me; that’s basically what I’m trying to say.

I try as much as possible to speak out when things start to bother me, so for me to get to that point of being very upset, it just means that I have been driven to the wall.

And I have a tendency to even walk away from relationships before they get me to that point.

So, as the great partner that I will be, my woman will have no yelling or outbursts to worry about, and little to no misunderstandings to contend with.

I’m a pretty chill guy, you know.

And fortunately for me, anger is not an emotion that I’m ever inclined to feel against people I care about.

Irritation? Maybe.

Annoyance? Definitely.

But I’d much rather lapse into silence than flare up into rage; exaggerated displays of emotions are just not my style.

Some people say this is a bad thing because it’s better to “express how you really feel” than to “pretend”, but I don’t think it’s pretence.

It’s just choosing to react to provoking situations with a much more reasonable reaction than shouting up and down or, even worse, reacting violently.

God forbid.

The foremost outright display of this patience is my willingness to have difficult conversations (as mentioned earlier) and to ask questions.

Unless it’s one of the rare occasions where I make an assumption (or a well-calculated inference), my default reaction to words, or actions, or statements that I do not understand is to try to understand “why”.

So I ask questions a lot.

Sometimes, it might seem like I’m prying, or like I’m trying to psycho-analyse the recipient of these questions, but the truth is… I’m just interested in knowing.

I like knowing stuff.

Knowing helps me understand, and understanding, in turn, helps me know how to act in return and as a response.

It’s why I’m so big on communication because a lot of conflict and strife will be avoided if we all just learn to speak more clearly and honestly.

My patience is definitely not up to the point of being taken for a fool but definitely to the point of consideration and understanding, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is my eighth reason.

9 - I Know How To Forgive.

Sometimes, I ask myself if this trait is even a good thing…

Then I remember what unforgiveness, resentment, and bitterness can do to the heart of a person, and I become grateful to God that He, at least, made this one… easy for me, to an extent.

Not “easy” in the sense that forgiving people comes without any difficultly, but in the sense that, more often than not, I’m often willing to exercise the option of forgiving a person.

Does this mean that things always return back to the way they were? Maybe not, but at least my heart and mind will be free of all strife, and being in that peaceful state of mind is invaluable to me.

Once a matter is settled and it’s out of the way, for me, that’s really it.

I might lapse into moments of silence or pull back slightly until the initial hurt has passed.

However, once it’s done, it’s really done.

I won’t hold any animosity, or worse, plan some form of “revenge”, and I will try my possible best not to reference it in the future. (Keyword = “Try”).

This is another reason why I believe that my woman and I will get along really well.

I’m not the type to be starting fights or creating unnecessary drama, and I have promised myself to never let resentment linger in my heart for too long again.

There’s a lot of peace of mind and calm over here, honestly.

That’s why I know a woman with a penchant for trouble and constant drama cannot even survive being with me; she’s more likely to bore herself to death than she is to get me to indulge in pointless melodrama.

10 - I Don’t Tell Lies.

Or let’s just say I try my possible best never to.

Why would I lie to my partner? Or why would I want to lie to my partner?

To hide things from her? To protect her feelings?

Maybe, depending on the severity of the situation, but I’ve found that even in such cases honesty still works the best.

Yes, sometimes, you might have to be delicate in your presentation to soften the impact of your words, or you might have to be tactile in your framing to prevent putting them in an uncomfortable situation, but as long as the core of your message remains the truth, it should always lead the way.

This is another reason I cannot stress enough the fact that it’s a terrible idea to be in a relationship with someone who is not on the same level of your emotional intelligence.

I’ve seen it happen to some of my guys in the past, and it’s such a terrible space to be in.

I can’t imagine being in a situation where I constantly have to lie to or be dishonest with the person I’m with just to protect her feelings or to avoid getting into an argument.

It sounds draining to have to constantly be dancing around the truth.

Part of my being real is my being honest.

Obviously, I just might not be as blunt or as direct as I’d be if I were talking to a stranger or talking to one of my guys because I have to always be very considerate of her feelings.

I’m very big on trust in all my relationships, so I hate being lied to, and I hate when people “go through the corners” to express themselves to me.

Just be honest, if I take it the wrong way, the L is on my part at the end of the day, not yours.

The long and short of it is that I really just don’t like to lie, and I think that’s a good trait to have nowadays when the general notion is that “all men are liars”.

Not me.

I might spare my partner’s feelings every now and then, but I’ll still make it my duty to always tell her the truth.

As I hope she’ll also do for me.

11 - I’m a Lover Boy To The Core.

Gifting? Check. Affirmations? Check. Thoughtfulness? Check. Words back with action? Check. PDA? Check (non-aggressive, of course).

Notes, written letters, essays expressing love? Very obvious check.

I told myself I was going to try my best to frame this article in a manner that doesn’t sound like I’m gassing myself up, but it’s hard to not say the truth when it’s the truth.

Honestly.

Granted, I’ve not had a lot of… avenues to express this side of me in the past few years, given my self-imposed solitude and ever-increasing spiral into anti-sentimentality…

But… I promise, it’s still there.

It’s just buried deep under a lot of things I’d prefer not speak about in public view.

Alas, we, unfortunately, cannot always fight our true nature forever.

When I was in Primary 2 (2nd Grade), I had a crush named Ebube Favour, and because of how much I liked her, I let her copy my sheet in a particular exam.

For some reason, I still remember that scene so clearly.

At the end of the day, she scored higher than me and finished ahead of me overall.

What screams lover boy more than that? I do not know.

When I was in JS3 (9th Grade), I fell in love for the first time, and because of that, I confined myself to being a boarding student for almost the entire term just so I could be “closer” to her and just for the off chance of seeing her occasionally across the small fence during weekends.

It’s clear that Romeo Montague will genuinely have a hard time keeping up with me.

I shall not be sharing any recent examples.

Point is, I’m not new to this.

Every time now, I find myself suppressing the urge to go out of my way to show someone how much I care about them.

And I know the entire point, once again, isn’t reciprocity, but there’s only so much water a bucket can pour before it becomes empty.

With the love of my life though, I know I won’t have this issue.

I have plans for you, my queen, lots and lots of plans, and like I said, I’m a very patient man.

All in due time.

Anyways, I’ll just end this section here because some things are better off shown than said.

12 - I’d Rather Leave Her Alone Than To Treat Her Less Than She Deserves.

This one is self-explanatory, yes?

I’ve seen people in relationships with people who didn’t love or care about them, and it’s something I’d never wish on anybody.

And it’s something I cannot imagine putting someone through.

That’s why if the time ever comes where I’m no longer interested in being in the relationship, or I don’t think we can make it work anymore, or we’re not making any significant progress in any direction, or I don’t think I’m willing to keep trying…

Then I will opt to end the relationship so we can both move on and go our separate ways, rather than keep her in the relationship where I’d be treating her with neglect, contempt, or disregard.

Maybe less so willing in the case of marriage, but I think you get the point, and that’s just based on my convictions.

You might think this is a no-brainer, but if you are to examine some relationships around you, you’ll see a lot of patterns:

Men who do enough to keep the woman in the relationship but not enough to make her feel loved…

Women who are too scared to end relationships because of how attached they are, so they stay and endure the hardship…

Men who use words and spurts of actions to convince the woman they’re still committed, only to return back to being cold…

Women who keep convincing themselves that things will “one day” return to how they once were…

And so on like that.

I don’t want to be involved in any of that.

It’s too draining, and it’s downright unfair for anybody to do that to another person.

If I ever get to a point of being so in love with someone, then my hope is that it never ends and that we keep getting stronger.

But if the time comes where ending things with her is the best way to ease my conscience, preserve her peace, and save the both of us a world of turmoil, then I’d be willing to do it.

I just hope that if the roles were reversed, she’d be willing to do the same for me too.

Difficult as it sounds…

13 - I’d Be Crazy In Love With Her.

All the 12 things in the 12 sections that I mentioned before this one will only exist and be expressed because I will be undoubtedly, unashamedly, and irrevocably in love with the woman I am with.

I refuse to permit any other level of love for my romantic relationships.

If I am not utterly smitten by her to the point where it physically hurts to feel that way for her, or if I don’t see myself ever getting to this point with her, then there’s no way we’d even be in a relationship in the first place.

I am never, ever going to “settle”, by the special grace of God.

I won’t do it because of pressure, I won’t do it because of loneliness, and I definitely won’t do it just “for the fun of it”.

Like I said, I’m a very patient man.

For some of the women that I had to let down gently after they expressed their feelings for me (including the ones I maybe liked in return), I had to do so because I didn’t think, feel, or imagine that I’d ever get to that point of being utterly in love with her.

So, there was no point in me wasting her time or my time.

For me to be with someone, I have to like her A LOT - more than I like my ego, more than I like my solitude, and more than I like keeping my feelings to myself.

I have to like her enough to be willing to put my reservations aside, be willing to try, and be willing to do whatever it takes to make it work.

If not, there’s no point, honestly.

There’s really no point.

And, yes, I know “love alone is not enough”.

There are many other factors that come together to make a relationship thrive: Attraction, compatibility, commitment, sacrifice, value alignment, emotional intelligence, time, etc.

I know all that.

But I also know that love is the strongest force in the universe.

It can drive men to fight wars to protect their families; it can drive mothers to die for their children; it can drive the Creator of the Universe to sacrifice Himself for humanity; and it can even drive you to spend so much time reading an article as long as this one just to hear a random guy on the internet talk about it.

That’s how persuasive and invasive love can be.

One day, I will meet a woman, and love will drive me to do all the things I’ve mentioned in this article and the hundreds of other things I have left out, just for her.

It’s going to be a lot of fun to be in love again.

Not a single part of me is in a hurry, but I honestly can’t wait.

Conclusion.

All of that being said, I don’t think I currently have any interest in being anybody’s “partner” at the moment.

This article was born more out of self-aware reflections and different experiences from the past, rather than out of an egregious attempt to wave a giant green flag to every woman who reads it.

Although I’ve never been in an “official” relationship before (I wonder why some people find this so hard to believe), I’ve had a couple of close calls in my lifetime.

Enough to know the kind of love I can give and the kind of love I deserve when the time comes.

Oh, I am definitely beyond perfect.

But one thing I’m sure about is that whilst I am a flawed, yet ever-growing, man, I am still well aware of who I am and what I can provide.

So, I might not always follow everything I’ve written down 10 out of 10 times in every given situation, but I always try my best to.

Plus, the way I am in my female friendships has given me a lot of confidence for future relationships.

At the end of the day, we all accept the love we think we deserve.

And if you don’t know the kind of love you deserve, it’s probably because you don’t know the kind of love you can give.

I wrote this article so maybe you could see yourself in it or through it, and I urge you to take some time to think about it.

When you’re done, I guarantee that you’ll be more aware of when to stay, when to go, when to sacrifice, when to be stubborn, and what else to do when you have to make every other of those little decisions in-between.

That’s the only way you will learn how to love fully and whole-heartedly without ever losing yourself in the process.

In this life, there’s hope, and ambition, and faith, and dreams, and passion, but nothing will ever, ever beat love.

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If anybody decides to write a similar article, please make sure to tag me to it. Thank you.

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I don’t. I genuinely know that I care about you. I do.

So I don’t understand the resentment I feel sometimes.

Many times it’s justified cause you get on my nerves, but it’s usually so easy to trigger.

It shouldn’t be so easy to trigger.

People do similar and sometimes worse things to me and I let it slide.

But with you… everything is amplified.

I really don’t understand it.

Is it past hurt? Do I have trauma?

Why does this always happen when people who have SHOWED me that they care about me do something that hurts me?

God, I need help.

I don’t hate you. I really don’t.

I just don’t understand this feeling in my heart sometimes.

This anger. This resentment. This vexation.

It really makes no sense to me.

I’m sorry, I really, really am.

You deserve better.

It’s unhealthy, honestly. It is.

You don’t deserve the way I treat you sometimes.

Especially the coldness and the silence.

You might think I don’t care about you anymore, but that’s far from the truth.

If only you understood the half of what goes on in my mind.

I’d let you in but I can’t do that.

My darkness and my struggles and my flaws are for myself and myself to bear alone.

I just hope one day we’d be able to have a normal relationship, like we did before.

Maybe me graduating from school will be good for us. Maybe the proximity and familiarity is what’s making me take you for granted.

I don’t want to experience “you don’t know the value of what you have till it’s gone”.

I don’t want to.

I love you.

You’re a good friend to me, and I never want to lose you.

Not due to my issues, anyways.

Sigh.

I wish I could tell you all this.

Maybe I should.

Maybe it’ll help.

Idk, man.

I really don’t.

I will pray though.

I have to pray against every resentment I feel towards the people who love me.

And pray against not being able to love the people who love me properly, especially once some form of bitterness is involved.

Seems like a deep issue.

God abeg.

Life is so brazy.

I don’t hate you. I really don’t.

I’m tired of that feeling that pops sometimes.

The nonchalance and the indifference that I shove in your face with my words and my actions, even when you’re just trying to care.

It’s not me.

Not to you, anyways.

Cause you care about me.

And I love you.

I just can’t… show you, or tell you, right now.

Because I’m still so angry and hurt and vengeful, and I don’t know how to get it out of me.

Your apologies and your restitutions have honestly done almost nothing to ease this gnawing ache in my chest.

And yet you still treat me much better than I deserve.

That’s the truth whether I like it or not.

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Then almost a year later:

If you follow the timeline, you can see where the note that became today’s post fits in.

My friend and I are very good now though, all I’d just say is this: Fight resentment and never let it linger between you and the people you love.

It’s a bitter toxin that does nothing but destroy everything that’s good; past memories, present moments, and potential happiness.

Just address and kill it as soon as it starts to grow, or else...

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You probably felt that once you finally got that thing, it would leave a permanent mark on how you felt for the rest of your life from that point forward.

At the time when you wanted it, the desire was… enormous.

You probably felt like by the time you finally got that thing, it would leave a permanent mark on how you felt for the rest of your life from that point forward.

Then you got it, and then you were happy to get it, and eventually… well, your life continued.

Yes, the getting felt really good – maybe it even still does – and yes, you felt all the amazing emotions you knew you’d feel, so it wasn’t like you were disappointed at any point.

However, now that you look back, that thing is now just a part of your ordinary, everyday life.

You can’t specifically point back to when exactly this shift happened, but somehow someway, it did, and now the phone is just a phone, the job is just a job, the trip was just a trip, and the thing that once had you tingling in anticipation is now just one of those many other things that once had you tingling in anticipation.

It’s clear that regardless of however high we place something on a pedestal of desire, when we do eventually get it, that thing stops feeling extraordinary after some time.

And, on the flip side, regardless of how much pain or grief an event causes us, eventually, after some time, it often stops being as painful, and it just starts to exist as a deep, present, day-to-day ache.

The question is, why does this happen?

Why do we, as humans, eventually, if we give it enough time, get used to everything?

The human brain is more wired to detect, and sometimes seek out, change, than it is to register permanence, and this design can be seen as more of a blessing than a curse.

Think about it.

If every sunrise you see is as beautiful and as mesmerising to you as the first one you ever saw, then you’ll never get anything else done because you’ll be outside every morning, staring at the sky in admiration.

If your favourite song hits with the same intensity on your thousandth listen as it did on its first, music might become unbearable rather than enjoyable, and you’ll probably never get to discover new songs to get blown away by.

The ability of our minds to adapt to events and stimuli around it is the reason our nervous systems can function properly in a world like ours that’s ever-increasing in stimulation.

Because of this innate wiring in our brains, in every single case – regardless of how intense the first or second stimulation was – the excitement always recedes eventually.

In fact, the more conversant your mind becomes with a certain stimulus, the faster this recession could happen, and the less “intense” it feels every time it comes again.

This is the reason addicts always keep chasing the high even when the habit doesn’t feel as good anymore, and it’s the reason you can sometimes go weeks without listening to your favourite album or your favourite artist.

These events or activities might not have lost their value or novelty, but because they stopped being “new”, the gratification we got from them began to reduce.

The unfamiliarity of that “newness” was playing a huge role in the emotional utility we were getting from such desires/activities, so our present state of familiarity now makes them appear… bland and less enjoyable.

In 1978, psychologist Philip Brickman, working with Dan Coates and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, ran a study that’s become one of the most referenced findings in understanding the psychology of happiness.

They looked at two groups of people whose circumstances had shifted dramatically, in opposite directions:

One group was recent lottery winners whose lives had been transformed overnight by sudden wealth…

and

The other group was people who had recently become paraplegic or quadriplegic after ghastly accidents.

If you were to make a general assumption, you would probably say that the lottery winners would remain significantly happier in the long term and that the accident survivors would remain significantly less happy for the rest of their lives.

However, what the researchers found in their study was a bit more complicated than that.

Of course, the lottery winners did report a spike in their short-term happiness, but after some time a considerable number of them reported that they were back to feeling… “normal”.

In fact, they even went on to add that some of the “small things” in their lives that used to give them daily pleasures before their huge win – good conversations or funny magazines – now seemed to bring them less joy than they used to.

Meanwhile, many of the accident survivors reported levels of everyday happiness and meaning that were far closer to their pre-accident lives than anyone watching from the outside would have predicted.

It’s worth noting that subsequent research done later on has added an important nuance to this initial study.

It has been discovered that after experiencing certain events, many people don’t fully return to their old baseline of happiness, regardless of how much time has passed.

Occurrences such as the death of a spouse, chronic unemployment, and severe ongoing losses tend to leave a more lasting imprint on happiness than the earliest adaptation research of 1978 assumed.

But even with these refinements, the core finding of that research has held up remarkably well across decades of further study, and it’s this:

People are considerably more adaptable to extremely emotional stimuli, in both directions, than intuition suggests.

Or to make it more relatable:

Your future self is surprisingly good at eventually making almost anything, whether wonderful or terrible, start to feel ordinary.

Like I briefly explained earlier, there’s obviously a very good side to this natural phenomenon being a staple part of us.

It can even be considered a… mercy, of sorts.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, if this baseline resetting didn’t happen to our minds at all. What kind of lives would we live?

Imagine if every car horn on the road hit us with the same startle as the first time we heard it, or if every compliment forever triggered the same rush of validation through our bones as the first one we ever received, or if every day of vacation felt like the discovery of a new country every single time you went there.

Sounds like a pretty miserable life to live.

We would not be able to function properly because our emotions and actions would be governed by a nervous system that doesn’t know how to separate stimulations into “known” and “unknown” and then move on from them.

Burnout and unfulfilment would definitely be inevitable.

Our “highs” feel high because we were coming from a place that was “lower”, and our “lows” feel low because we were coming from a place that was “higher”.

This ability of our minds to adapt and adjust is what makes living our daily lives livable and bearable.

Obviously, this mechanism also has its downsides, and the biggest one is that it quietly steals the wonder out of life and life occurrences, inevitably forcing us to always seek out new thrills.

The MacBook Pro you once couldn’t afford now sits open on your bed, unremarkable, while you complain about its ever-fading battery life.

You’re now used to having your partner around you, even though there was once a time their presence felt like a small miracle every time they walked through the door.

That friend whose messages you used to wait for eagerly now shows up as just one more notification amongst many others, and you’ve gone from once replying them in seconds to now replying them at your convenience.

The salary that once sounded like it would satisfy all your needs now barely covers up to half of your basic expenses.

The city where you live in, the one that tourists fly in from across the world to photograph, is, to you, just the place you have lived in all your life.

Like that, and like that…

The fact that we get used to or familiar with certain things that used to excite or gladden us doesn’t always necessarily mean that we have now stopped caring about them.

It’s just an inevitability that happens because we’re wired to not dwell on familiar pleasures for an eternity.

We can slowly become emotionally blind to the very things we once prayed and earnestly waited for, and this blindness can arrive so subtly that it won’t be until much later that we realise that those things don’t just feel as good anymore.

Most of the examples I’ve used so far have been largely positive, but this principle can also be seen in the way that we deal with difficult events and situations.

The same way it can be seen as a blessing that pleasure doesn’t last forever is the same way it can be seen as much more of a blessing that pain also doesn’t last the same forever.

We get over breakups, we move on from embarrassing moments, we recover after failures, we adapt to living with certain injuries, we get used to major life changes, and so on and so forth.

In the moments when we experience some of these things, it can often feel permanent – like that time or feeling will never, ever end.

And yet, weeks or months or years later, often without any single dramatic turning point, our lives tend to start feeling… normal again.

Or at least, we start to live with a semblance of normalcy.

We might still carry the scars and aches and the regrets of these situations with us, but the same adaptive machinery that eventually dulls our excitement over new purchases will also eventually dull the sharpest edges of our grief and failures over time.

But still, it’s true that many things never “go away” forever.

Many research studies on adaptation to bereavement generally agree that people don’t really “move on” from it but instead build lives that have learned to carry it alongside their other day-to-day activities.

The adaptation is still real here, but it’s slower, less complete, and less linear than the adaptation to smaller disappointments.

That’s why it would be dishonest to flatten all human pain into the same recovery curve and act like our minds all recover from devastating events the same way.

It just doesn’t work that way.

However, imagine for a moment that we as humans never adapted to pain, even just a little bit?

Imagine the same sharp pang of grief you felt when you got the call that your friend had passed away was the same exact thing you felt every time you saw her phone on your picture.

Wouldn’t that be miserable?

I know I’d definitely hate it.

With all this in mind, we can understand better the subtle and unconscious changes that happen to our expectations as our circumstances change for the better or for the worse.

The more we have, the more that more becomes normal, and that normal can quietly redraw, in our minds, the line of what we once counted as “enough”.

As children, we dream about the day we’ll finally be old enough to drive and to move out of the house, while adults spend that same privilege complaining about traffic and the prices of rent.

Teenagers dream about getting into university and counting down the years, while as graduates, a few years later, they complain about the demands of their jobs and the terrible attitude of their bosses.

And on the flip side, you can get used to pain and bitterness, right up until the point where it becomes your “normal”, and you make it your initial expectation of everything that comes out of life.

Life has a habit of promoting extraordinary things into ordinary ones, and if we are not careful, we will find ourselves on a “hedonic treadmill” that will have us chasing toward a finish line that’s always moving the moment we get close enough to touch it.

Unfortunately, the broader connection of billions around the world on the internet has not helped us at all.

Before social media, this adaptation mostly happened at its own natural pace, shaped by how quickly novelty wore off in our own private experiences.

However, because we can compare our lives and situations to those of people hundreds of miles away who don’t even know us, that process is now sped up considerably.

Rather than the “treadmill” just resetting your own mental expectations alone, it’s now being updated in real time by everyone else’s highlight reel, LinkedIn posts, and monthly dumps.

You can buy the phone you’ve wanted for a year, and within days, you’re seeing a newer model being unboxed by someone on your TikTok feed.

