CAROL..................

 Euphoria, agitation, apprehension, frustration, fears, I could go on and on but the bottom line is this. I have been a cocktail of emotions since the last day of the penultimate month when the auto update clock application on my device chimed, 1st of December, 2013.

I starred at the face of the clock listlessly for God knows how long and an emotional pandemonium broke out in my mind. I felt like I had just being drifting in the last 314 days or worse, like the gear of my life has being placed on N in all that time but a question, that will soon be the reason for me being a cornucopia of emotions started to plague my mind, “what have you done with 2013”. It was vastly unsettling and I lost all calmness to the great psychological perturbation that hunted me every minute. Each day was almost like a nightmare and a persistent migraine followed my incessant rounds of mental exhaustion. I thought only of my failures and pitfalls, my unaccomplished goals and unexecuted visions, my dead ideas and lingering plans, disappointments from loved ones, betrayals and most of all the aborted dreams! 

Not for once did I think about the seemingly unimportant things that have been given to me, the sun to dry my laundry, the rain to water the food I ate and the flowers I adore, the moon to help me dream, the birds whose colors are my fashion inspiration, the fact that I can swallow a morsel effortlessly and breath without help but these I later came to realize again that these simple acts are the most important of all through a simple but life touching event that reminded me of what I have forgotten- “the greatest accomplishment is to breathe, a gift providence has bestowed graciously on every mortal regardless of their caste and a gift with which all others can be achieved”

On Sunday, I reluctantly attended a carol service. I use the word “reluctant” because though I fore planned going for the service, a number of unforeseen circumstances almost completely changed that fact but I will be ever thankful that I made that 11th hour decision to dash out of my residence and barrel down to the church auditorium in good enough time that I didn’t get to seat in the overflow, stuck under a canopy and watching a flat screen.

The service was exciting and filled with so much life, shouts of joy and pleasant hymns until that ravaging thought gripped me again. The anxiety took over and I was lost in my mental battle, “what are you so excited about, singing and dancing when you haven’t accomplished anything substantial in the last more than 3 hundred days, and it is over because 2013 is gone?” immediately these words ran through my mind, my legs went numb and could no longer carry my body, immediately, I crumbled into my seat, feeling sick to my stomach and pondering on the negative ranting of my mind, aloof and detached but all of a sudden, from the corner of my eyes, I saw something. A sight that completely healed me of the mental pandemonium that has held me to ransom for over a fortnight and had plagued me with incomprehensible self loathe and pity. I had noticed a huge smile, one that sprang from deep down a joyous and appreciative heart. I followed that enthralling smile to behold the face of a young man, dancing, singing and expressing immense gratitude to the creator but that was not what compelled me to thinking, as I further probed, I saw that this joyous young man was barely more than the size of a midget though he had the facial features of a full grown male young adult but that wasn’t all of it, he equally had a disabled leg and was hanging onto a pair of clutches while he frantically tried to dance.

At that instant, I got up from my seat, silenced the voices in my head and the perturbation in my heart. There I stood, a biologically complete human with an over ambitious and ungrateful heart. I repented immediately and emulated the young man. 

I understand that certain times we feel like we have not reached full potential and strive till we get all we want. I get this because no one in my family is as ambitious, pushy and compelling as I am. With a 60percent of the choleric temperament exhibited in me, it is natural for me to run roughshod to get what I want and complacency is one of the English words I detest the most after dishonestly but the truth is this, sometimes, we get so consumed in searching for what we think we don’t have yet and totally forget to be grateful for we have and many a times, ingratitude is what shuts our receiving door! 

As 2013 wraps up, look beyond your failures and focus on the seemingly unimportant things which ironically, are the greatest of them all- show gratitude for the air you breathe, the water, the sun and the fact that as long as there is life, you will achieve all in due time. 

You have no excuse to be grumpy as the year ends and you better not pout or cry, you know who is coming to town.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you have now was once among the things you only hoped for. EPICURUS

 Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life, it turns what we have into enough and more, it turns denial to acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home and a stranger into a friend. MELODY BEATTIE

TITANIUM

For the larger part of this year, my musical gaze has slightly shifted from my usual intrigues, a blend of divas, countrymen and rock stars to a certain Disc jockey who wears a number of other feathers on his hat that includes, music producing, song writing and remixing and has worked with several big names in the music world and big music labels. I got fascinated by a 2011 trace video “titanium” the beat was amazing but more than that, the narrative of the video was enthralling. It depicted a heightened level of inner strength that which you can only conjure up from within you. That video moistened my eyes at the very end and I have since being drawn to the work of this famous French D.J. “Titanium” has been for me not just a hit trace track with fancy beat and laudable lyrics, it represents a muse, and each time I think I am falling I listen to that beat, and I get all revved up like a race car’s engine.

“Shot me down, but I won’t fall…....…….I am TITANIUM” I hear those Sia’s words and I soar like something invincible has taken me over and I am set to face whatever life throws at me. I listen to it on my phone and on the car stereo and I truly feel like Titanium each time.