You can take the trip you’ve been saving for, and somewhere on Instagram, you’ll see someone else posting pictures from a place that looks even more remarkable than where you can.

The social comparison theory, first proposed by Leon Festinger in 1954, explains that people evaluate their own standing largely by measuring themselves against others rather than against some fixed internal scale.

And social media has turned that process from an occasional, local comparison into a constant, global one.

Like I said before, we will always be chasing things because our minds are designed to seek new thrills; that’s normal.

However, if we are not much more careful, these thrills will be defined by external influences, and we will always be chasing the desire to meet up with other people’s lives even before our own has finished settling.

Is it possible for a person to ever get off this “hedonic treadmill”?

I don’t think so.

And fortunately, the key is not to try to completely avoid this adaptation.

It’s not even advisable to do so given what permanent, unfiltered emotional intensity would actually do to a person.

The key, rather, is to try to enjoy what we have now in the present before we get used to it and it becomes mundane.

So, we will not be trying to get permanent satisfaction, but we will be trying to slow down the process of adaptation for as long as we possibly can.

Sonja Lyubomirsky’s research on happiness, along with Fred Bryant’s work specifically on savouring, points toward a few things that seem to genuinely slow down this “hedonic treadmill”.

Some of them include:

Paying deliberate attention to good experiences while they’re happening rather than only in retrospect.

Practising gratitude as practically as possible rather than as a vague sentiment.

Seeking out novelty on purpose instead of waiting for it to arrive.

Occasionally putting the camera down long enough to actually experience something instead of only documenting it.

(This last point tackles a present-day occurrence that is so pervasive that it’s disturbing to see it happen in action.)

Whatever it is that you’re chasing at this exact moment will, one day, long after you’ve finally gotten it, very likely become ordinary too, and it will do so on its own schedule, without asking your permission.

So, the next time you’re doing something you enjoy or once enjoyed, take the conscious effort to keep your attention on it.

Whether you’re walking the same street you’ve walked a thousand times or watching that movie again, try, even if it’s for a second, to see it as a stranger would.

You might be surprised to discover some new wonders lying in what you now see as mundane.

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However, whilst they might seem “similar” on the surface, they both have meanings that are entirely different from one another, and they both ask different questions.

Self-esteem asks, “How do you see yourself?” (Value).

Self-confidence asks, “What do you believe you can do?” (Ability).

Understanding this key difference can help us understand ourselves and the people around us a lot more.

You can meet someone who seems fearless in boardroom presentations and public speaking events but still struggles to accept compliments or believe that they’re “good enough”.

They have a lot of self-confidence, but self-esteem is lacking.

And you can meet someone who struggles to put themself out there or to take full advantage of opportunities but has no problem admitting that they’re lacking or that they need help.

They have healthy self-esteem but struggle with being self-confident.

Both words define two different things, and when we separate them and the manner in which they express themselves, our actions and the actions of others around us start making more sense.

You’ll understand why some people can spend their entire lives racking up achievements and yet still be so insecure and why some other people can admit they fail repeatedly and embrace public scrutiny without feeling diminished by it.

My objective for this article is to help you understand yourself a little bit more, so I want to ask:

Are you struggling with your self-confidence or your self-esteem?

If you’re not sure which, that is why I’m here.

Think about the last time you felt extremely intimidated by a challenge.

Maybe it was a job interview, or a public presentation, or an exam, or a first date, or when you were simply trying something that was unfamiliar.

Think about the anxiety you felt.

In that moment, what exactly was going through your mind?

If your thoughts sounded like “I don’t think I can do this” or “I don’t want to make a mistake,” then you were most likely dealing with a self-confidence issue.

You didn’t trust your ability to overcome that challenge, either because you had never done it before then or because you had failed at it in the past.

On the flip side…

If your thoughts sounded like “If I can’t do this, then I’m a failure” or “What will people say if I embarrass myself?” , then you were having a self-esteem struggle, which is inherently much deeper.

You stopped seeing the challenge as a hurdle for you to cross, and it became a referendum on your worth as a person.

Like I said earlier, understanding this simple difference can change a lot of things.

For the sake of introspection, we’re going to explain the four distinct combinations of these two concepts that can be at play in the life of anybody at any given time.

I want you to pay close attention.

Low Self-Esteem, High-Self Confidence

I believe this is the most misunderstood (and most common) combination among people, and it is almost imperceptible from the outside.

To illustrate it, let’s say the following:

You’re capable, and you know you’re capable. If someone asks you to lead a team, solve a difficult problem, or finish a demanding project, you don’t hesitate to take on the challenge because you trust in your ability.

From the outside, everybody admires how composed you are under pressure, and they constantly express how impressed they are by your results.

In their minds, they assume you must believe greatly in yourself because your performance and track record suggest that you do.

However, what they don’t see is that your confidence only exists inside your ability to do what it is that you’re good at, and outside of it or outside of anything that relates to it, you’re constantly questioning yourself and wondering if you’re even worth anything.

Imagine a lawyer who rarely loses a case yet secretly believes their career is the only good thing about their life.

Or a musician who performs regularly before thousands of adoring fans but can’t genuinely accept that those people truly admire and value them.

Or a student who consistently graduates near the top of their class but constantly obsesses over any B or C grade because anything short of perfection feels like failure.

There’s a lot of outstanding ability and undeniable output, but outside of that, there’s almost nothing else.

Such people don’t struggle with proving competence because they don’t need to; their struggle is with convincing themselves that they are “worthy” and that they “meet up” with whatever criteria they’re judging themselves with.

Unfortunately for people who try to use their ability and achievements to answer the questions they have about their worth, they always soon discover that it is just never enough.

High Self-Esteem, Low Self-Confidence

Imagine you’re learning to drive.

You’re nervous every time you sit behind the wheel, parking feels impossible, and roundabouts make your heart race. You don’t believe you’re a good driver yet, and that’s simply because you are not one.

Nothing about this admission makes you think poorly of yourself, and you can confidently acknowledge your inexperience without turning it into a summation of your character.

However, the problem is that every time you make a mistake behind the wheel, it takes you longer for you to convince yourself to enter a car again to continue your lessons.

You know continuing to practise will make you better, but you can’t find it within you to just try again.

People like this don’t think less of themself despite the fact that they struggle to do certain things or reach certain heights.

They recognise the fact that their inability to do something doesn’t make them less of the person they are, the same way their ability to do other things doesn’t make them more of the person they already are.

The only problem is that they might be hesitant to do the things they struggle with or hesitant to try out unfamiliar situations because they lack familiarity or experience with them.

I’ll be honest though, there’s a level of freedom that comes with this combination because you’re not in that headspace where your identity is constantly pitching its worth on your ability.

Whether you’re good at something or not, it doesn’t really matter to you because, regardless, you are still who you are.

This is why the greatest experts at anything are the ones whose self-esteem gives them permission to keep looking foolish until their competence catches up.

However, the drawback that comes with this is the unwillingness to take risks, explore new situations, and take advantage of opportunities, and that is a very, very big flaw to have.

Low Self-Esteem, Low Self-Confidence

This is the worst combination to have, not only because lacking both can affect your quality of life but also because your lack of identity and your lack of ability will eventually begin to reinforce one another.

You don’t think highly of yourself, and because of that, you don’t believe you’re capable of anything either.

Every challenge you face, you ask yourself, “Can I overcome and succeed?”

If you say “Yes”, your mind tells you, “You still won’t be good enough.”

And if you say “No”, your mind tells you, “That’s why you’ll never be good enough.”

It’s a lose-lose situation, a never-ending loop of doubt, shame, and constant avoidance of unfamiliarity.

Most people cope by giving up and not even trying at all.

They don’t apply because they believe they’ll be rejected. They don’t ask people they like out because they believe they’ll turn them down. They don’t start the business because they believe it will fail. They don’t speak during meetings because they believe they have nothing valuable to offer.

Before they even take the first step, they have already rehearsed the disappointment, and that keeps them stuck and scared of moving.

It’s really not a pleasant place to be in.

And because such people have stopped trying, they rob themselves of the opportunity to get new experiences that might contradict what they already believe.

Every opportunity they avoid prevents their confidence from growing, and every missed opportunity quietly reinforces the low opinion they have of themself.

It’s a terrible cycle that reinforces itself with remarkable efficiency, and it’s one that is remarkably difficult to interrupt because each part keeps strengthening the other every time.

High Self-Esteem, High Self-Confidence

The key character trait you’ll have when you get to this point is resilience.

You know your value, and you trust your ability, so whether you fail or you succeed, neither has the role of defining who you are, and you’re still as willing as ever to take on the next challenge.

As you walk into that job interview, you genuinely believe you’re capable of doing the work, but even if someone else gets the role, you don’t spend the next two weeks questioning whether you’re capable or not because you recognise that there are dozens of reasons why the interview didn’t go your way, many of which have nothing to do with you as a person.

What you do is to prepare a little better for the next job, apply elsewhere, and keep moving.

High self-esteem lets you survive failure without drowning in anxiety, and high self-confidence is what gives you the courage to pursue difficult things in the first place.

Together, they form resilience, which can see you through the most difficult situations.

The difference between having low self-esteem and having low self-confidence is that confidence can be grown over time through practice, while esteem is a more innate and complex phenomenon that takes more than just time and familiarity to fix.

It requires deep soul-searching for you to trace the areas you don’t feel adequate, understand why, and then ask how you can, through your actions and words, fill that void by yourself.

Now, if these two concepts are distinctively different, why then do we confuse them so often?

I believe the reason is because confidence is visible and esteem usually isn’t.

You can watch someone confidently negotiate a business deal, captain a football team, or command a room full of strangers, but you cannot immediately tell whether that same person goes home loathing their appearance or the mistakes they’ve made in the past.

Likewise, you can see someone hesitate before volunteering an answer or admit they don’t know something, but it would be unfair for you to assume they secretly dislike or are resentful of themselves.

The fact that confidence is visible means people often mistake it for emotional security, and while it sometimes is, many other times it’s just a well-practised performance being executed.

From the outside, people can describe you as confident, but inside you’re exhausted from carrying a burden that your external ability and results can never help you unload.

People look at others with great abilities and impressive achievements and believe that if they can only reach those points too, then they will begin to feel better about themselves.

But at the end of the day, that is not always the case.

Many people become more accomplished, more respected, more admired, and more capable while carrying exactly the same doubts they had years earlier.

Yes, self-esteem and self-confidence both influence each other, but, no, they don’t depend on each other.

That’s why it’s important to identify the one that’s lacking in your life, so you can understand what exactly to do to work on making it better.

You can spend a decade collecting achievements, hoping they’ll eventually add up to a feeling of worth, and find that the feeling never arrives regardless of what you get.

And you can spend a decade telling yourself you’re enough as you are, while avoiding every situation and challenge that might have exposed you to versions of yourself that are capable of bigger things than you could have ever imagined.

The next time you feel inadequate, resist the urge to assume it’s simply a confidence or an esteem problem.

Pay attention to the sentence running through your mind.

Are you thinking, “I don’t think I can do this?”

Or are you thinking, “If I can’t do this, what does that say about me?”

Learning the difference gives you something incredibly valuable: clarity.

And once you know which question you’re trying to answer, you’ll know whether to aim for more confidence through practice or more esteem through better perceived value of yourself.

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The Problem With “Fall Down and Die!” Christianity.

It’s 11 P.M. on a Friday night, and you’re standing outside in an open field under the moonlit sky at a prayer crusade called “The Enemies of My Father’s House Must Die…

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Memento Mori, Memento Vivere is a Latin phrase that weaves together the duality of human existence:

The inevitability of death and The necessity of living life to its fullest.

Many people only know the first part of the phrase, which translates to “Remember, you must die,” and not the other half, which says, “Remember to live.”

Death is a sensitive topic for a lot of people.

For some, it’s scary to talk or even think about it. For others, it brings back terrible memories.

However you view death, your perspective is probably valid.

It can be scary. It can bring back bad memories. It can be cruel.

But the one thing that death definitely is, is inevitable.

We are all going to die one day.

All men must die.

Or, as the Braavosi say—

We only live once.

That’s the truth.

I know there are beliefs about reincarnation and second lives and all that, but plain and simple, we only get one life.

The Bible says, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die…”

If we’re dying once, that means that we also get to live just once.

So, it’s really a no-brainer that we have to take full advantage of this one life that we get.

Yes, it might sound dark, maybe even morbid, but death has a way of reminding us how precious life is.

Once it’s lost, it can’t be got back, and that’s something I think many people forget.

Or, at least, something many people don’t stay conscious of enough.

We get so caught up in the repetition of our daily life: the routines, the responsibilities, and all of the hustle.

We plan for tomorrow, next month, and the years to come, and we can sometimes forget about the most important moment of our lives, which is the present.

The now. The today.

We forget that life is unpredictable and that everything could change in an instant.

It’s a scary thought, maybe, but I’m not trying to scare anybody.

I’m just saying that if we, even in the tiniest depths of our subconscious, acknowledge the inevitable end of our lives, then maybe we’ll stop taking our moments for granted.

We’ll be reminded that our time is limited and we’ll strive to make the most of every single moment that we get.

Cause it’s just one chance; that’s all you and I have to leave.

Just one attempt.

So…

Now, you might say, “Ebun, we’re a product of our thoughts, so we really shouldn’t be thinking so much about death.”

I agree, and I’m not asking for anybody to develop a morbid obsession with death.

This is my perspective:

Let’s remain aware of the fact that we have just one life to live, not so that we can live in constant fear of the end, but so that we can make the most of the beginning, the middle, and every single second in-between.

This awareness is the reason people travel more, love intentionally, chase their most ridiculous dreams, and strive to fulfil their purpose.

They’ve decided to maximise the few years they get to spend on Earth, regardless of the risks they have to take or the potential pain they could suffer.

That, to me, is admirable.

Someone once said: Today is a gift, and that’s why it’s called the present.

And I think that makes a lot of sense.

The pain of regret is much worse than the pain of failure.

Or the pain of embarrassment. Or the pain of shame. Or the pain of insecurity.

Or the pain of whatever it is that is holding you back from doing the things you know you should do.

The things you want to do.

You don’t want to reflect on life in 30, 40 years with only “What if…” questions to show for it:

What if I had taken that chance?

What if I had asked her out?

What if I had applied for that job?

What if I didn’t waste so much time scrolling?

What if I did this…? What if I did that…?

It’s a scary reality.

At least for me.

One of my biggest fears is to have lived a meaningless life after I die. To just come and go, with no impact, with no mark, with no substance.

I don’t want to be on my deathbed and be filled with regrets, unfulfilled dreams, and forgotten aspirations.

Since I get just one chance, why should my life be average and ordinary like other billions of lives that have been lived?

No, that can’t be right.

It shouldn’t be, and I genuinely struggle to understand people who live their lives with such a one-dimensional focus on “having fun” and “enjoyment”.

Doesn’t make any sense.

That being said, the future should not be our concern.

It’s simply a result of the actions we take today, so we only need to focus on the now, and the things we do now.

Live in the moment.

A quote by Lao Tzu says:

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.”

There’s no better time to live than now.

Don’t worry about what has happened or what is to come.

Focus on what you can do NOW.

Pursue What Matters

It’s so easy to get caught in things that don’t serve us like jobs we don’t love, relationships that drain us, habits that are slowly killing us…

There’s no time for that.

All the choices you make and the things you focus on must align with what really brings you joy, peace, and fulfilment.

Embrace the Small Moments

Life is made up of tiny moments, so appreciate each of them.

The cold wind at night. The message notification from that person you like. Watching your favourite show for the 100th time.

Enjoy every single one of them while you have them.

Let Go of Fear

You can disagree with me, but fear lives only in the mind.

It doesn’t really exist.

The moment you confront it is the moment it disappears.

So, don’t be afraid to take chances. Don’t let fear hold you back from experiencing the crazy things that life can offer.

Post that video. Audition for that role. Tell your parents you’d like to leave the house more often. End that relationship.

Endless possibilities are on the other side of all the things that make you afraid.

Live With Gratitude

Every morning that you wake up, thank God.

Life is painfully fleeting, so be grateful when you get another chance to see a new day.

We can’t give life and we can’t make life.

So, the least we can do is to say “thank you” to the One that makes life and gives life.

For me, as much as I hope and pray to live long, I know that in the end, what matters is not how long we live but how well we live.

That’s why there should be a striving for being something that’s much bigger than us.

Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with wanting a simple, low-key life.

Although I do believe we’re all created for greatness, one way or another.

You don’t have to postpone your being happy “till I’m rich” or “when I get this or that”.

You can find it all around you.

Stop being a passive observer in your own life; start being an active participant.

Like it or not, you and I are running out of time.

That’s why we must live.

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Today is father’s day and billions of people around the world will be celebrating their fathers or fatherly figures in their lives.

I mean, we talk a lot about how women/mothers get celebrated multiple times a year, so if men got a day to be heralded too, was it so bad?

No, no it’s not.

Then I started thinking… What of those people who don’t have good relationships with their fathers? What of those whose fathers have passed away? What of those who never knew their fathers?

How would they feel reading a post such as this on a day as this?

I didn’t want to upset or offend anybody with something that was completely out of their control, and this was my singular struggle point.

However, I had to finally admit that as long as we’re humans and we’re living on this Earth, we’ll always have different experiences about similar situations.

If it’s not someone’s relationship with their father, then it’s someone’s experience with romantic relationships, or it’s someone’s perception about a particular person/thing.

As fortunate as this can be, it can also be very unfortunate.

It was this thought that finally gave me the reprieve I needed to reach out to my authors.

Honestly, I wanted all kinds of stories: Sad. Happy. Toxic. Angry. Hurtful. Joyous. Absent. Amazing. Memorable. Pathetic - Whatever it was.

Inasmuch as today is a day to “celebrate” fathers, I didn’t want to go without acknowledging those people who would rather do anything else than celebrate their father.

Many of the authors I reached out to declined to participate, and while I was disappointed not to get their entries, I totally understand and respect their decision.

As beautiful as this topic might be to some, it’s not so beautiful to others - that’s life, and it is just what it is.

So, if you have a father or fatherly figure that’s worth celebrating today, then make sure you do so, and do it with all sense of appreciation and gratitude.

And if, for one reason or another, you don’t… you are not alone. I salute your courage in having lived through life without the help of such anchor.

Happy Father’s Day.

(Favour’s Newsletter).

Let me tell you about my father.

Strong old man. Too much. Just too much.

When my father entered a room, everybody knew someone had entered the room. Loud. Chatty. Present. I suppose I got my chattiness, my stubbornness, and maybe some of my strength from him.

My father was a fine young accountant, probably one of the few people from his village who got the opportunity to go to school. When I was doing Business Studies in junior secondary school, he was the one who explained what a ledger was. My father rode motorcycles in those days. He wore those bougie trousers. He kept an afro. He raised people who were not his children. He married a beautiful woman. He moved to town and became one of those men people envied.

My father was stubborn, stubborn with his parents, stubborn with life, but somehow, he always got things done. He was always moving, always travelling, always on the road. Even now, old as he is, he never seems to stop moving.

But life happened.

A very turbulent season came and took much of the identity that once defined him. Well, almost everything except the stubbornness. The cheerful young man people admired slowly disappeared. Life had bruised him badly, and somewhere along the way he decided that life had won.

My father disappeared in many ways and angrier in others. Less honourable. More withdrawn. Became a man who seemed to spend years trying to save face from battles nobody else fully understood. We tried to reach him, but sometimes pain builds walls higher than love can easily climb.

Yet there are parts of him that remain undeniable.

When my father was ambitious, he was truly ambitious. He built foundations. He documented everything. He built us houses. At home and in the city. I got my love for records and documentation from him. My father kept journals. He kept receipts. He kept memories. Every child had a file. Even today, I could probably find my old Common Entrance scratch card safely tucked away somewhere among his records.

My father remembers everything.

The vintage shirts. The stories. The humour. The hurt. The happy. The fundraising meetings. The way he could make people laugh.

So let me tell you about my father.

The man who gave me life.

The man who gave me many of my firsts.

My first phone. My first private towel that belonged only to me. My first underwears. My first haircut. My first serious beating.

My father.

A man who was once larger than life, and then met a life larger than himself.

My father.

(Whispers With Nehemiah).

Let Me Tell You About My Father…

For the longest time, I only knew my father as a strict man.

Growing up, my siblings and I were much closer to our mother. She was warm, easy to talk to, and always seemed to know how to make us feel comfortable. My father, on the other hand, felt distant. Not because he was absent far from it. He provided everything we needed. School fees were paid. Provisions were bought. Whenever we needed something, he did his best to make sure we had it.

But there was a gap.

An emotional one.

We were so intimidated by him that whenever we heard the honk of his car outside, everybody scattered to their rooms. We didn’t sit and gist with him. We didn’t tell him our secrets. We didn’t have those father and child moments people often talk about. We respected him deeply, but we didn’t really know him.

Then I got to the university.

I would sit with friends and listen to them talk about their fathers. They had stories. Funny stories. Emotional stories. Stories of long conversations and shared memories. And while listening, I realized that apart from knowing my father as a provider and protector, I didn’t really have a story to tell.

So, I decided to change that.

I made a conscious effort to get closer to him.

And in doing so, I discovered something that changed everything.

My father was not just my father.

He was also someone’s son.

The older I got, the more I learned about his own childhood. His father had been extremely strict too. He grew up in a home where children weren’t necessarily close to their fathers. Vulnerability wasn’t something that came naturally. Affection wasn’t always expressed openly.

What I had spent years interpreting as emotional distance was, in many ways, inherited.

It wasn’t that my father didn’t love us.

It was that he was trying to give what he himself had never fully received.

One day, I walked into the sitting room while he was watching a movie. Normally, if my father was in the sitting room, everyone found a reason to be somewhere else. But that day, I sat beside him.

I still remember the look on his face.

It was subtle, but I could tell he was happy.

We started talking. Then we kept talking. Before long, the conversation became deeper than either of us expected. We talked about our relationship. I told him how his strictness had made us withdraw. I told him how distant he sometimes felt.

And he listened.

Really listened.

We laughed. We joked. We spoke honestly.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t just sitting with my father.

I was getting to know him.

To this day, it remains one of my favorite memories.

Then there was the day he decided to cook for us.

Now, I need history to record that the rice was not exactly a culinary masterpiece.

My father somehow believed that two cubes of seasoning and salt could carry the entire meal. We all smiled bravely while eating in front of him, praising the food like loyal citizens protecting national peace.

The moment he left, however, everybody rushed the pot back to the fire to rescue it with additional spices.

Looking back, that memory makes me laugh every single time.

But beyond the laughter, what I remember most was the effort.

He wanted to do something for his children.

And that meant everything.

Today, my relationship with my father is completely different from what it was years ago. We talk. We joke. We disagree. We have difficult conversations. We understand each other better.

My siblings joined in too, and somehow our family slowly bridged a gap that had existed for years.

My father is even on Snapchat now, which still feels like something that should be studied by scientists.

He’s not perfect.

Neither am I.

But we’ve learned each other.

And if there’s one thing adulthood has taught me, it is this:

Sometimes our parents are carrying wounds they never talk about. Sometimes they are loving us with the only language they were taught. Sometimes they are trying their best with tools that were handed to them by generations before them.

My father was never the villain of my childhood story.

He was a man doing his best with what he knew.

A boy who grew up and became a father before he fully learned how to be a son.

And perhaps the most beautiful part of our story is that we learned together.

So, when people ask me about my father today, I smile.

Because now I finally have a story to tell.

And it begins with this:

My father is just a boy who didn’t receive everything he needed growing up, but who chose to learn, grow, and love anyway.

And honestly, I think that’s one of the coolest things about him. ❤️

(Anywaysasiwassaying).

Let me Tell you About my Father….

….is something I would say if I knew anything about him.

I confess that when Ebun sent me this prompt, I was thrown for a loop. I usually do well with telling stories personal to me, but this was a territory not yet explored. I mean, I know my dad in the traditional sense. He raised me in the ways that mattered: took me to school, paid for nannies and tutors, and did the stereotypical African father things. And till now, he actively caters to my needs- something I recognize as a privilege as a woman in her early 20s living in a stressful uncertain Nigeria of today.

I do not want to understate his presence in my life or his role in shaping who I am today by simply portraying the lack of a relationship. There is one, but as early stated, I don’t know him. The earlier years of my life were filled with a tumultuous emotional relationship between us, probably a ripple effect of his on-again-of-again one with my mom. It was hard for me to get to know him, because that would mean I’d have to separate who he was as a husband, and who he was a father, and that was simply impossible to do. The result was a difficulty in sharing. Sharing the same space, sharing feelings, sharing my thoughts and dreams. People love to speak on what they’d do when everything aligns, but the truth is that what was missing in chaos is seldom found in peace. The foundation was never laid, and now, at the ripe age of 22, I have little interest or time to do so.

I did for a while mourn. Seeing my friends be so close to their dads made me wonder if I was too hasty in shutting down a real chance. I guess I’ll never know. It does linger with me though. Not knowing his favorite color, or what his childhood was like. Not being able to tell him about a boy a like, or being able to share the worst experiences I’ve hard. I often wonder if he looks at me, his first and only daughter, and mourns as well. Again, I’ll never know.

But as for today, I will try and piece together the words, because he isn’t just a forgotten dream. He’s funny and boisterous when he’s around. A people person (he knows someone for everything). he’s reliable and strong-willed, traits we both share, and patient enough with my little brothers. They can talk to him, and he can listen. That much, is good enough for me.

Happy father’s day.

(The Blonded Boy’s Notepad).

i grew up keeping away from my father. i deliberately cultivated distance between this man and me. why? i can’t exactly give you a solid reason, but i loathed the man who birthed me.

he did his necessary parental duties. he lacked in none of them. i went to wonderful schools while growing up. i ate at least three times a day. i never lacked a change of clothes. we even had cable TV, and he tried his best to keep it connected most of the time. yet, i was never satisfied. i seemed to want more. and because i never got this “more,” i never liked the man.

because of this disposition, it wasn’t hard for me to rebel against him. during my early teens, i became a thorn in my parents’ flesh. there wasn’t a month that went by without my actions grappling with them and choking the peace out of our home. i was inconsiderate. i was difficult. i was, at times, simply wicked to them.

but they never stopped caring for me. they never stopped loving me. until one day.

during one of our then-frequent showdowns, i insulted my parents again. my father had finally had enough. he looked at me with tears in his eyes and told me pointedly,

“i will have no hand in sponsoring you through university.”

like a tiger caught in a jungle trap, those words stirred something inside me in a way i had never felt before.

i had finished secondary school a year earlier as the best graduating student in my set, but for some reason i didn’t gain admission that year. i was already preparing for the next admission cycle, and i was certain i would get into university then. but what did he mean when he said he wouldn’t sponsor me through university?

who then would?

what would i tell people when they asked why i had parents who were alive and comfortable, yet were not seeing me through school?

it felt as though the wild animal inside me had been fatally shot in that moment. for days afterwards, i sat with those words. after long contemplations and prayerful nights, i went to my father, apologized for my actions, and pleaded for his forgiveness.

my dad forgave me then and there. he even inquired about the financial details of my chosen programme and paid for them.

a few days later, i went back to who i was before.

looking back now, i think that was the first thing that confused me about my father. my father’s forgiveness didn’t change me. at least not then. if anything, it merely solved the problem that had forced me to confront him in the first place. the threat was gone. university was back on the table. life could continue as normal. and so it did.

the strange thing is that i wasn’t consciously manipulating him. i wasn’t some criminal mastermind plotting my next move. i simply returned to the only version of myself i knew how to be. resentful and distant. perpetually dissatisfied. whatever had driven me to apologize had not stayed long enough to alter me.

it’s been over half a decade since this happened, but the difference between then and now is that my father and i have a beautiful relationship now. re-embracing my faith couple years into university made me see my father in a pure light.

for the first time in my life, i began to reckon seriously with the concept of grace. not the grace i could quote in church or read about in books, but the kind that inconveniences you. the kind that continues showing up after it has been rejected. the kind that remains patient with people who seem committed to misunderstanding it. somewhere in that process, i began to think differently about my father. not because he had changed, but because i was finally beginning to see him as a person instead of a role.

why was i mad at him? even today, i struggle to give a satisfying answer. all i know is that for years i treated his love as though it were an offence. i would now remember those nights when my dad would whip me because of some horrible thing that i had done, i will remember how much regret and pain he had in his eyes. my father was a very soft man, but i daily provoked him to anger.

one day, he sat me down and told me his life story, i would cry later when i was all by myself. what a man! he has tried and endured a lot. the more i learned about my father’s life, the more ashamed i became of my own resentment.

he had lost his mother before he was 10 years old. while most children were still learning how to be children, my father was learning how to survive. he spent much of his teenage years working for a relative who never truly regarded him. by the time many people his age were preparing to leave secondary school, my father was only just beginning junior secondary education.

his own father would have him go through years of neglect on his side. years of feeling less preferred than his younger twin brother because he chose to become a Christian. even having the younger one marry before the older one.

yet somehow, he endured.

that is what amazes me now. not that hardship visited him, but that hardship never succeeded in making him bitter, never stopped him from loving and believing in life. a lesser man could have become resentful. a lesser man could have passed his wounds on to his children. my father did neither. i would think that my father was passing on generational trauma to me, but i have realized that my father have worked and is still working to make sure he never turned out to be his father, and that i would never live the life he lived.

very recently, i would go through a business mistake that cost me millions and sank me. i would call my father; not because i was looking for financial support, but because i would love to hear the voice of a man who knew what it meant to lose, to start over, and to keep going. some years ago, the thought of speaking to him would have irritated me. now, in moments of uncertainty, he is one of the first people i reach for.

this is growth.

i may never recover the ten, fifteen, or more years i spent pushing my father out of my life. those years are gone. but if growing older has taught me anything, it is that some people are too precious to keep at arm’s length.

and if you ask me today about my father, i will tell you that one of the greatest kindnesses God has shown me was allowing me to understand him before it was too late. i would never be happy having another man as my father.

(Thoughts Unfiltered).

Let me tell you about my father.

But before I do so, I must tell you that it has taken me a very long time to speak of him in the light I am about to speak of him now. It has taken introspection, consideration and empathy. It has taken months, maybe years even, of trying to inject one particular truth into my brain- My father is HUMAN.

For some reason, this was a difficult thing for me to accept. Maybe because when you are young, your parents exist as absolutes. They are either right or wrong. Good or bad. Present or absent. But growing up teaches you that people are rarely one thing. And my father taught me that. Because whilst he may not have been the perfect husband, he has been a good father to me, to the best of his abilities.

Funny, isn’t it? The duality of man.

I do not know how to describe my father without telling you about the accident we had that Sunday. We were on our way to Lagos. My mummy, my daddy, my siblings and I. I can vividly remember that my siblings and I were having what can only be described as a karaoke competition in the car. We were singing. Loudly.

Then suddenly, the tyres left the car. At least that is how I remember it. I genuinely saw my life flash before my eyes. Till today, I still consider it a miracle that none of us got injured because it happened on an expressway and things could have gone very differently.

But that is not even the point of this story. The point is what happened after. My father somehow managed to park the car by the roadside. He came down, told us he was going to look for help, someone that could help tow the car or at least, link us up with a nearby mechanic.

And then he left. Just like that.

I remember watching him through the side mirror as he ran down the expressway looking for help. For years, I never thought much about that moment. He was Daddy. That was his job.

That was what fathers did. Or at least that was what I thought. But now that I am older, I think about that day differently. Because we had all just gone through the same traumatic experience. He was in that car too. He watched the tyres leave the car too. He was probably just as shaken as the rest of us. Yet somehow, while the rest of us sat in that car trying to process what had happened, he was already trying to figure out what came next.

He did not know if he would find help or how long it would take. He probably did not even know what exactly he was going to do. But he went anyway. I think about that a lot these days. How many times my father must have been scared and still moved. How many times he must have had no idea what came next and still found a way to keep going because there were people depending on him.

My father is a good man. I say this with no single doubt in my heart. My father has always made sure my siblings and I had the good things of life. At least the ones he could afford. And honestly, I suspect there were times he could not afford them and still found a way. My father made me feel secure. There has never been a point in my life where I needed something and felt scared to call my father. Never.

And we will not talk about the part where I am a firstborn daughter who would rather suffer in silence than ask for help. The part where I wait until I am practically on my deathbed before calling home. No. This one is about my father.

My father has taught me sacrifice.

Sometimes I try to sit and actually think about it properly. This man wakes up every single day and goes out to work, just so we can live comfortably at home. You go through stress, real stress, so that other people can breathe easier? So that your children can have things you probably didn’t even have at their age? And I think that is where I start to understand something about God. How everything He has done from the very beginning was love. I think God made me my father’s daughter so I would understand a little bit of what His love feels like.

Oh, I will tell you my father is an attentive listener. None of the gifts he gives me are random. They are intentional, specially curated because I mentioned them. Some, I mentioned in passing. Like the time he gifted me a big ass keyboard for my 10th birthday because I had said I wanted to learn how to play the keyboard. I don’t even think I thought much of it when I said it. But somehow, he remembered. Oh, how I love the journals my father gives me randomly because he knows how much I love them.

My father is a good father and I am my father’s daughter. No amount of lies I tell myself can erase that. Because I see it. I see how we have the same spark, same energy, aura, bubbly energy and yeah, same rage lmao. But my heavenly Father is still working on me, lmao. I have both love and hurt towards my father. And I don’t think you will understand that part of me no matter how many times I try to explain it. But I guess both can exist without cancelling each other. My father has set a very high standard for me. Which also makes me wonder why I keep meeting the type of men I keep meeting. God abeg, that one is a story for another day. My father is very assertive, in a good way. He is a man of his words. And his aura? Omggg. My father is also very bold.

But I think I need to end this properly. I have told you a little about who my father is through my lens. But I do not know what my siblings’ own story is. I do not know if they see him differently or what parts of him stood out more to them than they did to me. Because I know one person cannot fully contain another person. We all see in parts and experience in fragments. So this is my fragment. My father, as I know him.

My father, the human.

(Comma, Period.).

Let me tell you about my father, the first and only man who speaks highly of me in rooms I’ve never stepped into. That’s rare and slightly pathetic.

I move through the world believing that I can achieve difficult things because my dad told me I could, before the world told me I couldn’t. There’s a reassuring feeling attached to knowing that no matter what happens in life, there’s still a constant pillar of support waiting for me back home.

He knows every teacher’s name in every class I’ve ever been in, and knows my exam timetables almost as well as I do. Before every paper, even in undergrad, he lists every course and its date, then says a special prayer with my name attached to it, for extra luck.

Let me tell you about the only one who keeps an Excel sheet of me and my siblings’ academic performance ever since we were conscious of words and numbers. Years of data categorised by subject and term, with colour coded bar graphs and pie charts for systematic performance reviews. About the one who remembers every child’s birth weight and each one’s first mispronounced word. Nothing escapes documentation in my dad’s world. That’s probably where I inherited my organisational habits.

Many things make my dad. His love for stand-up comedy, Nigerian movies, long walks and drives, travelling, politics. I never get tired of hearing recycled jokes because they sound new every time he tells them. The same attention he gives to comedic lines and political figures is the same attention he gives to people.

I fear no one will ever pay this much attention to me, even with things I don’t remember about myself. Most people will only ever know the version of me that I choose to present. My dad will forever know all the versions. People often say someone reminds them of somebody else. My dad doesn’t remind me of anyone. He feels like an original blueprint. An irreplaceable one, at that.

This Father’s Day (like every Father’s Day) is special. Even more so because this year is one of the many years it falls on, or just a day after, my birthday. I get to shift from celebrating my own life to celebrating the man who helped shape it. It’s a season of gratitude and celebration in our household, and one of the many reasons I love being born in the third week of June.

(By The Still Waters).

Let me tell you about my father.

When I think about him, I realize something that has always made me uncomfortable to admit: I do not really know my father. And perhaps that is unfair.

Because how do you measure a man by the things you remember? How do you reduce an entire life, an entire person, to a few memories that have refused to leave you? It seems cruel, almost ungrateful, to allow disappointment to become the loudest voice in your memory of someone who tried his best.

But memories are strange things. They do not ask for our permission. They just stay.

And for reasons I still do not completely understand, the memory that has stayed with me the longest is not one of laughter or celebration. It is the memory of a little boy waiting.

I was seven years old.

My father worked in Port Harcourt, and because he was away most of the time, his visits home felt like miracles to me. We were an extended family, and my mother was the third wife. Life was not extravagant, but I was a child, and children do not ask for extravagance. They ask for moments. They ask for presence. They ask for things they cannot even put names to.

I remember that Friday. I went to school carrying excitement bigger than my small body. I told my classmates that my father was coming home the next day. I told the children in the neighborhood too. I was proud. Proud in the innocent way only a child can be proud of his father.

Saturday arrived.

And I waited.

Morning turned into afternoon, and afternoon slowly surrendered to evening. My mother, perhaps wiser than I was, gently told me to stop waiting. She had seen enough disappointments to recognize one before it fully arrived. But I was seven, and seven-year-olds believe in promises with all their hearts.

So, I waited. I waited because fathers always come home, or so I thought.

I waited because I had already told everybody.

I waited because I loved him.

And love, especially in children, is stubborn.

By nightfall, I was still waiting.

I remember taking a flashlight and shining it on the clock. Nine o’clock.

I checked again.

And again.

As though time itself could be persuaded to bring him home.

But he never came.

I do not remember crying loudly. I remember crying quietly. The kind of crying children do when they are trying to make peace with something they do not understand. I cried myself to sleep that night, carrying a disappointment that felt far too heavy for a seven-year-old heart.

The next morning hurt even more.

The children I had told came around. They asked where my father was. Some laughed. Some mocked me. I do not remember what they said, but I remember what it felt like.

And sometimes, feelings outlive words.

I remember standing there with tears in my eyes and shame sitting heavily in my chest, wishing I had never said anything at all.

And somewhere inside me, something changed

Quietly enough that no one noticed. Quietly enough that perhaps even I did not notice.

But I made a promise to myself that day, I would never expect anything from my father again.

Not because I hated him.

Not because I was angry.

But because disappointment had introduced itself to me, and I was trying, in the only way a child knows how, to protect myself from meeting it again.

Looking back now, I think that was the day I learned how to guard my heart, and perhaps I became too good at it.

Because even today, I do not know how to expect things from my father. I do not know how to lean on him emotionally. I do not know how to wait for promises or dream of surprises. Somewhere inside me still lives that little boy with a flashlight in his hand, teaching himself not to hope too much.

People often think trauma arrives with violence, with shouting, with catastrophe.

Sometimes it is just a little boy waiting for his father until nine o’clock at night.

Yet life has a strange way of teaching us compassion.

As I grew older, I envied other children. I watched fathers pick their children up from school. I watched fathers who knew the names of teachers and friends and favorite foods. I watched fathers who took their children to parks, who attended school events, who knew the small details that make children feel seen.

I wanted those things.

Perhaps every child does.

My father never knew the names of my schools. He never picked me up after classes. He never knew many of the things I loved. We never had those ordinary memories I secretly wished for.

But he paid the fees.

He worked.

He sacrificed.

He sent me to the best schools he could afford.

And now that I am older, I wonder if perhaps he was loving me with the only language he knew.

Because not every man is taught tenderness.

Not every father knows how to sit with his children and ask about their dreams.

Some men were taught that love meant provision.

Some men were taught that sacrifice was affection.

Some men spent so much time trying to survive that they never learned how to be emotionally present.

And perhaps my father was one of those men.

We are given our bodies once and our hearts once, and we have to love with everything that is within us.

That is what parents do.

They love with what they have.

And maybe that is why it has taken me so long to understand him.

Because understanding your parents is one of the last things adulthood gives you.

Today, I still grieve for that little boy who waited by the door.

I still wish my father had known me better.

I still wish he had known the names of my schools.

I still wish he had taken me to parks, picked me up after classes, and given me the kind of childhood I saw other boys enjoy.

But now, I think I can see the fact that somewhere, beneath all his imperfections, was a man trying to love his son with the little he knew and the little he had.

And perhaps that, too, deserves to be remembered.

(The Meadow…🌼).

Let me tell you about my father, a man who carried the burden of every unpaid bill, every hungry stomach, every leaking roof, every school fee that arrived before the salary did, and still managed to show up at the dinner table like the world wasn’t pressing down on his shoulders.

I don’t think he knew we could see it or perhaps I could only see it now. The way his jaw tightened when the generator needed fuel and the account was empty. The way he would go quiet for days, not cold or absent, just somewhere else inside himself, working through numbers we were never meant to understand. Then he would return, jokes ready, chair scraping, asking who ate the last piece of meat.

My father never said I am struggling. He said we will sort it out. He never said I am tired. He said let me rest for an hour. Just one hour, like the whole machinery of our lives could not afford to wait for him to breathe.

Let me tell you about my Baami ( my father), a man perched at a table he almost could not keep, feeding children who will never fully comprehend what it cost him to remain seated. It shows up in hands rough from years of holding things together despite being scared of what tomorrow might bring.

He was not perfect. None of them are. But he was present, and I have learned slowly that presence is not small. Presence is a man deciding every morning that this, you, are worth getting out of bed for. Worth the silence he swallowed. Worth the pride he folded up so the family could eat.

I think about the things he never said because he did not have the language, or the time, or perhaps the safety to say them.

I am scared.

I do not know what I am doing.

I need someone to ask me how I am.

I am tired of being a man.

Nobody asks the man holding up the ceiling how he is doing. We only notice the ceiling when it falls.

So let me tell you about my father, who carried more than I knew, more than I will ever know, more than any one person should have to carry, and still somehow made himself available. Not always perfectly or even always enough. But there. Present and trying.

And some days, that trying was the love of a father.

(Shall We Write?)

Let me tell you about my father.

James Adebayo Ehinmoro is a medical doctor extraordinaire, a writer, a history enthusiast, a husband, and most importantly, my father.

My father’s birthday was on the 11th of this month, and if I wrote everything I wanted to say about him, we’d be here all day. So, I’ll try as much as possible to “keep my thing brief.”

It is Thursday night, the night of his birthday, and I am standing in the kitchen washing the dishes from the little family get-together we had, when it suddenly strikes me that things could have been very different. Today could have been his posthumous birthday.

If anyone had told us back in 2014 that he would live for twelve more years, no, even one more year, we would have smiled politely through the pain and thanked them for their optimism.

That year, I remember wishing he would just be strong enough to scold me again. Strong enough to tell me to stop walking backwards because, in his words, “it means you want to go backwards in life.”

I remember wishing he would tell me, “Go and read your books!” one more time.

Or seize the phone I bought with money I had painstakingly saved because my parents refused to buy me a phone while I was in secondary school.

You think you are tired of your father’s rules until you watch him slowly slipping away before your eyes and realize there is absolutely nothing you can do.

Until you watch the light begin to leave his eyes, until you realize he’s getting tired of fighting, that he’s torn between wanting to stay by your side and wanting to cross over into eternal rest.

It was almost physically painful to watch the man who had saved so many lives struggle to save his own life.

And when you sit with it long enough, it changes you. Suddenly, the things that once annoyed you become the very things you miss the most.

Suddenly, you want to apologize for all the times you said, “Leave me alone” or “I hate you,” simply because he wouldn’t let you have noodles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Growing up, I was, and still am, a proper daddy’s girl.

I idolized my father as a child. In my eyes, he could do no wrong. I was always proud to tell people, “My daddy is a doctor.” My daddy wrote a book. My daddy this, my daddy that.

My father bought me my very first novel, Things Fall Apart. I was only six years old. It was meant to be a gift for the future, to be read when I was older, but I read it anyway because the future was too far away and I was tired of all the boring storybooks we had to read in Primary Two.

I did not know it then, but reading that book would shape so much of who I would later become.

Sometimes I wonder how he ended up in the sciences because he is so gifted with words. He’s still my favorite storyteller, and I miss when life wasn’t so busy and my siblings and I would gather around him after dinner every night to listen to stories from his childhood.

Growing up, our home was filled with books, and because of him, I fell in love with reading very early.

By the time I was eight, I was already reading authors like Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, George Orwell, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Sidney Sheldon. Before I finished primary school, I had devoured countless novels and discovered not just a love for reading, but a love for writing too.

Looking back now, I realize that my journey as a writer probably started with a father who loved books enough to place one in the hands of his little girl.

I am grateful that my daddy fell in love with my mummy and that somehow, by God’s grace, I was born into their story.

I like that I have a big heart because my daddy has a big heart.

My father made sure I never lacked anything. I was never sent home because of unpaid school fees. I never lacked books, clothes, shoes, bags, or anything else I needed growing up, and even now, he still makes sure I am taken care of, no matter what.

So much was invested in giving me the best education possible, and even though I didn’t appreciate it then, as I grew older, I came to understand that not everyone had that privilege.

My father is very funny. He doesn’t try to be; he just is. If you stay around him long enough, you must laugh at least once. He’s responsible for my little sense of humour and, according to some people, my sharp mouth too. (But let’s leave that part for another day.)

He is probably also responsible for my introverted nature. You can only truly see him in his element when we’re at home or when he’s around his close friends.