Today’s story however, is not about David or Sia, it is about a great mind that acted out the very words Sia sang while David put the beat to it. It is the story of a formidable young man who took various shots and didn’t fall but just kept screaming “fire away” at the top of his lungs in the just concluded West African MTN Project Fame. A platform I have being in awe of from the very beginning and a few weeks ago, a brand new season began with hilarious auditions at different zones but ended on a stunning note and once again, the phrase came to mind as I watched Adaora and Joseph call the winner, “the unfathomable twists and turns of life” which I have often chanted on this blog like a mantra.

I was screaming in my living room alongside my sisters and my mom, we were all beyond shocked! Bemused and euphoric but I was most of all humbled and then I remembered that a contestant had performed my favorite D.J’s song earlier and unequivocally, that song had being adequately demonstrated by the result of the competition after all. I lapsed into a trance for a short while as my mind skidded back to the very beginning. There were 17 contestants in the academy and if you had asked me, I would have wagered my last penny that Olawale could never be the man standing at the end of the fierce battle but then, Olawale fought and made his own destiny! He wrote his name on the walls of fame and now walks in the hallway of fame.

I had a different prediction in the beginning and I arrived there having judged all the 17 contestants by their prowess, talent, voice, showmanship, panache and style but like it is written in the holy writ, surely the race is not to the swift and the remarkable turn of events was based on the following criteria I had earlier almost trivialized- spirit and attitude. Everything changed the night the contestants did their traditional renditions, that night epitomized the death of a man’s strength and the birth of another man’s resilience.

I rooted for Simon from the very beginning, he had it all working for him and it happened so effortlessly. His performance was superb, his delivery was impeccable and most of all, he had SWAGGGGGGGGGG. So much charisma! In my heart, I had crowned my own winner for project fame season 6.0 and I was simply waiting for the whole world to confirm my prediction alas, I saw superficially because what makes a man succeed after all isn’t just SWAAAAAGGGGGGGG! It took something extra, something profound, interred in the very core of man’s being, the inner strength to keep fighting, the spirit to blossom in constructive criticism and that was exactly what Olawale showcased.  That night Simon was evicted, I saw it coming. I am no harbinger of doom or emissary of bad tidings but it broke my heart to see the look of resignation on his face when he again performed Bright Chimeze with utter Languidity on a stage that was at the moment a battle field!  I shook my head in disappointment at his lack of guts and will and announced in my living room that his walk on the MTN Fame hall

IYA BOBO.........nemesis is now!!!!

What goes around comes around I have often written on this blog. Yes, be mindful of the stones you throw at the market place, you have no idea who will be hit!
In this century, change is the most constant thing. Not only can you travel in a tube moving at almost the speed of light nowadays when it used to be weeks unending in times past, so also, these days, the evils that men do lives within them, not after them like our ancestors thought.

Today, I would like to share the tale of a certain fish seller, IYA BOBO as generally called by all who know her and after you read this story, feel free to either dissent or nod in the affirmative to my earlier assertions.

A few years back, I met a middle aged dry fish seller, who was at the moment a mother of four- three boys and a girl. However, her husband and father of three of her four children looked triple her age. Okay, that was a little exaggeration but he was well above seventy and I was of the assumption that she would be in her late thirties or very early forties and I was correct!

Moving on to the crux of the matter, Iya Bobo hails from the coastal area of south western Nigeria, an Ilaje woman who had inherited the fish trade from her mother. Although she migrated to Ile-Ife, the cradle of the Yoruba people in search for the legendary greener pastures a few years after she was given off in marriage to Baba as she called him. I met Iya Bobo via business transactions as fish, be it fresh or dry and a full blooded ijaw person is inseparable and it was that search for fish that led my mother and I one day to the road side fish stall of Iya Bobo and in no time, a business relationship blossomed and flourished into friendship.
 

Consequently, it never ended in a buyer to seller conversation when we visited Iya Bobo’s fish stall. It was that between friends. She confided in my mother about her personal-most especially, her marriage.

She was devastated about being married to Baba and kept insisting on walking out of the marriage. My mom advised her not to. Baba was taking good enough care of her and her children but it seemed Iya Bobo’s mind was already made up and all my mom’s sermon fell on a rocky place.

Days turned into weeks and in four months, Iya Bobo got hit by cupids arrow- she had fallen in love with someone her age and wasn’t hesitant about brandishing her new lover.

That day we visited her fish stall, we were astonished by what greeted us. Iya Bobo frolicking in the arms of her new lover. My dear mother confronted her but Iya Bobo’s reply was “mummy, e ma worry, mo ti fi Baba Oloriburuku sile jare” She went on to do the introduction, “mummy, meet my dear, he works in the University with professors and earns millions” she concluded with incoherent English.