He’s a walking history book. I don’t know how anyone manages to know so much history and tell it in such an appealing way, but I salute people who can do that.

A simple question could easily turn into a thirty-minute lesson on ancient kingdoms, colonialism, world wars, or some historical figure I had never heard of before. But somehow, by the time he was done, I always wanted to know more.

A prolific writer himself, he unknowingly passed on his love for words to me.

In many ways, he is the reason I am writing this today.

God, writing this is making me realize just how much I love that man.

However, as much as I idolized him as a child, as I grew older, I found him annoying sometimes—especially when I wanted to watch SpongeBob for one more hour but suddenly a figure would emerge from the room, switch off the television, and tell me to pick up my books and read.

Times like that made me wonder if this man just wanted me to read books for the rest of my life. I mean, why did you even buy the television?

My father never beat me. Never raised his hands at me once. Sometimes I wonder if it was because he had already seen what beating did to my older siblings. Instead, he had a peculiar way of scolding me that would make me cry without ever being touched.

But somehow, even then, I knew everything he did came from a place of love because after scolding me and I’d cried my eyes out, he’d go out and buy meat pie—my favorite snack then—and an orange Capri-Sun or Hollandia yoghurt.

Then he’d tell me why he scolded me and why I shouldn’t have done what I did.

When my father used to preach in our former church, he almost always talked about me. I have never said this to him, but while I secretly loved it, it always made me shy.

I cannot count the number of times he used me as a reference when he taught the church to be like little children if they wanted to enter the kingdom of heaven.

He would say, “I can scold my last daughter now, and she will cry and cry, but give her a few minutes and she’ll be back at my side, begging me to give her a piece of meat or tell her a story.”

I like that I still have that part of me—the part that can never keep grudges, not even if I tried.

My father apologizes when he is wrong. If he crosses a line or does something that genuinely hurts me, he says sorry.

I learned how to say sorry easily because I saw how easy it was for him to say sorry to me, my mum, or really anyone he offended. He would rather say sorry than get into an unnecessary fight.

I also learned the art of gifting from my father. He’s a “just because” gifter. Sometimes he’d randomly come to me and my siblings and ask, “What does your mummy like now? What has she been saying she wants to buy?” just so he could find a way to surprise her.

My parents rarely had disagreements, but when they did, it was party time for us. In fact, at some point, we almost wanted it to happen because my father would go above and beyond to do something extravagant just to show how sorry he was.

My father is not perfect, but through his dinner-table stories, he showed me how the world works and how not to get lost in it.

Through the way he loves my mother, he taught me how to love.

Through the way he apologized whenever he was wrong, he taught me humility.

Through the way he fought to stay alive, even when it would have been easier to let go, he taught me that love is sometimes choosing to stay and fight for the people who still need you.

And that is why I will keep choosing him.

Forever and ever.

In every lifetime. In every world. In every version of this story.

I will choose you, James, over and over again.

Just do me one favour, if we happen to be father and daughter in another universe, please learn how to make noodles, okay?

Damola ().

Let me tell you about my father...

How do I start, really? For the longest time, if you were not close to me, I would simply tell you I don’t have a father, but I have a dad. They would often look at me like I was tripping, but depending on the person, I would either explain further or leave it at that.

I see this person as both my dad and a “father figure”. So, let me tell you about my father.

This man is everything a girl could ask for, and it’s evidence that God is indeed consistent in answering my prayers. My father passed away when I was 4 years old, and if not for the truth that he passed away, I would almost have never felt the absence of a father in my life.

This man, Mr. Akin Adekoya, is a father a girl would be so proud to have. He is my daddy’s older brother, and since my daddy passed, he has played the role of a father to my siblings and me. Think of the role a father plays in one’s life, however extensive the list comes up to, He is and even more. Talk about spiritual covering, financial covering, security, everything.

My father is the reason I know to be better; he is the reason I know there is so much out there that I can have; he is the reason I understand the importance of dreaming and never wanting to be small; he encourages me in a way that I know that giving something a try is as good as winning. He has been a safety net, a shield, and a refuge from the harsh realities of this world.

What he has unknowingly shown us is the quality of sacrifice, the need to be kind and homely, the blessings in selflessness and humility, and ultimately, living a life led by God. What he symbolises for me is the depths I should be willing to go to for the people I love, and the joy that comes with prioritising family.

Everyone honours him, respects him, shows up for him, and ultimately wants to provide value for him, and this is a testament to the fact that he honours, shows up, and provides value for others. He is a role model in every sense of the word, and any chance I get, I will never hesitate to celebrate him.

Here are my favourite things about this man;

· He loves a good chat. Our morning devotions always end in a long spiral of recollection.

· He is a giver. He will literally give you anything he could give (as far as it is financially prudent), he is our very own accountant. 🤣🤣🤣

· He loves family so much, it shows in his efforts to unify us all and just make sure we stay in proximity with ourselves.

· He works really hard and chills almost as hard. He understands the balance between working and resting.

Whilst this is definitely not the entry you might have been expecting, I just want to use this opportunity to spotlight this great man who has wrapped me under his shield and done everything in his power to ensure that my siblings and I are good.

I love you, Father!

(The Pilgrim’s Progress).

let me tell you about my father.

if i could describe him, i would write a whole book and still find it wholly insufficient..for he is the sort of man who defies the economy of words.

baami, igi leyin ogba mi: the tree behind my fence. it is honestly the most accurate way i can describe him ..he stands as trees do. rooted and generous with his shades, and it is only when the storm passes that you realise you were never once left unprotected.

mo ni baba kan, baba ara to mo’yi omo: i have a father, a wonderful father who knows the value of his children. and he has spent every single day of his life proving it

i think often of a particular evening in the car. we were making the long drive home from his workplace, he and i. my father and i are not, by habit, given to long conversation with one another. and yet that evening, as though the road itself had loosened something in him, he began to speak..not as a father dispensing wisdom to a child, but as one person, quite honestly, addressing another.

he spoke of his family. of things i had never thought to ask and had therefore never known. he spoke of his own father in terms that left me, entirely astonished...sitting there in the front seat, endeavouring to maintain some semblance of composure, and not altogether succeeding. it is a curious thing, to discover that the man one has known since the very beginning of one’s existence carries within him an entire world that one has never once thought to inquire after. i believe that was the evening i began, in the truest sense, to see him.

my father is funny..the understated kind that catches you off guard every single time. growing up, he teased my siblings and i with such consistency and skill that one could only conclude he thoroughly enjoyed it. and honestly, who could blame him.

yet it is his kindness that has always struck me most. he gives generously, to family and stranger alike, without hesitation and without keeping score. people are drawn to him..they always have been. his nature is difficult to explain and impossible to resist, and i have long stopped trying to understand it, accepting it simply as one of those beautiful things that he is.

beneath all of this is a sharp and ambitious man. my father builds with intention. he thinks with care and carries himself with a purpose that i have always admired..and, on occasion, found a little humbling.

he is the kind of man who makes you want to be better, simply by being himself.

i will not pretend that loving him has been without its soft pain. there were times i wished he would look up from his world and simply see mine.. times i wanted more of him than he perhaps knew how to give. but that, i have come to understand, is the particular ache of loving someone deeply. it only means you feel it all the more.. the longing for more time, more evenings like that one in the car, more of those long, rare conversations.

and yet, when i consider him in full.. his humour, his generosity, his steady and undemonstrative love.. what remains is this: safe. loved

i have inherited something of his kindness, i believe, and perhaps a little of his humour. but there is still much of him i am reaching toward. the way he gives of himself so naturally. the strength he carries as though it costs him nothing at all. the way he loves without condition. the way he shows up for everyone who needs him. i am still learning him. still learning, from him. and i suspect i will be for a long time yet.

he is the tree behind my fence. and i am still, most gratefully, growing in his shade.

(Gbemi Writes).

there are fathers who are absent, and there are fathers who are present. then there are fathers who exist somewhere in between.

the kind of fathers who make sure there is food on the table but don’t even sit to share the food. the kind who work tirelessly day and night to provide a life for their children, but miss so much of the life they’re working to provide for. the kind who carry so much responsibility, that they sometimes forget the people they’re carrying it for. my father is one of those men.

“let me tell you about my father..”

my father is a confusing man, he gave us reasons to smile and reasons to cry. he was close enough to reach, yet somehow always just out of reach. he filled the house with everything we needed, except the one thing we sometimes wanted most, his time.

i never knew whether to thank him, miss him, admire him, or resent him.

maybe that’s why telling his story is not as simple as it should be.

writing about my dad is indeed a sensitive topic for me. i remember when i received a message from ebun asking me to write about my father. i looked at the message, smiled , took a deep breath and replied, “yayy! i’ll for sure love to be a part of this!”

however, i immediately became quiet.

“what am i possibly going to write about this man?” that was all i could think about.

i racked my brain day and night. stared at my notes for three days and each day, still blank. i didn’t know what to write about.

then i realized that maybe i could write about how i don’t have anything to write about.

because i don’t really know my father. and that just felt really weird to admit.

because i grew up with both my parents. with love. alot of love, with a silver spoon.

with everything i ever needed on my table.

my school fees were always paid first in school. i got a new phone every year. i barely heard “no” from my parents growing up. everything i wanted was given to me.

my daddy does everything i want. if i fall sick, he becomes even more restless than i am.

my father is a working man. he leaves home by 4 and returns by 11. i only saw him during the weekends and only spoke to him over the phone.

my mummy was the only parent i knew.

she took my bath every morning. she took me to school, fed me, picked me up, paid my fees, bought my clothes.

basically, she did the job of two parents.

all my dad did was provide the money. and this was the start of all the issues.

because somewhere along the line, providing became parenting. and parenting became providing. and maybe that’s where we lost each other. a child doesn’t measure love the same way an adult does.

adults count sacrifices. children count moments.

i still don’t understand the concept of parenthood, hence why i don’t even want to marry like my parents.

not because they weren’t good parents individually to me.

because they weren’t perfect as a union.

they didn’t work hand in hand to raise us.

we grew up in nigeria. i moved to ghana at age 6, moved back here at age 12 and ever since, i just kept getting more distant from my dad. my siblings and i actually.

we learnt so many new things about him. we became wiser and saw life from a wider angle.

sometimes he made us all happy. other times, we were all sad and angry.

sometimes we aggressively loved him. other times, we all wished we grew up in another family.

while i’m writing this to appreciate my father for being a lovely father figure to me, i greatly want to appreciate my mummy for being my father and my mother.

she loved us with everything. even when she wasn’t feeling the best . just because she wanted life to be smoother for my siblings and i.

sometimes i think mothers like mine never get enough credit.

because while everyone praises the man who brought the money home, nobody sees the woman who held the home together long enough for the money to mean something.

my father loves us all with his life. that is one thing i have never doubted. but sometimes i don’t think he knows how to express it.

he forgets that sometimes it’s more than money. sometimes it’s time. sometimes it’s spending time with your family. sometimes it’s simply sitting in the sitting room and laughing with the kids and your wife while talking about what one of the neighbours did that morning. sometimes it’s just about being present.

money can build a comfortable home. presence is what makes it feel lived in.

recently, he has tried to actually be present. but because we barely know him, it has been over 10 years of absence. come on. we don’t know what to do with his presence anymore. it feels weird now.

like a stranger trying to continue a conversation that ended years ago.

my dad is so, so protective of us all.it gets really annoying sometimes.he barely wants us out of his sight now, maybe that is because he is finally trying to hold on to the time he once missed. the older i get, the more i understand my father.

unfortunately, understanding him doesn’t erase the things i missed. you can be grateful for what someone gave you and still grieve what they couldn’t.

so that’s probably what makes writing this so confusing.

because i don’t hate my dad. i love him with everything in me.and i can’t wait to give him everything he deserves in life. but i don’t know him really well either. and maybe that is the saddest part.

having a father. loving your father. being loved by your father. and still feeling like there are entire versions of him you’ll never know.

i used to think fathers were supposed to be either heroes or villains. completely good or completely bad.

but growing up taught me that most fathers are just people. human beings. tired people.

people carrying burdens their children may never fully understand.

some fathers break their backs to provide for their families.

somewhere along the way, they forget that their family needed them too.

my father was probably doing the best he knew how to do. maybe providing was his way of saying “i love you.” maybe every long drive to work, every late night, every sacrifice was his version of affection. maybe he loved us loudly in a language we didn’t understand.

and maybe we spent years needing a different language. so no, i don’t have a dramatic story about my father.

i don’t have a story filled with beautiful memories either. what i have is something much harder to explain.

i have a father who was there. and wasn’t.

a father who gave me everything. and somehow left me wanting more.

a father i love deeply. a father i am still getting to know.

now i know that’s why three days passed and i couldn’t write a single word.

i wasn’t struggling to tell his story. i was struggling to understand it.

my father loves us the best way he knows how. it just wasn’t always the way we needed.

and despite everything, if i had to tell you about my father in one sentence, i would say

he spent most of his life trying to give us a good life. and somewhere along the way, we were all started trying to find each other.

(A Day In The Life).

Let me tell you about my father.

The first thing that comes to mind is a fact about him I had forgotten until the day I typed this. The man was the definition of a road-rule breaker. He crossed red lights, drove on one-way roads, and moved around without papers.

I grew up getting used to being stopped by the police.

There was a time he lost his number plates and printed one out. For the next two years, I watched him tell whoever stopped him that it was a temporary fix and that he would get the authorized one soon.

I guess it sums up the kind of man my father is. Incredibly stubborn, a trait my siblings and I all inherited.

I’m not going to come here and try to lie to glaze my dad, because half the time I think I would be completely fine if he died, and other times I realize I still love him. It’s a deeply complicated relationship. I tell my mum to leave him, and then I turn around and receive advice from him.

Let me tell you something else about my father.

The man is really smart.

There was no subject he didn’t have an idea about. He played newspaper crosswords, his favourite mobile game is FreeCell, and his favourite logic game is Sudoku. Two games I learned to play because I wanted to know why he loved them so much.

He enjoyed watching mentally stimulating shows, and I always sat and watched with him. Aircraft Investigation and news channels were what I grew up around. To the point that anytime the AIT jingle plays, all the adults who were around when I was a kid remind me that it was my favourite song as a one-year-old.

He had a Rubik’s Cube. Our favourite unspoken game as kids was to steal the cube from his room, play with it, and, the moment we scrambled it, drop it back in his room, only to steal it again when he solved it.

He is also a tinkerer. There was nothing he couldn’t fix. The sink, the bulb, the switch, the generator, the car. If there was a handyman over, it meant that whatever issue there was was a really technical one.

A little something else about my father.

We were terribly afraid of him and gradually lost that fear as we grew into adults and developed backbones.

My dad believed strongly in the cane. We broke so many growing up, and they just kept spawning.

He was the homework parent. He would cross-check your work and flog you for any question you got wrong.

I have multiple stories that show you why—and how much—I was terribly afraid of crossing him growing up. We weren’t allowed to eat in the car because of crumbs or doze off at church. Our mum used to be our negotiator and mediator.

I think he got more lenient as he got older because the man I experienced and the man my baby brother is currently experiencing are two different people.

The man I knew lost his temper whenever he thought you were lying, and the marks and blood from cane cuts on your body after he was done with you testified to that. I still have a scar he gave me when he flogged me one time when I was seven.

But another thing about my father.

He sometimes let glimpses of his inner child slip free.

And those days are etched in my memory, from the shock of seeing Daddy be playful to eventually embracing it.

My favourite memory of him was when, as kids, he caught a pigeon.

It was shocking because he had this thing where, if our room was a mess and we were playing, he would sneak out of his room so we wouldn’t hear him—which was a feat because his door had that spring net and we never heard it—and then make us pick up every item in disarray that belonged to us. The number of items equaled the number of strokes of the cane you would get.

Anyway, that day he had snuck up on us. We noticed him because someone turned around and froze, heart in mouth, and everyone else followed. The room was a catastrophe.

Then he told us to follow him downstairs, bypassing the counting altogether.

Dreading the flogging we thought we would receive, we followed him. Instead, he led us to a carton where he proudly displayed the pigeon he had caught with his bare hands. The emotional whiplash was unreal.

He was just a guy whom life had toughened.

A guy who loved music and singing and dancing. A man who loved the song “Greenlight” by Tekno and Cuppy, because there was a part in it that sounded like they were calling our surname.

A guy who enjoyed joyrides and birdwatching and called us to enjoy those hobbies with him. That taught me how to count how many birds flew past with just a glance.

A guy whose mirth we only caught rare glimpses of.

One last thing about my dad.

I’m afraid of being like him or marrying someone like him. I don’t want any kid, if I have one, to have mixed feelings about me the way I do about him. I don’t want my kids’ friends thinking I’m dead or divorced from my partner the way my friends think of him. I want them to have majorly good things to say about me.

My dad is still growing and maybe changing, but I admittedly don’t know a lot about him. I knew his favourite song used to be “Reggae Blues” and his favourite radio station was Classic FM, but I don’t know what his favourite song or radio station is now.

We barely have a relationship.

I don’t call him, and when he calls me, he usually has something for me to do. I hear about him from the family, and he hears about me from my mum and comes to scold me for letting him hear things from her first instead of from me.

But I love him.

I do.

I should.

After all, he’s my dad.

He’s blood.

(Aw0)

Let me tell you about my father. My Father is the most amazing dad I could ever ask for. I was his little queen, and growing up, I wondered why he had such high expectations of me.

From Basic 3, he’d sit me behind a computer to type “My Self,” expecting me to type it like a pro when all I really wanted to do was play Hangaroo. My mum would always argue, “No basic 3
student can type that quickly so let her be”.

I’ve never had to go to the hospital alone, because my father was always there to take me.

As unbelievable as it may sound, I still have a hard time going by myself.

He was such an anti-injection man. It was almost funny how scared he got whenever I had to take one. I wouldn’t sit still, so he’d have to hold me, squeezing his eyes shut, holding my arm, looking away until it was over, because he didn’t want to see his baby girl cry.

He’d tell me stories under the moonlight about when he was younger, smiling the whole time as I asked him question after question. I probably have such a good imagination because of him.
He was a good cook, too. He made the best fufu and palm nut soup with my brothers, and he was always so proud of himself.

These are some of the good memories I have of my dad

There are other memories too, of someone I didn’t recognize, ones I wish I’d never had to make.

And yet, he was still my dad; he never stopped taking me to the hospital, never laid a hand on me, never raised his voice at me. He just wasn’t there the way he used to be. He was just... gone.
We never got to talk. We never saw each other again.

The last time I saw him, he was immobile, and his nails were dead. He used to have this little snore when he was just breathing casually, and I couldn’t hear that anymore. He wasn’t in his
crisp, baggy shirt and shorts, or his well-polished slippers. His ring and watch collection gone from him too.

When I saw him in that state, I thought quietly to myself: it’s been five years, and he hasn’t been there, never got to see me grow up, never got to see how much of him there was in me, never got to see how proud I made him and I understood, then, why he’d had such high expectations of me.
I was looking at a photo I took of myself on my 21st birthday, and I saw his face. I looked just like him in my ponytail, and I missed him so much.

It’s been eight years now since he left, and I wish he’d come home. I wish I could tell him that I loved him, that I wasn’t mad at him, that I’ve forgiven him. I wish I’d gone out of my way to even give him a call.

My cousin told me, two years ago, that my father loved me so much, and that he just wanted to be better for me — for all of us. He didn’t want to come back feeling he hadn’t done enough. This summed up the kind of father he was, and it broke me, because in my eyes, he was always enough. He was always a super dad who took me to school and to church in cool cars. He
was always going to be the man who made me laugh under the moonlit sky. He was always going to be the most selfless man I knew, the man who put everyone’s needs above his own and
showed up in ways no one else would.

“I am not ashamed to say that no man I ever met was my father’s equal, and I never loved any man as much... being his daughter is one of the greatest honors of my life.” I wrote this in my
tribute to him, and I will forever stand by it.

May the Good Lord continue to keep him in a safe place.

(The Beautiful Mind).

Let me tell you about my father.

What words can I use to describe him? I think the best word is simply ‘father.’ My father is a father. I know how redundant that sounds, but let me explain.

(Speak of the angel, he just walked in. Give me a sec while I hand this hardworking man his dinner at almost 9:30 PM.

Okay, I’m back.)

The root word for father is pater, which Etymonline defines as one who exercises parental care over another. That is exactly what I mean when I say my father is a father. You know how you see someone do something and you can just tell they were born to do it? That’s exactly how I feel watching my dad. It is second nature to him. He just breathes and exists as a father, as though he came into the world completely ready to be one.

One thing I always say when I talk about my dad is that he wanted to be a father. I can tell. My siblings can tell. Everybody around him can tell.

There was a day when my friends and I went out on a school night. Well, it wasn’t supposed to be a night out, just a quick pizza run after classes. But the rain started pouring and didn’t let up until around 8:00 PM, leaving us completely stranded.

We tried finding taxis to no avail, so the only thing that crossed my mind was, “Wait, my father is in this town. Why am I making myself suffer?”

I called him, slightly terrified that he would be mad at me. He wasn’t. (He hardly ever is, but I still get scared when I do something I shouldn’t.) My dad came as fast as he could and rescued us. He even went completely out of his way to drop my friends off in their area because he refused to leave them under a bridge to catch public transport at that time of night. That is the kind of man he is.

My father wasn’t always at home when I was younger. He worked in another state, so we didn’t see him as much as we wanted, but he was never absent in spirit and rarely in body, if he could help it.

All my major milestones have my dad in them: primary school graduation, secondary school graduation, and so on. (Is it obvious that my self-worth is tied to academia? I hope not.)

But he was also there for the seemingly small, inconsequential moments in between, like visiting days and random weekends where he would completely surprise us. He once whisked my brother and me away on a trip because my very pregnant mother needed a break and he wanted us to experience another city. It remains one of my fondest memories with my father.

Right now, at my big age, my father still drives me to school just like he did when I was a kid. He never rushes me to prepare. He waits patiently when I inevitably forget things in the house and have to run back inside when we’re already in the car, which happens a lot. Every single school day, he reminds me to take a bottle of water, my earpods and power bank or just carries them for me. It’s these little things that mean the most to me, because they show a quiet attentiveness and intentionality.

I genuinely believe my father’s fathering skills have gotten better with age. When I say he doesn’t rush me now, I remember a time when he used to. I can see the growth and the willingness to get better. And that’s another thing about him: he is ever-learning. He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree to add to his many certifications.

One reason I am as confident and assertive as I am today is because my father never let my voice be shut down. He always listened to me and took my concerns into consideration, even when I was as young as six. I once announced that I didn’t want to attend a particular school after we went to see it, and that was it. He didn’t enroll me there.

My father and I don’t have a perfectly straight, flawless relationship, regardless of the pristine picture I might have painted here. But we have a good, deeply functional relationship.

He has sacrificed so much for me, and the best part is that he never holds those sacrifices over my head. He doesn’t even make them look like sacrifices, though I am entirely aware they are.

I want to make him proud, not because he demands it of me, but because I am forever grateful for him.

I will always find it easy to relate to God as a good father, simply because I have a good earthly one.

Ruth ().

Let me tell you about my Father. But to be honest… words fail me.

I’m caught between my mother’s husband and my father – and I don’t know how to address both as one person. How can one man be so extraordinary and so devastating? Why do I want a man exactly like my father, but never like the husband he is? I think this is a paradox a lot of people can relate to. Is there a word for it? Is there a word that makes it hard to hate a parent because they hurt you and break their back for you at the same time?

But this entry is for my father, not my mother’s husband. I have a great deal to say about the second man but not today. Today is for my father.

*****

When I was 13, I fainted in front of his bedroom door on Christmas Eve.

If memory serves me right, it happened around 3a.m in the morning and I didn’t think twice about whose room to approach when I started feeling dizzy. One thing I remember in between my sluggish episodes was my Dad behind the wheel, driving to the hospital like the fate of the world…his world depended on it. He had one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand reaching back to check on me where I lay limp in my mum’s arms.

When I was 14, a strange man followed me home.

I like to get into details whenever I tell this story because it’s one core memory out of a million of my Dad being my protector. He sent me on an errand when a stupid dude thought it was completely normal to stalk an underage girl home in a bid to get her number and befriend her. When we got to the gate of my house, I’d told the guy to wait for me to go get a phone. Stupid dude really did. Who came out was my muscular tall Dad in a singlet, and after he was done with him, I never saw the boy in the neighborhood again.

When I was 15, and writing WAEC, my Dad waited outside the exam hall after every single paper.

It became our thing, and a bit of a local fixture. Everyone in the area knew his car and the daughter he came to pick up. The other kids knew me and the man who picked me up. At first, it was a bit embarrassing but it did me a lot of good mentally. Regardless of whether the paper I wrote was good or bad – I always walked out to a face that was happy to see me.

When I was 16 and preparing for university, my Dad did the shopping.

All of it. Down to my bra size which could be wrong or right – but he tried. During the no-cash policy period, I never lacked cash. If it meant driving in Lagos traffic, jumping buses or flying bikes, he got it to me. My Dad did that without complaining and without blackmailing me into gratitude the way most parents would.

When I was 18 and started exploring the world, my Dad was my first call.

Regardless of where I was, all it took was one phone call to him to bail me out. I genuinely believe that man carries a map of the whole world in his head. I just always assumed he’d know the location I was stuck at and the safest way to get me home. He always did and still does. My Dad comes through for me so much that I also have this naive belief that he can never be out of money.

When I was 19 and fell sick, my Dad changed my bedsheets himself.

When I was 20 and started working, my Dad developed a habit of serving me breakfast in bed whenever he could. He would lock my room’s door from the outside and keep my siblings occupied so that I could have those moments of quiet.

When I was 21, my Dad hid a pack of capri-sonnes for me from my siblings because he knows I like them.

When I was 22 and took a gap year from school, my Dad covered me. He called the school and lied about his health since my health excuse was not enough. When my phone was stolen on a bus 7 hours after I bought it, my Dad sent me the exact phone – same brand, same color, same model, same pouch – a week later in school.

I’m turning 23 soon and my Dad has been a constant in my life for over 2 decades. It’s so overwhelming that I genuinely pity the man I will eventually marry. He might not know it, but I will measure him against my Dad’s standard every single day.

My Dad is a walking green forest – if such a thing ever exists. If I am bold, it’s because of my Dad. If I am kind, it’s because of my Dad. If I am anything, it’s because my Dad is everything. He was my first introduction to feminism and made sure I saw men as my equals. He made sure I knew how to physically defend myself and made sure I knew home was always open.

“No one is coming to save you”....well, let me tell you about my father.

He would come. Every single time. For twenty-two years and more. I couldn’t have asked to be another man’s daughter. How could I? Have you met my Dad?

(20s And Fighting Life).

One day, when I was 4 years old, I woke up at 4am to one of the most horrifying sights of my life. A horde of cockroaches in my room.

It was a scene straight out of a horror movie. They were moving, flying, and walking like they owned the house. Where they came from, till today I don’t know.

All I remember is me yelling my lungs out, and my parents rushing out of their room with scared looks on their faces.

They looked at my room and were shocked to see at least 20 cockroaches just having a party in my room, and my father went into action.

He started killing them one by one. He didn’t use insecticide. He did it the old-fashioned way: broom, like a real man.

From left to right, my father was swatting and hitting. He was out for blood. Nobody and nothing would scare his first son, the heir of his properties (which belongs to his Igbo babe anyways).

It was a cockroach genocide, and my father was Hitler.

That night, he became Superman in my eyes. My protector, my warrior.

When you come of age as a man, there’s an untold pressure that settles on your neck. One of quiet protection and steady provision. Everywhere in the world.

My father’s hustle story is my design for life. To me, my father is a better hustler than Elon Musk, because he rose from the trenches of trenches to become a man of ways and means.

He rose through hard work to become a respectable person in society, and as he moved up he also dragged his family along with him.

My dad is my hero. Not in the generic way that we talk about in papers or companies mention as they design their flyers.

No no no. He is my superhero because struggles after struggles have come, and none have been able to break him. He has remained steadfast, strong, and unwavering despite it all.

My father is the epitome of solutions. He knows the right things to say, the next step to take, the best approach to a subject. He is the one you go to when shit starts to go south. He is also the one you go to when shit has actually gone very far south.

He isn’t perfect, but he tries his best.

For me, it’s all about balance. My father’s story is one of resilience and steadfastness, but it also comes with a lot of apprehension around money.

And that for me is where the empathy comes in.

The understanding that my father isn’t perfect.

Everything I am today is because of him. From my mannerisms to my opinions on certain things.

He isn’t just my father, he is my framework for life.

I will never leave my children. I will never be a deadbeat dad. I will never not be a protector.

My father’s mistakes are the stepping stones for me to become a better father.

My children will never be apprehensive to tell me what’s wrong with them. My children will be mushy and soft with me. They will be vulnerable with me.

Weekends were a big deal in my family growing up. We looked forward to having our dad at home, because during the week he was barely home.

He would wake up at 4am, leave the house at 5am, and come home by 10pm.

He would still find time to sit with the family and watch TV before everyone went to bed.

He would doze off anyway, and I would mock him.

Now I’m the one dozing off when I get home. The tides don change gan.

But those days of very short sleep has paid off, because today my family is shielded in a way from the horrors of this society we call home.

I can move through life confidently, knowing my father gat me.

I can punch someone on the nose, because my father can bail me out.

Will he yell? Yes.

Will he call me names? Yes.

But he will bail me out. That’s for sure.

He has laid that groundwork, and is still doing it to this day.

In movies, the hero is faced with several battle and never gives up.

My father is that hero.

He is determined that his children would never go through what he did.

That, for me is the height of love.

He isn’t perfect, no one is. But he is the best, and that’s all that matters.

For him, he has done all he can for his children. He has emptied himself and poured everything into us.

I agree, and I plan to do the same for mine.

Precious ().

Let me tell you about my father: Daddy Favour became a man when He was a boy. I still remember that night my dad told his girls with fury in his eyes, “I came to Lagos at 16 and started running my race.” Somehow that statement gave me perspective into the childhood He had. He was thrust into adulthood early, lived with different uncles from get go and home was never just one place. He worked so hard like tomorrow depended on it. because it did.

Daddy reminds me of my heavenly father in many ways, He has shown me that you cannot separate love from sacrifice. My father does not say I love you in words, He says it in the prayers He makes for me and my siblings every morning, in the way He tells us who we can become. My father does not say I love you, but I am convinced that I am deeply loved. When I look at our early years and the version of our lives today, tears sting my eyes. Daddy has made sure all his children get the best Education because He understands that exposure widens your vision. I am learning everyday to extend grace to my dad because He is living life for the first time too. I am because my Father is. I am my father’s daughter.

(EbunWrites).

My name is Kendrick Duckworth Lamar, and I want to tell you about my father…

He was present, and that shaped everything about my life and the way I lived, including the rules, the moments of silence, and the tension between the things we said and left unsaid between us.

In the home I grew up in, danger didn’t always come from outside. It also came from within those very four walls that were supposed to protect me.

At a young age, I learnt that survival is about as much as learning how to move inside your own home as it is about learning how to survive in the streets.

My father knew a lot, a lot more than I gave him credit for when I was younger.

Unfortunately, knowing and teaching are two different things, and in that gap between experiencing both as he raised me, I found myself learning things I probably shouldn’t have learnt yet.

I learnt how to read the pressure in the room and how to stay alert, and I learnt how to hide my emotions from everyone around me.

“Men should never show feelings,” he’d repeat to me often. “Being sensitive never helped any man.”

Everything else that he didn’t teach me, I learnt from the outside world, and if my father was “cruel” in imparting lessons to me, the outside world wasn’t any kinder.

I carried around a lot of things I picked up from him without even realising it.

I reacted to loss with the same dismissiveness, and I struggled to let ego bruises go. I had his same pride too… always refusing to bend even when bending was ultimately for my good.

There were days I wanted to break out of that pattern, but I felt stuck. I had learnt many limitations too early, and they were now harder to unlearn later.

In his defence, my father had had his own way of preparing me for life.

Toughness was part of it, and so was restraint, and so was this unspoken rule that emotions were not something you leaned on for any reason.

“Trust nobody, son. Only your mama and your family,” he’d say.

At the time, I didn’t understand all these lessons and the brutish manner in which he taught them, but I grew up learning them anyway, and over time, they became my default.

Some days, I loved my father; other days, I hated him, but as I got older, I started to see the cracks of his own story.

I saw the limitations he was working with, and I saw his desperation to pass down the things he never received from his own father to me, in the only manner he knew how to.

My father was as impactful on me as he wanted to be, but his impact was complicated because, while I inherited his lessons, I also inherited his flaws.

The difference between us, however, is that I’m learning which ones I can carry forward and which ones I need to stop repeating.

If I ever become a father, it’s crucial for me that I don’t make the same mistakes.

So, when I think about my father now, I don’t think in absolutes.

He’s not hero, and he’s not villain; he’s just a man who shaped me, both for the good and for the bad.

His responsibility was to make a man out of me, and he did.

Now it’s my responsibility to decide the kind of man I want to make out of myself.

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Thank you for reading.

If you have a story of yours to share too… regardless of whatever it is and however it goes… I’d love to hear it.

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Thank you to all my authors for participating.

See you again in September for A Tale of 20 Authors #4.

Part 1…

Part 2…

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(The date is 15/1/2025 as I write this. I’m definitely not posting it today, but I’m time-stamping it so we’ll see when I do post it.

If I ever do…)

The day you left me, I didn’t cry.

Crying has never been my default response to pain.

I just hold it in and let it wash over me, then I get my head up and keep it moving.

I thought I was going to be able to do that again, but boy, how wrong I was.

I miss you.

I miss so much.

And it hurts.

It hurts so bad.

I really thought I knew what it was like to be heartbroken, but last time barely compares to what I’ve felt for the past few days.

I keep trying to remind myself that it’s for the best.

That it was a mutual split, that it was rational, and that it was the sensible thing to do.

“Better now than later” was what we said.

And we were right; I know we were.

So why does it still hurt this much?

Why can’t the logical part of my brain accept the logic in us going our separate ways and process it the way it does the other regular, everyday emotions?

I don’t understand and it’s killing me.

This ache in my heart is killing me.

I think I’m okay for a minute.

Then suddenly I remember.

I remember you.

I remember that I can’t reach out to you. Or call you. Or text you all day. Or talk about anything at all. Or watch you sleep off on the call. Or even know how you’re doing.

Then the ache returns and it tears at my heart.

Deep and ferocious.

Unforgiving in the way it heightens every other emotion and makes me want to get swallowed by the ground.

The worst part is that I know you’re probably feeling this way too.

I know you didn’t want to leave. But you had to. You had way more to lose than I did.

You took the decision I was too cowardly to take.

And now you’re probably suffering for it.

You’ve probably cried a million times. Probably had a million thoughts about so many things.

It sucks that I can’t be there.

I can’t “comfort” you.

I can’t call you to tell you that you’ll be fine. That I’ll be fine too. That we’ll be okay.

And it kills me.

It hurts so so much.

I can’t stop thinking about you.

No matter how hard I try. I just can’t.

I tell myself that it’s because it’s still early days.

When an emotional bond as intense and short-lived as ours gets ferociously torn apart, it’s inevitable that we bleed.

That’s just the way of the heart.

But the truth is, deep down, I really don’t want to stop thinking about you.

I don’t want to let go.

I don’t want to forget anything that we shared.

I don’t want to forget you.

The ache in my chest is amplified again as I write this.

Why am I even writing this?

I’m not going to send it to you.

“No contact.”

Isn’t that how it works?

So, why am I doing this?

Why can’t I accept that what we had is over?

I’ve listened to “Bire” like a thousand times today.

I’m too scared to turn off the music because the silence will leave me alone with my thoughts.

I’m too scared to be idle, but I can’t even concentrate on anything else.

Too scared to be left alone with the ache.

I have no regrets about us, I promise.

But I keep wondering…

Did we get too attached too fast?

Did we make the right decision?

Could we have found a better, less hurtful compromise?

Is this really the end?

What could we have become if the circumstances were different and we could change that one thing that left us this way?

Is this the end of our friendship too?

So many questions…

Questions with zero answers because you’re not here to answer them.

And because enough time hasn’t passed for their answers to be revealed.

I can’t even act like I’ve been here before.

Because I haven’t.

Yes, I’ve lost emotional bonds before, but nothing like this.

And none of them even came close to comparing to you.

I’ve prayed for comfort.

For peace.

And I’ve had peace, for the most part.

I thank God.

But there come those moments when I just feel it.

And can’t avoid feeling it.

That ache of loss.

Was the heart built to break?

If it was, then it sure does a very good job at it.

Your radio silence kills me.

Just gone. Like that. Nothing.

Is this a sample of what grief is like?

If so, then my heart breaks even more for anybody who’s had to experience it.

But you’re okay.

I know you’re okay.

You’re just moving on.

I should do the same.

I know.

I know.

I know I should be moving on too, I do.

I will.

I know myself, I will.

I’ll wake up one morning and I’ll be okay, and I’ll laugh at myself for the way I’ve been so emotional since you left.

It’s so out of character, but I’ve decided to allow myself to feel, and to wallow, and to hurt.

Even if it’s just this once.

Because losing you… losing you is worth grieving over.

So, I’ll grieve now, then I’ll move on later.

There’s no point in holding on.

I know that.

But…

But how am I supposed to move on from you when your solace is the only thing my heart now so desperately craves?

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I randomly found this post in my drafts and I decided I’m now fine with sharing it.

I’m too lazy to write anything from scratch anyways.

In case you’re new here, I wrote something similar to this some months later when I was in a much calmer headspace-

And yes, it’s the same person.

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Yesterday (Friday), American businessman Elon Musk became (as has been widely reported) the first human being to ever reach a trillion-dollar net worth.

This happened largely due to yesterday’s SpaceX IPO listing and the massive valuation shifts around all of his companies (Tesla, xAI, etc).

Last year, when Elon became the richest man in the world (again), I had an inkling that he was going to do everything in his power to cross that Trillion-Dollar mark.

I mean, it only makes sense, right? Why stop at hundreds of billions when you could add more hundreds of billions? Are you insane or something?

Anyways, he ended up doing exactly that yesterday, so I’m not really surprised.

What’s surprising to me, however, is just how “little” time it took. I definitely wasn’t expecting it to happen in less than a year.

In mid-2025, Elon Musk’s net worth hovered around $423 billion; in late 2025, his net worth reached around $500 billion, and now, in June 2026, following the record-breaking public debut of SpaceX on the Nasdaq, his fortune has surged to an estimated $1.1 trillion.

In case you’re not good with numbers, that’s $1,100,000,000,000.

That is a LOT of money.

It’s mind-boggling if you care enough to think deep about it.

Now, while I do have some personal reservations about Elon Musk as a person, especially due to popular perceptions around his public image and the fact that he has made a lot of promises over the years that haven’t really been fulfilled in the way people (investors) expected, I still think there are some interesting things to discuss about this topic.

So, I’m going to dive in.

If you want to read more about Elon’s brilliant image laundering tactics and sometimes underhanded (corrupt) dealings, you should read this brief but accurate piece:

Paul Krugman

Elon Musk, Human Ponzi Scheme

Yesterday I took a short trip. I began with a ride on the local Hyperloop, which ran through a tunnel dug by Boring Company. Then I used my neural implant to summon a fully self-driving Tesla robotaxi. While enroute I read the latest news from the Mars colony…

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2 months ago · 3441 likes · 548 comments · Paul Krugman

Whether you like him or not, it’s hard to ignore the fact that one man having this much money is really insane, and there are a few different angles that you can look at it from.

We can argue about the ethics of it and whether it is moral for a person to have this much wealth in a world where about 682 million people (8.5% of the world population) are living in extreme poverty.

We can also play devil’s advocate and argue that Elon Musk is not Jesus Christ, the saviour of the world, so he doesn’t have any global “obligations”, and whatever he does with his wealth is his business.

Or we could take the classic Elon-glazer route and say that since he’s such a flawless, intellectual genius that’s going to take us all to Mars in our self-driving rocket cars, then he can have as many trillions as he wants.

Whichever route you decide, that’s up to you.

However, the basic conclusion is that this…

…is absolutely ridiculous.

One thing I’ve observed is that a lot of people don’t really understand how having this kind of money works.

Many people think that if someone is worth billions or millions of dollars (or whatever other currency), then it means that they have a bank account with that many zeroes or they have bags of cash stored in a safe somewhere.

Some people even say that all billionaires should be forced to give out all their money so that everybody becomes rich too, and while this might be a “joke”, all it does is reflect a certain level of ignorance that’s at play.

Wealth at such a level doesn’t work that way.

It’s not cash sitting somewhere waiting to be shared or a bank balance that can be easily transferred to another account.

When you hear someone having any currency in its “trillions” or “billions”, or even “millions” in many cases, that worth is mostly tied to valuations (stocks, ownership, companies, and assets).

This is why if, for example, SpaceX suddenly drops from its current value (which it will, soon enough), Elon’s “trillion” can quickly become $700 billion or $600 billion in just a few hours. Meaning that number in itself isn’t as stable as many people imagine.

Regardless, though, having that amount of money linked to just one person is still very crazy.

The question I’ve been asking myself, like J. Cole did, is: How much does one man need?

And I’ve also been asking myself: What does one man even do with all that money?

We all know Elon Musk is big on unconventional ideas like travelling to Mars, establishing humans on other planets, electric and self-driving cars, robotics, and all of the other future tech visions he’s been talking about and getting investors excited about for decades.

And, yes, to be fair, he has made progress in some of those areas.

However, a lot of his promises are still very far off from what he originally sold to the public, especially when you think about how long ago some of them were first talked about and the level of hype that initially came with them.

He still claims yearly that they are “working hard” to bring these lofty dreams to reality, so let’s just give him the benefit of the doubt and say almost all that money is being funnelled toward that purpose.

But if it were you that were reading this who had a trillion dollars, what would you use it to do?

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A more interesting question is: What if Elon Musk actually shared his trillion dollars with everyone on Earth?

Would we all become rich? Would it solve world poverty? Would a lot of people start living more comfortable lives?

Well… NO.

Not at all, honestly, and not even close.

Vaguely, telling all the world’s billionaires to dissolve their wealth and share it with everybody sounds like a brilliant idea, but when you break it down, it doesn’t really make much sense.

If you are to divide a trillion dollars among all the people on Earth (approximately 8 billion), you’re looking at roughly $120–$125 per person.

Okay, for some people, maybe that might help them for some time, but for some others, it will barely do anything.

So, it’s not exactly the kind of money that’s going to be changing anybody’s life permanently, at least not if it were shared with everybody in the world.

Which means that the assumption that “if rich people just shared all their money, everyone would be rich” is very flawed.

It’s just not that simple, and the reason, I believe, is because poverty has less to do with money and more to do with structural systems. Systems that money can be used to influence.

Let’s say there are two towns:

In the first town, everything is structured. Schools are fully equipped, roads are smooth, there’s stable electricity, and businesses are operating and thriving properly.

There’s an overall level of order, infrastructure, and stability in that town.

In that kind of place, even a small amount of money can go a long way because people will be able to build on it, and it can multiply over time.

But in the second town, it’s the complete opposite.

Everything is unstable, schools are poorly equipped, basic infrastructure is poor, crime is high, and businesses are struggling to survive.

Even if you are to give people money in such a place, a lot of it will go into their basic survival or get absorbed by the environment itself.

So, you can share the same amount of money with citizens of both towns and have completely different outcomes after the same amount of time.

Why? That critical difference in surrounding structures.

It’s the reason you can have a world where extreme wealth exists in one place, and extreme poverty exists in another, all at the same time.

I’ve already written a more detailed article about this:

Anyways, that’s all said just to answer the question many people have been asking, jokingly or not.

Yes, it’s crazy for one man or a group of men to have so much money, but even if all that money were shared with everyone on Earth, it still wouldn’t magically fix everything.

Maybe in some already advanced nations, but definitely not everywhere in the world.

Another interesting thought I had last night was that, at a certain point, “wealth” stops being about buying luxury cars, expensive houses, travelling the world, or extravagant public displays of raucous spending.

That version of “rich” is what many people have, and it is still visible, still easy to understand, and still “relatable” to most people in a way.

Extreme wealth, on the other hand, moves completely differently.

The purpose of having that kind of money is less about consumption and display and more about having and holding influence over systems, governments, and world-impacting decisions.

That’s the level where figures like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos sit, and it’s a completely different category.

Their wealth is not just tied to what they can buy (what can’t you buy with a billion dollars?) but to what they can fund, scale, influence, or shape across entire industries.

At that level, money starts to touch things like large-scale technology development, infrastructure and logistics networks, space exploration and communication systems, artificial intelligence and automation, and global supply chains and digital platforms.

That is the kind of wealth that can be used to “control”, because it has the power to influence where capital flows, what gets built faster, which ideas get backed, and how quickly certain industries and innovations move and scale.

It’s no longer about showing anything off because, most times, there’s not even anything to show, as the real impact of the money is embedded inside systems most people use every day without thinking about who funds or owns them.

This exact point is the biggest concern I have about the current distribution of wealth in the world.

On one hand, concentrated wealth can be used to accelerate innovation and development in ways that are difficult for governments or public systems to do on their own.

For example, artificial intelligence, whether for good or bad, has advanced speedily in the past few years because we have companies and governments that have been throwing billions upon billions into its development.

However, on the other hand, concentrated wealth can also be very dangerous because it allows single individuals or small groups of people to have a large amount of “control” over systems that affect millions or even billions of people.

Which means they can push certain agendas, facilitate regime changes through election influences, advance their selfish interests, facilitate massive crowd engineering, and – worst of all, as we’ve seen in the case of Jeffrey Epstein – commit a lot of evil against humanity and get away with it.

This slight but massive gap between visible luxury and invisible influence is what both impresses and unsettles me greatly about the extreme wealth that certain individuals have.

And it’s something I ponder upon every now and then.

Money is fascinating, and conversations about and around money can be very enthralling to have.

I believe money is worth understanding as an entity, as a tool, and maybe even as a spirit, to an extent.

Too much or too little, money can have devastating or beneficial consequences.

I’m not the type to gatekeep or dictate what anybody does with their money, especially if they’ve worked hard to get it and have not harmed anybody else in the process.

I mean, it’s yours; spend it how you want it.

But my personal belief is that anybody that has money or is chasing money or trying to make money for the sole purpose of self-aggrandisement has not yet fully understood what money can do and therefore will not fully maximise its potential.

You can have money and be focused on consumerism, and you can have money and be more focused on making a larger impact.

I’m not saying everybody needs to have charities or donate all their money to the poor, but I’m saying that if you look around, there is always something you can do, someone you can help, and a situation you can influence.

I mean, that has to be the larger purpose of money at the end of the day. What else could it be?

After all, we don’t really need much to survive and thrive as humans, and everything else after food, clothing, and shelter becomes us indulging in luxury and frivolities.

It’s not that doing so is wrong in itself; I’m just encouraging you not to become self-consumed with money or by money.

It’s this self-consumption that leads many people to do so much evil to get this money in the first place.

If you start thinking of money in terms of a tool outside yourself and outside your personal needs, you’ll find out there are many great things money can be used to do.

Desire money so you can influence and not only so you can spend, that’s all I’m saying.

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The first was that I wasn’t entirely sure what my intention for publishing it would be.

Why did I want to make a post like this, and what did I aim to achieve?

After a lot of pondering and silently asking God to allow my heart to be in the right place, I was finally able to establish my reason.

And my reason is simple: I’m TIRED of the way many of us portray God, His Ways, and His Wisdom on this app and on the broader internet in general.

I’m genuinely tired.

I’m tired of reading half-assed “defences” of God, I’m tired of personal opinions being presented as established doctrine, I’m tired of theological and contextual ignorance, I’m tired of the Bible being used to justify ridiculous things, and I’m tired of the real questions being avoided and genuine concerns being dismissed with the same old convenient religious notions…

I’m just tired.

And as much as God loves us, I’m very sure He’s also not pleased with the way we handle and discuss matters and subjects that relate to Him.

He might appreciate the effort and desire when it’s genuine, but deep down, I’m very sure He wants us to do better.

On the surface level, I’m pleased to see people stand up to defend the gospel and the nature of God anytime it’s questioned or misinterpreted, and I know a few writers on here who do this exceptionally well.

However, it’s also very displeasing to see people try to “defend” God, just to end up failing miserably or having whatever defense they present get shredded into pieces.

It’s a painful sight to see.

So, my intention for this article is to appeal to or plead with or demand from — whatever term you want to use — Christian writers to DO BETTER.

My second reservation before publishing this article was that I didn’t want to be misunderstood.

Now, as much as I try to deliver my perspectives through simple and easy-to-understand articles, there still remains that off chance that someone somewhere will miss my entire point, make their own deductions, and then respond back to me based on notions they generated by themselves.

That’s fine by me because I genuinely don’t see being misinterpreted as my problem.

However, when writing on subjects like today’s own, and considering the fact that the overall goal is to educate and inform, I’m inclined (and maybe even obligated) to go a step further to ensure that my points are not misunderstood.

Now, usually, I like to deliver my points through implied statements, but with the above paragraph in mind, allow me to spell it out LOUD and CLEAR that this post is not a call for Christian writers or writers who are followers of Christ to “shut up/keep quiet” or to stop writing and speaking on certain issues.

So, before you tag me as an “enemy of the gospel” or repeat the same quoted lines of “God’s word doesn’t bend, so we mustn’t bend too” or “We must speak the truth even when it’s harsh,” I want you to know that I’m actually on your side.

As long as your side is the one that aims to deliver the genuine wisdom of God that’s free from personal biases and religious/cultural adulterations with truthful accuracy and emotional compassion.

If that’s your desire too, then you should have no problem with this article by the time you’re done reading it.

That being said, let’s get into it.

Note - When I say “Christian Writers,” I don’t only mean writers who put out Christian content, but also Christians in general who write or speak about the gospel in any way, manner, or form.

The first point I want to make is that you, as a Christian, do not have to write on every issue.

I promise you, you don’t.

God is supreme and powerful, and as much as He wants His ways established on Earth, He’s also not looking for cheap publicity or mediocre promotion.

So, you don’t have to force Him into every debate, conversation, or trending topic.

And when I say “force,” I don’t mean mention or refer to; I mean mention or refer to in a manner that’s not done properly or tactfully.

I understand the desire to refer to the ways and wisdom of God when certain aspects of life are mentioned, but what I don’t understand is the desire to impose them in a manner that’s almost overtly aggressive.

There were many times in the Bible when people tried to bait Jesus into responses and trick him into saying certain things, and He always knew when to respond with silence or with wisdom.

Sometimes he spoke, sometimes he ignored, sometimes he changed the topic.

If Jesus Himself didn’t feel the need to address every stray comment or opinion or issue that was surrounding Him despite carrying more passion for God than any other human, then why do you?

Why do we?

And before you counter me with the fact that Jesus was always eager to correct wrongs and call out errors, my point is not that we should never speak out on or against things.

Of course, we should.

However, we must learn to only speak when it’s absolutely necessary, and we must be discerning enough to know how to approach certain matters with wisdom, emotional maturity, and the right amount of aggression.

Once again, Jesus knew how to do this well.

This balance is exactly what I’m advocating for.

It’s even very critical because there are a lot of mischievous people who intentionally stir up trouble around religious topics and sentiments in a bid to get some attention and reactions.

And when you now react to them, they will try to twist your words or manipulate your responses to mean things that were completely different from what you said.

We need to know when to speak and when not to speak.

It’s the wisdom in knowing this that allows our words and opinions to hold value when we finally do express them.

Yes, like Jesus, we must not bend the truth, however harsh as it might sound, or however much it might offend some people, but we must also do this in a manner that doesn’t condemn the people who need the things we’re saying or isolate us from them.

This principle applies to all topics that cover human endeavour, and also particularly to the “popular” topics that come up more often than others.

Topics such as marriage, abortion, sexuality, eternity, raising a family, tithing, socio-political involvement, doctrines of all kinds, etc.

Whatever the discussion of the day is, and whether you’re writing an article about it or writing a reply to an article about it, we must always ensure that our responses are not skewing the nature of God or dragging anybody down.

When I write rebuttals, I prefer a blunt and direct style, so, many times, I always have to be extra cautious that I don’t cross that thin line between criticality and condemnation.

That balance, once again, is very important.

Before you speak on any issue in relation to God, no matter how “hot” the discussion is or no matter how many other people are speaking on it, you need to ensure that you’re doing it for the right reason.

The truth is that many of us don’t, and that’s why we end up writing things that make the angels in Heaven facepalm and sigh in resignation.

I’m not trampling on anybody’s effort to be a propagator of the gospel; I’m just saying that it’s better to not do it at all than to not do it right.

Because when you don’t do it right, you can undermine the effort of the others who are, and make their work even more difficult.

And this brings me nicely to my next question: Do you even know or understand what you’re writing about or the topic you’re addressing?

Sad to say, but many Christians don’t have any proper knowledge about many of the topics that they discuss in public spaces.

It’s either their understanding of the topic is too shallow, or they only have second-hand knowledge about the subject, or their argument is heavily riddled with inconsistencies, or they just struggle with the articulation and presentation of their points.

I’ve seen all this in play before, sometimes all at once, and it’s just so painful to witness.

Very often, I get second-hand embarrassment when I see someone make a “Christian” post concerning a topic, just to end up getting cooked in the comments or in the replies because of the ridiculousness of the way they presented their point.

Unfortunately, especially here on Substack, the latter is more common.

That’s why I want to, again, plead or appeal or demand that before we speak on any issue of any kind, we must ensure that we have enough knowledge and understanding about it.

Not just in Christianity, but also in all topics that cut across all spheres of life.

It is very ill-advised for you to enter a debate, argument, or specific conversation without substantial theoretical, experiential, or practical knowledge about what you’re discussing.

Matters of the kingdom and the gospel notwithstanding.

A doctor needs at least 8 years of medical training before he can diagnose your illness, and a lawyer needs at least 5 years of legal training before he can defend your rights.

So, why do you think you can speak on the biblical topics without doing your due diligence of studying, meditation, internalisation, and learning through teaching?

Why?

If the knowledge you use to defend your football club comes from years of experience through watching and analysing, why is the knowledge you want to use to defend God shallow and porous?

Think about it.

We must not fall into the trap of encouraging mediocrity in matters that relate to our faith.

The prevalent culture of doing this is the reason we have many ignorant preachers, fake pastors, and doctrinally flawed ministries around the world.

And it’s the reason we have many “men of God” who lack wisdom and discipline and found themselves in the “ministry” because it was the easiest thing they could make it at.

It shouldn’t be this way.

I understand that we can’t use the same black-and-white template of secular knowledge in Christianity due to the key differential factor, which is personal revelation by the Holy Spirit.

However, the Bible remains the litmus test for all forms of wisdom, doctrines and opinions; therefore, it’s up to us to ensure that we are well-versed in certain topics pertaining to it before we speak about them in public and share our opinions with others.

This will save us the shame of being embarrassed for being wrong or not knowing what we’re saying, and it will mitigate the risk of us imparting the wrong knowledge into the rightly curious soul of another person.

Of course, none of us can ever really know EVERYTHING, and since we’re constantly learning, time and time again, it’s normal in the process of growth for us to make errors or have misconceptions.

However, if we’re going to be openly giving opinions or openly refuting the opinions of others, we must make sure that we have the right knowledge that’s needed per topic and per context.

Read the Bible regularly; study it, in fact, the same way you’d study a textbook. Read books. Listen to teachings. Take notes. Learn theology. Ask questions, even the difficult ones. Listen to balanced sermons consistently.

These are the only ways to grow in wisdom and understanding, and it’s how we’ll ensure that we’re always ready to give a proper and suitable answer whenever our faith is questioned.

The truth is that even if people don’t agree with what you’re saying, they can always tell when you’re speaking from conviction and understanding.

So, even if they don’t believe in God or in the Bible, they will still accord you with respect because you’re knowledgeable about what you’re saying.

And this respect leaves room for you to speak to them again in the future, because they’ll be willing to hear what you have to say.

That, to me, is better than getting called out in a conversation or argument and ending up embarrassed because you yourself don’t fully understand the points you’re making or trying to defend.

It would be hard for anybody to listen to you again after that.

And, finally, it’s also not a crime to not know things or to not have the answers that someone needs at a particular time or the answers that you yourself need.

Saying “I honestly don’t know, at the moment” or “I don’t have enough knowledge about that topic yet”, or even just keeping quiet, is 100x better than forcing a reply in a bid to save face and then getting caught out.

Yes, people might laugh at you and question the authenticity of your faith, but that’s when you must remember that it’s belief in Jesus that saved you in the first place, and not your wisdom about Him.

So, it’s okay not to know EVERYTHING.

The onus just falls on you now to ensure that you’re learning the right things and knowing the right things that you need to know, per time.

Fortunately for us, we have more access to knowledge than any other generation before us, so we really don’t have any excuses.

In today’s fallen world, God is hated, Jesus is hated, and the Christian faith is hated.

And even in cases where the situation is not outright hate, there’s still a lot of confusion, questions, and justified pushback toward the three entities mentioned above and the people who believe or support them.

So, it’s inevitable that there will be opposition of all kinds toward you, especially if you choose to be loud and proud about the things you believe in.

It’s always been like that, and we’ve been told by our spiritual progenitor that it will always be like that.

There’s no escaping it, unfortunately, at least, not yet, anyway.

I believe that we even have it easier, to an extent.

The same opinion that you expressed in a blog article that’s making people “drag” you with insulting comments and harsh replies, is the same opinion that other believers were once dragged on the streets by horses for expressing.

If you put out a well-written and doctrinally correct article about something, and you get blowback from it, just turn off your phone when the pushback starts to affect you.

Or mute the comments and don’t look at it at all.

Or just do literally anything else.

Easy fix, simple as that.

In this same world today, people are being burnt to death for sharing the same faith that you’re sharing, so consider yourself lucky that your persecution starts and ends on the internet.

And like I said before (repeating for the hundredth time for emphasis), this is not a call for the withdrawal of opinions or the convenient censorship of the truth that we believe in.

We, as Christians, have to speak. We have to keep speaking, and we have to remain involved.

People will try to convince us that Christians need to “stay out” or “stay away” from certain spheres of life, but I strongly disagree.

So, as “light of the world” and as “salt of the earth”, we can’t stop shining and sweetening, but we must ensure to do it in the right manner to ensure that we achieve our intended purpose.

We should not be overly conformist, but we must not also be repulsive to the same people we are trying to reach.

Too much light is blinding, and too much salt can literally kill, so we need to know how to dish what we have in the right doses and in the proper proportion that’s needed per time.

It won’t make any sense if all that we have is reserved only for our private use in churches and Christian spaces when there’s a whole world out there that needs it.

But it also won’t make sense for us to go out into that world and end up chasing and repelling away everyone who needs it because we refuse to apply wisdom in our dealings.

Balance is the key to everything in life.

Also, please, I want to BEG – like I’m literally on my knees (I’m not); let us start exploring different topics to write about.

It’s not every time that you must write on marriage or abortion or homosexuality or the “head of the home”, please.

We’re just flogging dead horses at this point.

Enough people are already speaking on those things, let’s try to do something else.

The wisdom of God is too vast, too dynamic, and wayyyy too deep for us to limit it to discussing the same old things every single time.

We’ve almost made it seem like all God is concerned about is ordering people around and creating restrictive and unbearable rules and demands for humans to live by.

That’s not true.

Does He have guidelines that we should adhere to? Definitely.

Is that all He’s all about? Definitely NOT.

You can write about God’s idea for creativity, for nation-building, for wealth creation, for technological advancement, for personal relationships, for… literally every other thing that relates to life and living.

I’m tired of the same old topics: “submissive wife”, “gay Christian”, “my view on abortion”, “why I can’t marry a Christian feminist” – like, we get it. It’s okay.

It’s enough.

I’m not saying that these topics should be completely tossed out of the window – they are all important in their own right – I’m just saying we should zoom out and stop hyperfocusing on them and start to address other equally important issues.

The generations before us made this same mistake of restricting God to two to three areas of life, and we must not do the same.

If you’re going to attract people into the kingdom of God with your words, you CANNOT do so by constantly attacking and berating the things they currently believe in.

All that will do is to create a defence that will be difficult to permeate.

All you need to do is to simply show them the superior wisdom of God in a direction that matters to them and leave the conviction of the Holy Spirit to do the rest.

The right amount of light is what illuminates a room, and the right amount of salt is what sweetens a dish.

God help all of us, amen.

Peace.

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I got this burden months ago, and it led me to create the Newsletter.

The objective of Counter Cultural was simply to write articles that display and reveal the multi-dimensional wisdom of God, free from overly cultural and religious biases and adulterations.

However, I’ve not been active enough on it as I should’ve, despite having so many unwritten and uncompleted drafts.

This is an admission to sluggishness on my part, and I will try by best, by the special grace of God, to do better in the coming weeks.

If I’m going to address the topic of this article, then I can at least go further in my action by being the change I want to see and taking the lead.

If you’re interested in reading balanced, engaging, and enlightening articles that relate to God and the Christian Faith, then you should subscribe to .

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One – I graduated from the university with a good grade, one that I had no problems with, so this post is not a copium of any kind.

Two – This post is not in any way trying to belittle academic excellence or invalidate the joys of academic validation.

Keep these two things in mind as I explain to you in a very simple manner why the Cumulative Grade Point Average system used by many universities and colleges around the world is an unfair metric to determine the intellectual capability of a person.

And why you, as a student or ex-student, would be doing yourself a disservice by tying your worth or future career confidence in a decimal number, whether high or low.

If it gets uncomfortable or triggering in the process, just stay with me, and if it gets overly satisfying and indulgent, then you’ve probably misunderstood my point.

One of the biggest flaws of the educational system, at least, in this part of the world, is that we were never truly taught what it is to learn or how exactly to learn.

We were taught different theoretical and practical subjects, and we were regularly bombarded with different styles and methods of teaching, but almost none of them were directed at teaching us how to study, assimilate, and recollect information.

This is why the way many of us “studied” back in school was simply by rereading lecture slides, rewriting the notes, and highlighting different portions.

Have you ever wondered why most of your preparation for exams included hours of writing down the things you already jotted down before?

How many of those things did you remember again hours after the exam?

Let’s be honest, we weren’t really trying to understand what we were reading; we were just trying to remain familiar with it. Familiar enough to pour it out on the exam page.

And who could blame us? After all, the most important thing was to pass the exams; who cares what came after?

That is why many students can score high grades in a course and, a few months later, barely remember anything they learnt.

Not necessarily because they have poor retention ability, but because they’ve mastered playing along with a system that prioritises short-term performance over long-term understanding.

And many people go through this cycle for years and years before they discover much later in life that true understanding comes from teaching others, practical application, repetition over time, problem-solving, discussion, active recall, and simplifying concepts in your own words.

I was lucky enough to have discovered this back in school when I realised that I retained information about topics faster by explaining them to someone else as simply as possible.

Anytime I could do that properly without breaking a sweat, then I was ready to go.

The traditional educational structure was built around standardisation, and despite the fact that humans and technology have evolved a lot since it was first established, this structure hasn’t changed a lot, and many learning curriculums still adopt it.

Back then, a method was needed to evaluate millions of students quickly, so examinations and grading systems became the unconscious and default yardstick for intelligence and competence.

However, the problem is that human brilliance is far too multidimensional to be accurately captured by a single number on a transcript.

Some people are naturally exceptional at communication; others excel at leadership. Some thrive in storytelling, or creativity, or emotional intelligence, or innovation, or entrepreneurship, or practical problem-solving.

And since many of these things are difficult to measure inside a classroom or be measured by a 2-hour examination, the areas of strengths of many students are, for many years, left dormant and idle.

Some of such students are then left feeling inadequate and incompetent, or wholly criticised by parents and teachers alike.

Unfortunately, in many societies, academic performance was and is still heavily exalted as the ultimate proof of brilliance and the most accurate indicator of future success.

This belief is and has always been flawed, but to be fair, you could still make a case for it some decades ago.

Years ago, graduating with a first-class or second-class upper degree classification almost automatically increased your chances of securing a stable and respectable job, as organisations aggressively sought after top-performing students.

It’s not like this situation is not still in play, but the world has changed drastically over the last decade, and the global job market today is far more competitive and unpredictable than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

Apart from that, industries have evolved, some careers have disappeared and others are currently disappearing, artificial intelligence is transforming entire sectors, unemployment rates remain high across many parts of the world, and, due to all these factors, many employers are now asking a different question:

“What can you actually do?”

Today, many organisations care less about what you claim on paper and more about what you can demonstrate in reality.

It’s why portfolios are becoming more important, why practical skills now matter more, and why people are increasingly being asked to show proof of competence instead of merely presenting certifications and degrees.

In the real world, execution matters more than theory, and the bulk of our education system is still all about testing and rewarding the recollection of theoretical knowledge.

That is a serious problem.

Obviously, this is not to say that education is useless or that “school is a scam” – God forbid. Not with anti-intellectualism reaching all-time highs nowadays.

It is also not to say that academic success does not matter or to encourage laziness, mediocrity, or carelessness in school.

If you are in school, do your best to study hard and aim high and graduate with the best result you can achieve because there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting academic excellence.

A good CGPA can open doors, make opportunities more accessible, make your family proud, and give you validation for your hard work and confidence to go for more in the future.

Academic success is an achievement that should be respected, so I’m not belittling it, that would even be hypocritical since I have had a LOT of academic achievements in my lifetime so far.

That’s complete and utter nonsense.

A high CGPA does not automatically make someone a genius, the same way a low CGPA does not automatically make someone unintelligent.

Human beings are far too complex to be reduced to academic numbers alone.

Some people bloom later in life, some people struggle with rigid academic environments but thrive in practical environments, and some people are terrible test-takers but exceptional thinkers.

The truth is that many of the things we learnt in school are things we will never directly apply in everyday life, especially for those of us in non-specialist fields and those of us who eventually pursue paths outside our academic discipline.

A lot of education is theoretical, and real life is often practical, and this disconnect is part of why many graduates eventually realise that success outside school requires an entirely different set of skills.

Thriving requires adaptability, communication, creativity, resilience, networking, initiative, consistency, emotional intelligence, and many others.

And these are all things that many schools don’t take the time to teach.

A personal slight that I have against the CGPA system is how it can also be brutally unforgiving.

One bad semester can damage years of effort, one difficult period in your life can drastically affect your academic standing, and one bad grade or system error or unforeseen circumstance can see you miss out on your target CGPA goal by 0.1 or 0.01.

It can be very, very harsh.

And because society places so much emotional weight on grades, or because of their personal desire for academic validation, many students attach their self-worth to academic performance.

That is dangerous.

Your academic result should never become your identity, especially when it doesn’t go as you hoped for it to.

Yes, it is okay to feel disappointed if you do not get the grades you hoped for, it is okay to want better for yourself, and it is okay to be disappointed about academic outcomes.

However, educational setbacks do not have to be the end of your life, as painful as they can be.

Your CGPA or whatever grade you have is not the final verdict on your intelligence or a prophecy about your future, nor is it a permanent definition of your potential.

Some of the most successful people in the world were not the best students academically, and I know many people use this as a cope and a cop-out, but it’s the plain truth.

And some academically brilliant people still struggle later in life because real-world success requires much more than performances in education.

There’s no black and white to these things.

At the end of the day, a CGPA is simply one measurement within one system, during one phase of your life.

It is not the complete story of who you are.

So, if your numbers are high, enjoy it and be proud of your success, but don’t forget that there’s still more to be done.

And if your numbers are low, it’s okay to be disappointed, strive to do better, and don’t forget that there’s still more that you can do.

Either way, you are far bigger than a transcript, and your abilities and potentials are far too great to be summarised by some letters and decimals.

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I agree because if you are to trace the primary cause of all the vices, wickedness, and evildoings in our world and immediate society today, you will, 9 out of 10 times, end up with two major reasons: a desire for power and an insatiable thirst for money.

From kidnappings and ritual killings to cyber fraud and sex trafficking to global wars and espionage – the long-time obsession of human beings with hoarding and accumulating riches by all means has caused a lot of death, pain, and social dysfunctionality.

This is something we clearly see on a daily basis.

But what exactly causes this obsession with money that leads to so much evildoing? We barely ever stop to think about it.

I believe it boils down to two things: Greed and Poverty.

In the case of greed, when a man already has money but can’t curb his desire for more and more and more, there’s a good chance he will do anything just to sate that need.

Including taking dangerous and unnecessary risks or resorting to vices that will bring in that extra money.

However, as pervasive as greed is, it can still be somewhat curtailed and managed so long as the individual suffering from it learns the principle of contentment.

However, you see, poverty… that’s a whole different animal on its own.

When a man has nothing and he is desperate to get something by any means, there’s no telling to the limit of what he can do with himself or to others in his bid to get his desires.

That’s why I believe that poverty is one of the biggest physical and mental drawbacks that the human race has faced.

One that we have been losing to for centuries and are still losing to today.

According to the United National Global Compact, around 700 million people, which is about 10% of the global population, still live in extreme poverty, which means they are surviving on less than $1.90 a day.

This stat alone, and the reality of it, is absolutely damning and honestly impossible for my mind to wrap around it.

So, I won’t even try; I’ll just focus on the point of this article.

When people talk about poverty, they tend to reduce it to a mere physical aspect, and while that’s the major expression of the condition, it is not all that there is to it.

The mental aspect of poverty, which is often caused by proximity to the physical aspect of it, also exists, and it’s just as widespread, as it is dangerous.

Since it’s often regarded as the “poverty capital of the world”, I’ll just use Nigeria as an example to illustrate both aspects.

Physically, we can see poverty all around us: it’s on the streets, it’s in the hospitals, it’s in villages and rural communities, it’s in the quality of infrastructure, it’s in the public spaces, it’s in the dilapidated roads, it’s in the government buildings – it’s everywhere.

Everywhere around us, we can see poverty in tangible form and the individual and social suffering/degradation that comes with it.

In the same line, we can also see mental poverty all around us: it’s in the quality of our skits, the quality of our movies, the quality of “celebrities” we produce, and the quality of leaders we have; it’s in the type of things we celebrate, it’s in the type of social conversations we have, it’s in our “trending” topics, it’s in the mindset of the people, it’s in our religious and cultural beliefs, it’s in the things that exalt us and prop our egos, it’s in the classism – it’s everywhere.

As much as being poor in resources will always be the worst thing that can happen to a person, being poor in mind is also just as dangerous because it’s much harder to lift a mentally poor person out of physical poverty than it is to lift a mentally rich person out of physical poverty.

You can copy and paste this into society and other spheres of human endeavour.

As long as the people carry poverty-inspired mindsets and beliefs, a society or community or organisation, no matter how blessed it is with resources of all kinds, will never make any form of meaningful progress.

Poverty is artificial; it is a condition that is largely man-made, and the reason I can confidently say this is because, from all the works of God in nature, we can clearly see that there is a law of abundance in operation.

Every basic thing that human beings need for sustenance and to thrive on this planet is already readily available in inexhaustible and unquantifiable amounts.

Oxygen is in abundance. Water is in abundance. Trees are in abundance. Animals are in abundance. Food is in abundance. Salt is in abundance. Resources are in abundance. Humans are in abundance.

And to further display His wisdom, God made sure that despite us having all these things in vast amounts, each person would only need a little of each in regular consumption to have a good life.

How much water can you drink per day, compared to all the water on Earth? How much meat can you eat per day, compared to all the meat on Earth? How much oxygen have you breathed in since you were born, compared to the amount still available?

And so on, and so on.

Everything that we humans run after and obsess over today, desperate to hoard lots of it – money, cars, fame, etc. – are things that WE by ourselves created and made the “standard” or “metric” for what should be considered a “good” life.

The most important things that we actually NEED are all freely available. And the ones that aren’t directly available – like medicine, clothes, and shelter – are things that can be gotten through the manipulation/extraction/production of what’s already freely available.

This goes to show us that, naturally, it should be practically impossible for human beings to lack things like food, water, clothing, and shelter, since nature already has so much deposit of these things, albeit most are still in their rawest form.

If a group of people in a particular area are “poor”, it’s either because someone somewhere ensured that they became and remained that way or because those people there have not exploited the freely available gifts of nature to meet their needs.

Which, interestingly enough, could also be because someone somewhere ensured they wouldn’t be able to.

The truth is that poverty has no real social or economic value to the majority of the human race; it has never been useful or profitable to anybody except for those people who have wanted to have some significant level of control over others.

As the popular saying goes, “He that pays the piper dictates the tune.”

It’s common knowledge that the easiest way to control a crowd of people is by controlling the means of their basic survival.

If you can limit their access to resources and then give them scarce opportunities to fight for, you can almost get them to do anything you want, including kill each other, snatch ballot boxes, attack peaceful protesters, attend your political rallies where you’ll share small packs of rice and underwear for them to take back home, etc.

If you’re feeling extra villainous, you can also use the control you have over their resources to condition them into seeing social vices like fraud and prostitution as the only way of survival, and you can also get religious leaders for them who will encourage them to pray and “trust God” whilst they laze away and remain passive in the name of “faith”.

It’s all one big bubble, and it’s quite interesting to watch it all play out in real life.

Back in school, we were taught that economics is the management of “scarce resources to satisfy unlimited needs”, but have we ever stopped to ask why the resources are “scarce” in the first place?

Or if they are really scarce at all and we’re just made to believe that they are?

Who benefits if 90% of the human population is struggling to acquire a part of the available 10% of human wealth?

Of course, it’s the 10% of the human population controlling the 90% of the human wealth, right? Right.

This world is a really skewed place with a lot of injustice and imbalance, and it explains why some men have more money than they can ever spend in 100 lifetimes, whilst other men can barely find $2 per day to eat one meal.

This is not a slight against the extremely wealthy, but just an analogy to show you that this thing called poverty that we see all around us is very intentional.

There’s also a very intentional agenda to keep millions of people in a state of mental poverty too.

Even when they’re not in a state of physical poverty.

And the most common way this is being done is through the extreme and rapid rise of anti-intellectualism and the constant encouragement of the acceptance of “small” things.

I don’t want to enter this topic too deeply, as I already wrote about it here:

All I’ll say is that, and I already mentioned it earlier, it’s much harder to help a mentally poor man than it is to help a physically poor man.

And “poor” is not just in terms of resources; it’s also in terms of mindsets, beliefs, and personal principles.

There is a battle for the minds of millions to ensure that they constantly minor in the major and major in the minor.

To ensure that even if they’re going to be rich, they will be too focused on and engrossed in mundane things to use the wealth for anything substantial.

Mental poverty is something we must all fight.

We must train our minds to be abundant in information, open to growth and beneficial mindsets, open to intellectual topics and conversations, open to creative expression, and, of course, open to having wealth and having it for the right reasons.

Having a society with rich people who have poor mindsets is just as bad as having a society of poor people with poor mindsets.

The only difference is that one society will be flashier and its inhabitants will have food in their bellies, while the other will be aesthetically unpleasing to the eyes whilst housing thousands of hungry people.

If the opposite of poverty is abundance, and we’ve determined that the purpose of poverty is to subjugate, then what is the purpose of abundance?

Liberation?

You’re right, it’s liberation.

When you are not in that position where you are struggling for resources or struggling to make ends meet, you automatically hold a significant level of control over your life.

And when you’re in the position of wealth, to be able to command more than enough resources, you automatically have the power to hold a significant level of control over the lives of others.

Whether you use it for good or evil now then becomes your choice.

But the point is that you can CHOOSE.

A lot of people don’t have a say in major decisions of their lives – career, friendships, marriage partner, physical location, job, lifestyle, etc. – simply because lack has ensured that they don’t have the ability to make choices.

Some people went to the school; they did because of their financial situation, good or bad. Some people are currently working at the job they are because of their financial situation, good or bad. Some people have the quality of life they do now because of their financial situation, good or bad.

So, inasmuch as we don’t want to make “money” the revolving force of life, a whole lot definitely revolves around it.

Both to us, the people around us, and our broader society.

There’s a lot of emotion and hypocrisy attached to this topic of poverty, and it’s always unfortunate to see people get defensive or dismiss it in pretence whenever it’s brought up.

Abundance, both physical and mental, is very important, but without that physical abundance, a lot of things just can’t work.

The Bible in Ecclesiastes tells the story of a poor but wise man who rescued his city from destruction by his wisdom but was immediately forgotten because he was poor.

The Bible also says in Proverbs 10:15 that “The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor.”

The purpose of abundance, once again, is LIBERATION.

That ability to have control over your life, time, choices, beliefs, opinions, and decisions. That ability to thrive in your space and at your pace because you’re not constantly worrying about what to eat. That ability to find fulfilment and satisfaction in life’s purpose.

That is what liberation is, and that is what poverty desperately seeks to take away from people.

It’s what poverty has successfully taken away from billions over the course of the existence of the human race.

And it’s not just liberation in terms of yourself; it’s even more in terms of those around you.

That ability to defend the poor from injustice. That ability to put smiles on the faces of orphans and the needy. That ability to build a society where all humans thrive equally.

That’s the purpose of abundance, and it’s what certain people have sworn to ensure never happens due to their selfish needs and their greedy desires.

Poverty is their tool to keep people subjected to penury so that they can rely on “aids” and “grants” that come at dire costs. Poverty is their tool to ensure that they have readily available hands to execute their violent and dangerous purposes. Poverty is their tool to ensure that some people remain mentally broken to the point where they become spineless and unable to stand for anything that’s not immediate and need-gratifying.

All this and many more, my friend, is why you have to fight poverty, both physical and mental, with all that is in you.

Fighting to have a good life is good; fighting to have a spiritual life is better, but fighting to be liberated from lack? That’s probably the most important fight of all.

A poor person cannot have a good life by any means; the most he’ll get is some form of copium to numb his days.

A poor spiritual person will most likely, sooner or later, compromise his faith just to ensure that he or his family doesn’t die of starvation.

Or so that he can just… get something.

So, yes, against many popular religious notions, I believe that the fight against poverty is just as critical and as important as the fight of faith.

Maybe even more difficult, because the grace that is available in the fight of faith doesn’t always tangibly exist in the fight against poverty.

The balance, however, is that we must not allow our desire to fight against poverty to consume us to the point of eroding our humanity and erasing all our morality.

On the grand scheme of things, it’s better to have lived a morally upright life with no money than to have lived a depraved life with riches.

So I’m not for throwing away all forms of uprightness in a bid just to be rich. There’s a balance that must be drawn.

Where do you draw the line in your quest for money? What’s “too much” for you to do? And what boundaries have you set, mentally?

Can you sleep with animals? Can you steal? Can you kill people who trust you? Can you betray your loved ones? Can you put pain in the hearts of others?

What is “too much” for you to do in order to get money?

You have to know, you have to know.

I hate poverty.

I hate what poverty does to people.

I hate how poverty beats down the minds of people.

I hate how poverty leaves people defenceless and vulnerable.

I hate how poverty is so widespread.

I hate seeing poverty in real life.

I hate how intentional poverty is.

I hate how many people die due to poverty, directly or indirectly.

I hate how much poverty limits people.

I hate how poverty can be used to control people.

I hate how poverty can reduce the quality of a man’s life.

I hate how poverty can make people inconsequential.

I hate how ingrained poverty is in our nation.

I hate how normal poverty and its recurring effects are to us.

I hate poverty a lot.

I hate it with every single fibre of my being.

You have to fight.

Mentally first, then physically.

Fight poverty, fight for liberation.

Your life might just depend on it.

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I saw this screenshot somewhere, and the first thing that crossed my mind was “lmaoo, can’t even be me.”

On the internet today, there are many “standards” and “expectations” that are projected as things that a partner in a relationship should be willing to do for you that are just downright crazy to me.

Some people might be like, “Oh, he’s going the extra mile to prove his loyalty and reassure you,” but nahh, merely expecting someone to do this for you is already a symptom of a deeper issue at play.

Nowadays, it seems like the idea that many people (mostly women) have about “assurance” or “reassurance” are just statements or actions that massage or coddle the insecurities that they have about themselves or their relationship.

And this is not a generalisation; it’s just something I’ve observed from many different opinions that I’ve seen.

When certain people say they need “reassurance”, what they are actually saying is “I have this insecurity, and since I’m always going to have it, I need you to do whatever it takes to make me feel better about it.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe that’s what reassurance is at all.

Now, I believe that affirmation and reassurance are a very integral part of any healthy relationship of any kind.

I also believe in going the extra mile to do or show people just how much you care about them and value them.

And if the person you’re with has bad experiences from the past or they have difficulty trusting you because of mistakes you made before, it makes sense that you’ll have to put in some extra effort to back up your reassuring words with consistent action.

However, the notion that I don’t subscribe to at all is getting to the point where my reassurance is being used as a tool for you to do what you should have done by yourself in the first place, which was to work on whatever insecurity you have.

And it seems to me like many people are at that point where, rather than admit and deal directly with their insecurities — “I have trust issues,” “I don’t like how my body looks” “I’m scared you’ll leave me for someone else” — they prefer to have a partner who will constantly massage their fears and doubts, soothing and placating them, all in the name of “reassurance”.

I once saw a tweet that said, “If a man likes you, he’ll just have to learn how to deal with you however you are,” and I was like, no, no, that doesn’t make any sense at all.

Why should I, as your partner, be burdened down with the responsibility of having to deal with your incessant mood swings, intentional sabotage, or whatever bad traits/habits you have, just in the name of proving my love for you?

Why?

I’ve never understood it.

There are many things that, as human beings, we have to first deal with by ourselves before we rely on anybody else for help or support.

If you don’t do this and you outsource it to your partner in a relationship, you’re putting yourself in the situation where you’ll constantly be needing them to assure you, to put you at ease, and to soothe fears that already existed far before they even came into your life.

Many people have bad experiences from the past, experiences that hurt and affected them deeply, and so, if I’m with someone like that, I understand that I may need to do some extra emotional work here and there.

That’s understandable.

However, that should also be my decision, a decision I should be making out of love, and not a complete burden that will be intentionally placed on my head as a requirement for the relationship to work.

It should not become this thing where, because somebody hurt you in the past, it is now my full responsibility to be smoothing over the scars from the past while I’m also trying to build the foundation for our present.

To me, that’s unfair.

And I’ve noticed that this dynamic is more common in situations where women tend to cede the bulk of the responsibility of handling their emotions to their male partners.

He calms you down, he lifts you up, he makes sure you’re fine, and he checks up on you – he always does this and always does that, everything just to ensure you’re fine. Why?

One reason why people sometimes self-sabotage relationships, intentionally create drama, start unnecessary conflicts, and test people emotionally is because they desperately want to get some form of reassurance or emotional reaction.

Then if the guy eventually leaves because he’s incapable or no longer interested in carrying all of that responsibility, then it becomes, “He’s just like everybody else.”

Meanwhile, the issue was that the relationship itself was already built on a dissonance right from the very beginning.

Inasmuch as emotional reliance is one of the broader responsibilities of both parties in a relationship, it’s not meant to be one-sided or unbearably overwhelming.

Interestingly enough, there are many people who are willing to take on that responsibility of “over-reassurance” all in the name of love, and if that works for you, I mean, fine, no problem.

I, myself, prefer a situation where I help you as you’re already helping yourself, not where helping you becomes my entire responsibility.

I think the statement “come fully healed” is very insensitive and tone deaf, that’s why I prefer to say: “come willing to be healed and to be assisted to healed.”

“Love” to me is not me helping you carry all of your burdens and insecurities while you just sit still and look pretty. What exactly is the point of that?

And what happens to my own issues that I am already carrying by myself?

Maybe some guys like the idea of being the one to “save her”, but I don’t subscribe to that notion one bit.

There have been many times I’ve been in conversations with people where it was very obvious that they were intentionally fishing for validation or intentionally trying to get me to massage an insecurity, and I have many times just chosen to ignore it and carry on like I didn’t notice.

And that’s not because I don’t care; it’s just because I don’t want to have the responsibility of constantly making anybody feel a certain way that they should ideally be making themselves feel.

Yes, I know this sounds harsh, and I’ve been called many names: strict, nonchalant, passive, inconsiderate, etc., etc., and I don’t even mind.

If that’s what it takes for me to enjoy a mutual relationship with a person and not be boggled down by extra and unnecessary baggage, then I don’t mind being called whatever.

I believe in mutual responsibility.

I believe that things like compliments and encouragements and “sweet words” are only meant to serve as a supplement, as an occasional breath of fresh air, and not as the oxygen that your drowning self-esteem desperately clutches to for survival at every moment.

Can I do that? Yes. Why won’t I want to always hype my girl up and make her feel good?

Should I do that? Yes, but only when necessary, and only as an addition, not a replacement.

Now, the balance is that, since we are all in different states of emotional maturity, there will be times when I might have to lean on you for support, or you might have to lean on me for support.

Those are the moments where one of us will have to hold the other for as long as they need before they get back on their feet.

If I’m more emotionally stable than you are at a certain moment, then it’s normal for you to want to depend on me until that moment passes. That’s understandable.

However, that’s why it’s called a “moment”.

It’s been meant to be for a while, and not a binding and permanent agreement that defines the entire nature of our relationship.

Personally, I don’t think I can be with someone who constantly needs me to fill this void or massage this insecurity or offer this or that assurance every single time.

It sounds exhausting.

Obviously, I’d also hate to be in a relationship where both parties are completely emotionally independent from one another, so that balance is very much needed. As always.

And, just to be clear, reassurance or needing reassurance in itself is not the problem.

In fact, I actually enjoy encouraging and propping up people when they need it. I genuinely think it’s one of my strongest suits because, apart from being gifted with words, I naturally always know what to say and when to say it.

And since reassurance and affirmation and the like are not difficult for me to give, that’s all the more reason why I like to be careful with when and how and to whom I dish it out.

Before I unintentionally become someone’s emotional crutch.

The problem is when it becomes my responsibility to constantly make you feel good about things that you don’t feel good about within yourself.

Everyday. Every time. Every moment.

Like, please, just… please.

At that point, it stops feeling like love and starts to feel like emotional labour, and then it inevitably becomes a burden.

Trust me, nobody likes an emotional burden.

Maybe the idea sounds thrilling to you, especially if you’re the one that’s outsourcing your emotional responsibility to someone else.

But I can’t imagine being the person that has to hold such a responsibility and to hold it for a long time and to hold it for someone who can’t be bothered about trying to help themselves too.

Yikes.

Assurance is not the problem; reassurance is not the problem, but those things are not and should not become an excuse for insecurity massaging.

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He has his own dreams, his own feelings, and his own emotions.

The other guy, like everybody else around him, longs for emotional intimacy and connection with someone else.

But, unfortunately, the other guy has been very unlucky with love.

He has been unlucky with love all of his life.

The other guy is never interested in by the people he’s interested in, and nobody else at all seems to be interested in him either.

Of course, the other guy has a lot of friends.

The other guy has casual acquaintances around him and sparks that fly every now and then, but nothing that ever seems to look like romance in any way, manner, or form.

The other guy has had many romantic attempts in the past, but none of them, for one reason or the other, never worked out.

In the few moments when it seemed like it would work, the other guy was harshly reminded why he was the other guy.

Reminded by the way she confides in him about the guy she actually wants.

Reminded as he watched her have the time of her life with the actual guy.

Reminded by the clawing jealousy and spite that brews beneath his heart.

The other guy hates it, he does, but what can he do about it?

After all, he is the other guy for a reason.

So… he plays his role to the best of his ability.

The other guy gives advice to her about her relationship.

The other guy reassures her every time another man hurts her.

The other guy surrenders his shoulder for her to cry on.

As always, the other guy is willing to help, willing to be present, and willing to listen.

But, at the end of the day, the other guy is never the one loved.

He’s just the safe, ever-present option until the real option comes back around.

The other guy is the “thank you for always being there for me” text.

The other guy is the “any girl would be lucky to have you” speech from the same girl who would never choose him.

The other guy is the almost; he is the emotional support system without the emotional intimacy.

The other guy is the one people are comfortable with but never deeply desire.

The other guy is always close enough to matter but never wanted enough to be chosen.

The other guy is the low-commitment, low-effort man that many people like to have around.

The other guy hates that things have to be the way.

Why does he never receive the same kind of love that he gives? Why is he never considered for the “extra” gestures and actions? Why is he never viewed the way he wants to be viewed?

The other guy always wonders.

And with this wondering comes sadness, spite, resentment, shame, and self-loathing.

Yet, at the next request, the other guy is back playing his role.

The role of being ever-reliable and ever-dependable.

Part of the other guy is now used to it, but part of the other guy still wants love.

The other guy still wants someone that chooses him loudly and intentionally.

The other guy still wants someone that stays.

The other still hopes that one day, one day, it’ll happen…

Yet, that remains to be seen.

I’ve been the other guy before, and I can tell you for free: it sucks.

I’d never mock the other guy, because I know what it’s like to be him.

I know how it feels to be in that space, and I also know what it takes to come out of it.

If I were to speak to the other guy, I’d tell him one thing:

“That love you seek from outside will never come until you settle that love that’s lacking inside of you.

Until you plug that leak and seal up every hole, you’ll always be thinking you’re empty because nobody has chosen to love you.

When in reality, it’s because you haven’t yet loved yourself.”

The other guy doesn’t have to change his nature.

The other guy doesn’t have to become mean and resentful and angry.

All the other guy has to do is simply redirect his focus and start loving inwardly so it can be expressed outwardly, rather than loving outwardly to compensate for not loving inwardly.

That’s all it takes.

I hope the other guy listens, and I hope the other guy takes my advice.

Because the other guy deserves love too.

And one day, I hope he will find it.

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In the video, some men were leading a tiger toward a woman, and as one of them was trying to wrap the arms of the tiger around the woman who was on her knees, the other was feeding the tiger a bottle of milk, which it was gulping aggressively.

The video wasn’t AI-generated (you need an extra level of vigilance when consuming short-form content video nowadays), so I figured it was probably like a tourist attraction situation where people got to take pictures with the arms of a tiger wrapped around them.

No problem at all.

Except there was a problem, and the problem was that this was a grown TIGER that was drinking (and profusely enjoying) a bottle of MILK.

Like, liquid milk.

It didn’t make sense to me because I didn’t remember being taught in primary school that tigers loved milk.

My immediate assumption was that it was probably as a result of some domestication procedures, so I decided to do some quick research.

The results of my research were simple but very striking, and since I’m always finding an analogical lesson in everything, a connection was instantly formed in my head.

And since it made so much sense to me, I decided to share it here.

You’re welcome.

Apparently, the tiger wasn’t doing anything that could be termed as “unnatural” in the video that I watched.

Apparently, since tiger cubs drink milk from their mothers in their first 6-8 months from birth, they can also drink it as adult tigers too.

Apparently, since tigers are part of the larger cat family, they really LOVE milk.

However, what caught my attention the most was everything that had to happen for the tiger before it could get to the point where it could be doing what it did in that video.

Now, here’s where I tell you to stay with me…

No tiger on Earth gets to that point by accident.

There’s no tiger that’s naturally comfortable with being in close contact with humans, and there’s definitely no tiger that wants to be used as a milk-drinking attraction to hundreds of tourists every single day.

Yes, fundamentally, the tiger has not stopped being a tiger.

It’s wild and predatory instincts are still there, but they are now buried deeply beneath the surface because they’ve been numbed down by his environment and the situations he has been intentionally made to experience.

His natural abilities have not been sharpened, tested, or reinforced for a very long time because he’s been conditioned to have no need or use for them.

If this same tiger had been born and raised in the wild, he would be a fearful beast that strikes terror into the heart of almost all animals and humans alike.

However, what you have now is a domesticated beast that probably loves hugs, cuddles, and pictures with foreigners. Essentially, a shadow of its true nature.

Unfortunately, a lot of human beings are also milk-drinking tigers.

Many times, we like to think of ourselves as being independent of our environment, but we forget to acknowledge the fact that our surroundings play a very vital role in shaping who we are and who we become.

On the extreme hand, people often use their unsuitable environment (dysfunctional background, low-income family, lack of opportunities, etc.) as an excuse for why they don’t do much or why they are the way they are – and that’s a problem on its own.

However, the underlying truth is that willpower is often never enough to shape outcomes, and since most patterns begin as exposure before advancing into repetition, it’s completely natural for us, as humans, to make quiet adjustments to the situations around us.

If you grow up where poverty is rampant and survival by any means is the priority, your lifestyle will adjust to that mindset.

If you’re surrounded by people who don’t aim for anything that’s beyond what’s immediately visible and in their reach, your sense of what’s possible will adjust in alignment to theirs.

If you’re never exposed to certain standards, certain ways of thinking, or certain levels of ambition, those things will always feel out of reach and appear unattainable to you.

And, unfortunately again, the longer you stay in an environment, the more the things that are there, both good and bad, will appear “normal” to you, because that’s all you consistently see.

In fact, you could even start to look like such an environment.

Why else do you think some people are comfortable with living in streets where the roadsides are refuse dumps, while some other people can’t stand seeing a single dirty plate in the sink?

Or why do you think some people cower in fear and intimidation at the sight of any form of opposition, while some other people can boldly speak to anybody regardless of who they are?

Or why do you think some people see paying for knowledge or mentorship as a “waste”, while some other people jump at every chance they have to learn from experts in their fields of interest?

It’s because their minds have been conditioned in a certain manner over a period of time, and many times, the primary driver of this conditioning is their environment.

That physical, social, or mental space that they have spent most of their lives in.

There are certain universal principles that apply across the board in all facets of life, and one of such principles is the principle of repetition.

It’s the foundation of statements like “practice makes perfect” and “you are who you think you are” – and it basically means that the more something happens, the more the results of that same thing happen.

This same principle applies to conditioning of every kind, whether it’s mental, physical, environmental, social, or any other type, and whether it’s negative or positive.

It’s important to note that there’s nothing sudden or dramatic about conditioning.

It is a steady narrowing that quietly shapes your behaviour, expectations, and identity until the boundaries of whatever it’s locking you into start to feel like the entire boundaries of life itself.

Then, once you’ve adapted, you begin to operate within those walls without ever questioning it or even knowing it can be questioned.

Just like the tiger, you’re now only into milk and cuddles because it’s all you’ve ever known. It’s all you’ve ever been fed and given, so you believe that that version of you is who you truly are.

The problem with this form of conditioning is not that the circumstances it puts you in will necessarily always be bad, but that they will definitely always be limiting.

I mean, you can say there’s nothing wrong with humans having wild animals domesticated for entertainment purposes, and the tiger himself might not even mind his daily diet of milk, hugs, and photos.

However, when you compare its current lifestyle to the potential lifestyle the tiger could be having if it were in its natural habitat, the difference is clearly staggering.

Why would a tiger want to be locked in a cage all day when it could be roaming and hunting in vast jungle lands?

Why would a tiger want to be fed with milk and rationed diets when it could have access to the full menu of the wild – with the gazelles, the antelopes, and other juicy animals?

Why would a tiger want to be wrapping arms with humans when it could be building a family with multiple tigresses and cubs?

It just doesn’t make sense.

And the worst part of all this is that the domesticated tiger in the zoo would never know the life he’s missing out on, so he would always be content with whatever he’s given by the carers around him.

You can argue that it’s better to not know what you could have had than to be stuck with the pain of knowing it but knowing you can never have it.

The same way the tiger is unaware of his full potential and the life he could have because he’s been conditioned by his environment to be satisfied with milk and hugs,

Is the same way many people have been conditioned by their environment and factors spurning from it to be satisfied with mediocrity, poverty, ignorance, inconsequentiality, and “small” things in general.

It’s even worse in humans because we can be locked in a box and still be aggressive about remaining in it and attacking anybody who tries to get us out of it.

The way the tiger has the cages of the zoo and his daily diet as the factors that are used to condition him out of his primal instincts is the same way we have limiting factors of our own.

We have religion, we have culture, we have family, we have immediate society, we have the type of education received, we have exposure, we have self-perception, we have perceived external perception, we have political affiliation, we have emotional biases, and we have many others.

These are some of the things that, over the course of centuries, have either conditioned humans to act in a certain way or have been used by certain people to condition humans to act in a certain way.

So, you that’s reading this article right now could have had the potential to become a world-class footballer, but because your parents didn’t believe in that path, you ended up studying a course in the university that you hated.

Or you could have the potential to be an amazing public speaker, but because you have low self-esteem, you always end up cowering in the back of rooms and hiding from the spotlight.

Or you could have the potential to have an impactful podcast or social media page, but because you’re scared of people laughing at you or criticising you and your content, you end up never making that first post.

And why could these things happen?

Maybe because your parents have been conditioned by their limiting beliefs to see you “playing football” as an unrealistic goal.

Or you have been conditioned by your insecurities to believe that you’re too ugly to stand in front of a crowd to speak.

Or you have been conditioned by your need for social validation to always put the opinions of others into consideration before you do the things you want to do.

Do you now see how limiting conditioning can be?

And just like the tiger, many times we don’t even know… We don’t even know what’s locked up in us or what we could become if we only cast away our limiting beliefs and expose our minds to more.

That, I think, is very sad.

The bright side of all this, however, is that conditioning is very reversible. There’s nothing permanent about it.

And I know this article has focused primarily on the negative side of it, but there’s also the positive side of it.

All you have to do is take what you don’t want, flip it over, and allow yourself to adapt to the new change you’ve made.

Of course, it’s not as easy as it just sounded, but it’s not impossible.

The biggest issue is that many people don’t know that they can be free from their limiting beliefs or that there’s life outside their limiting beliefs.

Heck, they don’t even know that they have been limited by their environment or mindset to settle for less than they could actually get.

Those are the worst kind of people to deal with because it’s practically impossible to convince them that they need help. All you can do is just hope that they somehow see it one day.

However, for people who do know that there is more available to them but the idea of change feels unrealistic and distant, there’s still hope.

As long as they’re willing to do the difficult work.

Most people aren’t; that’s why they stay within what feels familiar, what feels manageable, and what feels consistent about how they’ve come to see themselves or how they see life.

The first step in this process is to identify the area or areas where you have been negatively conditioned to think in a certain manner, act in a certain way, or believe a certain perspective.

It can be your negative perception about marriage or starting a family, or the way you’re so unwilling to spend your hard-earned money on things you see as a “waste”, or your beliefs that “all women are this” or “all men are this”.

Whatever it is - identify it first.

Then, the next step is separation. You need to get yourself out of that environment that has conditioned you to act that way or believe certain things.

This is a bit difficult in some contexts, like, for example, it’s not so easy to escape from a dysfunctional family if that’s what’s affecting your perception of marriage and family life.

And it’s also impossible for you to escape from yourself if your struggle is low self-esteem.

In such cases, what you’ll need is the mental fortitude to block certain thoughts, emotions, and actions of people out of your mind and be very patient as you wait for the situation to change.

However, for other contexts, like your belief system that the actions of one person define the nature of an entire gender, it’s up to you to separate yourself from the things fuelling those beliefs.

Stop reading the books, delete the podcasts, unfollow the pages, change your friends, delete Twitter, and do other things like that.

The same way you can’t successfully preserve ice cream in a microwave is the same way it’s completely futile to try to learn new things in the same old environment.

Everything you keep seeing and hearing will just be fighting you and eroding whatever progress it is that you’re making.

And the same way you can’t lift someone who you’re on the same level as is the same way you can’t hope to help others break their limiting blocks if you’re still limited yourself.

God had to separate Moses from the suffering of the Israelites so that he would be mentally and physically fit to be their deliverer from Egypt.

It would have been impossible for a fellow Israelite slave to do the deliverance because his mind had already been conditioned to pain and bitterness, and his might to fight had already been broken.

Like I said, all the same principles apply.

Once you’ve successfully identified the limiting factor(s) and separated yourself from the environment, the other steps in the process to reconditioning require consistent effort over time.

The same way it took years for your mind to be conditioned to believe that money is scarce and should be hoarded is the same way it’ll take your mind years to believe that money is a tool that is meant to be spent.

You’ll have to be patient.

You’ll have to constantly put yourself in a position to see people operate differently and think differently, and you must get used to being in spaces where the baseline experiences are higher than what you’re used to.

At first, it’s uncomfortable, sometimes even irritating, but that discomfort is often the first sign that your frame is starting to expand.

When the domesticated tiger is thrown back into the jungle, he will struggle a bit. He might get bullied by some other tigers who are used to the wild or struggle with his confidence when it comes to hunting.

However, as time passes, as long as he sticks to it, he will begin to adapt to his new environment again, and those primal instincts that seemed dead and buried will start to kick back in.

It might take time, effort, and a lot of trial and error, but it will happen.

If it can happen to a tiger, it can surely happen to you.

You can build new patterns that will be strong enough, over time, to change how you think, what you aim for, and how you move.

It’s not impossible.

See, life can be hard and very unfair.

Many times we genuinely had no say in choosing the environment we were born into or that we found ourselves in.

Sometimes, well, shit just happens, and we are left with no choice but to deal with it.

We can complain about how unfair everything is and how everybody else has it better; that’s okay.

However, it gets to the point where we have to decide whether we’re going to stay in that environment, making excuses as we continue to be defined by it.

Or we’re going to do everything in our power to break out of it.

The environment that once limited us doesn’t have to be the one to determine our permanent identity, but this won’t happen by accident.

It takes deliberate effort to seek out better inputs — people, ideas, standards — and to stay with them long enough for them to reshape us into better versions of ourselves.

At least, now you’re aware.

Those tigers in those zoos will probably never know what they can be, so they will be satisfied with the smallness of milk and cuddles until they die.

Don’t let that be you, please.

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I’ve heard many balanced teachings about God’s idea for marriage, and I agree that if all parties in a marriage followed that ideal blueprint, they would have a blissful union for as long as they live.

That’s aside, and I stand on it due to my understanding.

However, what I really don’t understand is this hyperfocused and almost… chronic obsession that many “Christian brothers”, pastors, and churches in general have with marriage – and specifically, the Biblical instruction of women to “submit” to their husbands.

That entire discourse has been spoken about so extensively, right up to the point that it’s now often the primary discussion in every marriage seminar and every sermon on marriage and up to the point where many Christian women have been manipulated into tolerating so much foolishness, bad behaviour, and inadequacies in the name of “submission”.

Those women have found themselves staying in abusive marriages, enduring neglect and infidelity, and following after a man who is leading them nowhere, all because a simple Biblical instruction has been grossly misinterpreted and taken out of context.

It’s really sad, and I thought that for us younger people – since we claim to be all about “changing narratives” – we would approach this critical subject of marriage with more nuance and emotional intelligence.

That was until I saw an article by a “brother” here on Substack claiming he “can’t marry a feminist” for different reasons, but primarily because they don’t believe in the biblical instruction of wives to “submit”.

Apart from the fact that feminism was reduced to nothing but being a tool for claiming “equality” in marriage, that article also pissed me off because it was highly unnecessary. Like, nobody asked.

And it got me thinking… As a young man preparing for life and your future plans to raise a family, why on Earth is the most pressing thing on your mind to find a woman that will “submit” to you?

What is in this “submission” thing that’s always itching our bodies?

For a long time, it didn’t make sense to me, but I understand it now.

I’ve finally figured out some of the reasons for this chronic obsession that many Christian men have with finding “submissive wives”, and I’ll explain it in this article as simply as I can.

Before we dive into the core aspect of this article, let’s first examine the widely misinterpreted verse in question for proper understanding.

To balance the argument, let’s also examine the verse that carries the parallel obligation, the one that’s either never spoken about or only ever mildly emphasised upon.

Now, I could dive into these scriptures and do a little breakdown of the context, the use of metaphor, and the expected practical application of these texts, but let’s just keep it simple.

From the above texts, we can see two parallel instructions:

Husbands: Love your wife as Jesus loved the church to the point of dying for her, love her like she’s your body, and take care of her and feed her like Jesus feeds his church.

Wives: The same way the church looks up to Jesus for leadership and direction, willingly do the same to your husband.

Easy enough to understand, right?

Now, from a logical standpoint, we can infer TWO things from the breakdown above. Stay with me.

The first thing we can infer is that, biblically, husbands have the “bigger” and more pressing responsibility in marriage – to love like Jesus.

And why wouldn’t they, if they are indeed the “head” of the home?

Which means their primary duty is to love their wives selflessly, take care of her every need, and even die for her, if need be.

This is a typeset of what Jesus did for everybody in the world.

The second thing we can infer is that the “submission” of wives to the leadership of their husbands is a secondary thing that’s meant to come willingly and only after the husbands have shown love and care for them.

This is a typeset of how, as Christians, we can only now submit to the leadership of Jesus because he has already died and resurrected for us.

I think that’s simple enough to grasp.

With these points in mind – the fact that husbands have to love in the same selfless and tireless manner that Jesus did and the fact that the submission of wives is only meant to come as a response to this love – why on Earth is all the focus placed on the second aspect?

Why is most of the focus of teachings and marriage advice always on the expected reaction of wives and not the demanded responsibility of husbands?

Why is “submission”, in whatever contextual manner, pedestalled as the PRIMARY thing that must be present for a marriage to work and not the SELFLESS LOVE that husbands are told to give?

I’ll tell you why, and it’s two simple reasons: the need for control and the mindset of poverty/smallness.

The fact is that we live in a majorly patriarchal society that, for many decades, suppressed the voice of women and subjugated them to playing nothing but passive and secondary roles in the society – including in matters that concerned and affected them, such as marriage, career, and social/political/economic participation.

Many women and women groups, alongside many men and men groups, have, over the centuries, fought for women’s right to equality and equal participation in society, and fortunately for all women who are alive today, they have covered a lot of ground.

This is why I get confused when I see some women (mostly Christian women, by the way) vehemently disassociate from feminism like it’s a cancer or a slur they’d rather not be a part of.

Why is this so?

Is it the “Pick-me” syndrome? Ignorance? Foolishness?

Could be any of these reasons, and whilst I understand the desire of some women to not be perceived as being agreeable with the many extreme and diluted views of feminism that are present today, denying the entire cause in itself is an utterly dumb thing to do.

If you’re a woman, reading this article from your phone or laptop or wherever, you better be grateful to feminism and the many women who gave their lives, literally and figuratively, for the cause, because, without them, you probably won’t even be able to buy or own a device today.

Anyways, as much as the equality situation is better than it was 200 years ago, it’s still not as good as it should ideally be.

Women are still being suppressed, more subtly and indirectly now, in many aspects of society, and many women still have to work twice as hard to get some things that come easily to their male counterparts.

I won’t tilt to the extreme of blaming only the “patriarchy” as the cause of all the issues women face in society, and I won’t deny that this same system has benefitted and still benefits many women today in some little ways – but I would concur that a lot of problems faced by women today are mainly due to this imbalance.

I’m laying this foundation so I can build properly.

Now, some of the major reasons men were able to suppress women and erode their societal autonomy for so long include physical strength, economic control, coercive control of their children, educational alienation – and the one that’s our focus for today – religious doctrines.

All of the above were used by different men in different parts of the world at different times, but aside from economic control, the other factor that has remained a constant, even till today, is religious control through skewed doctrines.

The Bible was used to justify the slave trade, justify wars and killings, and also justify the suppression of women.

It makes sense to me that in order to control and subjugate an entire demography of people, those people were made to believe that this fearful and powerful “God” that they had heard so much about wanted them to be under the control of men (or their husbands), who in turn majorly allowed them to be nothing but helpers and housekeepers.

And boy oh boy, it worked wonders.

Fast forward to today; that same Bible is still being used by Christian men to justify their innate desire to control a woman, the woman being their wives in this context.

So, when such men say they want a “submissive wife”, they usually don’t mean that they want a woman who will respond to their care and selfless love with peace and reciprocity.

What they mean is that they want a brainless spawn who will obey their every instruction, never check or question their excesses, and stroke their egos at every given time.

Bonus points for her if she’ll also stay at home with the children, cook and clean regularly, and always be available to spread her legs whenever the “head of the house” is feeling funky.

That’s their definition of a “good wife” or a “submissive wife”, and, as always, they have found a Bible scripture to back up their skewed reasoning.

It’s all very appalling.

Let me not even dive into the gross misinterpretation of Proverbs 31 and the woman that was described in that chapter.

It’s important we understand this “control” factor properly because it serves as the foundation of the next point.

The bulk of the traditional and religious sentiments around marriage and family dynamics are foundationally based on: POVERTY + SMALLNESS.

As a man, if you grew up in a financially stable home or a home where you were exposed to spaces of power and influence, when the time comes for you to get married, the number one thing on your mind won’t be to find a woman who will “submit” to your every whim and caprice.

And you also definitely won’t be looking for a woman whose primary duty in your house would be cooking and cleaning, all in the name of “submission”.

Why?

Because growing up, you would have been exposed to seeing women with influence and power, women who carried themselves with poise alongside their husbands, and you would have desired the same for yourself.

Or, at the very least, you would have had a washing machine in your house, so the washing of clothes would have never been a big deal to you because anybody can do it.

However, if the way you grew up every Saturday was that you had to gather all the clothes in the house and strenuously wash them for hours, or watch your mother wash them for hours while your father reclined in the living room, you might be inclined to believe that this was the “standard” for marriage.

I’m not criticising the washing of clothes; this is just a simple illustration of how what you were exposed to can condition your expectations of the future.

If your mindset has been elevated beyond survival and little things like having a car or having a house being the proof of your masculinity, then there’s no way on earth you’ll want to relegate your wife to the primary role of washing plates and cleaning toilets.

Her doing these things is not the problem, but marrying her because you expect her to definitely is.

And the truth is that many of men who have this mentality don’t know that they are only reflecting their smallness and their lack of big ambition for their lives.

If you have dreams of being a valuable man to society, one who runs big things and is involved in some insane doings, then you’ll know that the kind of woman you need to have by your side cannot be one that you will marry solely because she can cook or because she has “child-bearing hips”.

If your idea of a “virtuous Proverbs 31 wife” is a woman that’s in the house all day, changing nappies, and serving your food, then it simply means that you yourself have no big dreams or ambitions for your life whatsoever.

Because if you do, then you’ll know that your life partner has to also be an ambitious woman who will be very productive in her own right – a woman who can build and handle things by herself and not a slave that you’ll marry to just dump in your house.

Once again, I’m not demeaning or dismissing the importance of performing domestic functions in the house; I’m just saying that those things are too flimsy to be the basis of any marriage.

And I know it’s not a general case, but if you check the lives of most of the men who reflect this “submission at all cost” sentiment, you’ll realise that they are as small and inconsequential as the roles they try so desperately to relegate their wives to.

These are the men who can’t allow their wives to earn more salaries than them, and these are also the men who feel threatened by the successes of their wives.

Apart from being defeated and poor in their mindsets and outlook toward life, they also tend to have very fragile egos.

Unless he’s a narcissistic or insecure person, there’s no man who has big ambitions and aspirations who will marry a woman solely for the purpose of her washing clothes and cleaning the kitchen.

And there’s also no man who will TRULY love a woman and not want to see her shine and excel in everything that she desires.

It’s not even sensible.

I really hope that, one day, we’ll stop using misconstrued texts of the word of God to justify our selfish desires and overall inadequacies.

I long for such a time to come.

“Submission” is not “subjugation”, and the church needs to stop glorifying it as the perfect formula to make marriages work.

According to the Bible, the man loves selflessly first, and then the woman willingly allows him to lead her because she feels safe, loved, and cared for.

I wish more men would realise that you can’t use aggression and manipulation and forcefulness to get a woman to submit to you.

Love her well and do all the right things, and watch the magic.

But again, I ask, why do you even want a woman to “submit” to you?

Why?

What is the value of the submission? To stroke your ego? To give you someone to lord over? To serve as an outlet for all your unchecked excesses?

Is her submission, in whatever specific context, going to be a blessing to her life or a curse to her life?

And look at yourself too. Are you even someone that should be submitted to?

Why should any woman in her right senses, with all of her self-esteem intact and a great future in mind for herself, look up to you to lead her and her family?

If you were her, would you follow yourself?

I think we don’t introspect enough as men.

If as a man you’re not looking for someone who will partner with you so you can raise a family together, and all you want is a dummy that will be a slightly upgraded version of a slave, then you’re already on the wrong path.

I don’t even understand the thrill behind this disparity in marriage.

Personally, I can’t imagine having a partner who is just a passive figurehead that’s always eager to agree with me and “obey” my every instruction.

Obviously, every man wants his woman to rely on him for certain things and naturally also wants to play a prominent role in her life, but it should never be to the point of eroding her autonomy.

Where’s the fun in that, please?

Marriage is all about partnership.

Let’s stop using the Bible to justify skewed beliefs.

Get that rubbish view of submission out of your head and focus on finding a woman who will understand your vision and assist you in making it happen as you assist her in making hers happen.

Win-win, everybody’s happy.

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