My mother called Iya Bobo aside privately and began her interrogations after which she discovered that the new lover already had his own family- a wife and about four children in the same town. She warned Iya Bobo that holding on to another woman’s husband would resurrect consequences she won’t be able to bear and that providence was frowning at her misdemeanor but Iya Bobo jovially tossed the advice aside. Iya Bobo behaved like the proverbial dog that feigns deaf ears to the hunter’s whistle and soon disappears into the forest.

She continued to bask in the euphoria of her new found romance. Fish business was flourishing simultaneously as her love life. She even instructed her children to call her lover, “father”.

She thought she had found a lasting happiness

UNFATHOMABLE....

The holy writ in its several admonishing to mortals explicitly in some cases likened man to the grass that flourishes beautifully at this instance but is momentarily removed and disappears. Long have I pondered over these sayings but a few weeks ago, an event occurred which transformed my random ponderings into a fresh state of perturbation I have persistently dwelt in, this event I intend to divulge today.

It was a cool Sunday afternoon and I was busy making a mental note of what delicacy would best quench flaming fires of my after traditional gigantic “after church” hunger. Walking into the kitchen, I heard footsteps from behind but cared less, all I was thinking of was good food until my younger sisters loud scream interrupted my trail of thoughts and simultaneously crashed my culinary meditations.

 Berserk, I turned around, ready to give her the verbal lashing she deserved for being an unrepentant prankster, alas, I was mistaken. Stunned by the very frantic look on her face, I became apprehensive as my anger melted into concern and I began to do subtle probe. She released her hand and let her phone slid into my open palms as the following words slithered out of her agape mouth “dem just ping me say my course mate die yesterday”

Wide eyed, my cerebrum began to process the information. Lecture free week had just ended; she was home for the weekend to do her traditional exam raiding of the entire house, most especially the store. Special electives had already been fixed for the next day, in fact, exams had literally begun. Amidst the hustle and bustle of my mind, I found my voice and slowly asked, sighing after each word, “how e take happen? When and where e happen?”

Well, all the information she had at hand was this- the young lad in the company of two others were driving from campus to the school gate and had gotten into an automobile crash. He died instantly, while the other occupants of the car, his friends, were both rushed to the ICU of the University Health Center.

I floated out of the kitchen because I couldn’t feel my legs carrying my body and in the same manner, my appetite drifted from me. With a broken heart, I found a seat in the living room and perched. She went on narrating the little she knew about the deceased course mate and the most recent which was after a test result was released. He was planning and hoping that he makes a B in the course. He obviously was preparing for strongly for his exams!

Who could have fathomed?, alas, the cold hands of death had snatched a budding rose yet again! 

Later that evening, a picture of the car wreckage was sent to her phone, it was a disheartening sight, one that rendered the tear ducts unequivocally ineffective.

That night as I lay to sleep, certain restlessness consumed me as I pondered over the holy writ’s description of a mortal and suddenly, I froze. An epiphany illuminated the darkness of my bedroom, no doubt, I realized- Life is a loan and someday the creditor will come to collect but when? Even the wisest of mortals cannot fathom!

Goose bumps covered the pore spaces on my skin and I began to shiver under the warmth of my covers at the reality that,- we could plan all we want, dream all we can, fantasize and give birth to illusions but we cannot tell of a surety what the next millisecond holds and what the next minute will bring.

Life is a stage where every man must come and deliver his roles having not a tinge of insight as to when the playmaker will scream "CUT"!

Emotions eventually normalized and routines continued but then, something else happened that got me thinking really hard.

There was going to be a presentation in my advanced immunology class and I was meant to introduce my group which would be presenting the topic “DNA fingerprinting”. I had it all planned out. I was simply loaded and ready to explode but my presentation was rescheduled as time ran out on us. I saw it as a good sign, an opportunity to do remarkably well. I was about to make an indelible impression on the professor and the class I thought but then came the much dreaded however- 5:00 AM on Wednesday morning, day of presentation, I woke up retching and vomiting!

I was absent the entire week and someone else did the introduction. All I could do for a whole week was to lie on the living room couch, cable remote on my right hand and flick TV channels restlessly and yet again, the same perturbation took me over as I recalled the holy writ’s analogy of life and every day, ever since these incidences occurred, I pause for a second, no matter how busy my day seems to be to ask myself these questions-

If life is a loan? How am I investing it?
Am I making profits, losses or am I just stationary?
Will I be ready when the creditor eventually comes to collect?

OR

If life be a stage, as inferred by William Shakespeare.
What be my role?
Am I delivering the right lines most succinctly?
Is my character in sync with the playmakers script?
Am I delivering someone else’s line or acting out another’s character?
What will happen to me when the playmaker finally screams “CUT”

I still am perturbed. Lost in the tides of reason and carried far away by the current of logic. I am frantically fighting the tides, swimming against the torrent and yet hoping desperately that providence leads me to find the right answers.

How about you? Think about it. Ask yourself and perhaps, you could be fortunate to catch an epiphany that will revamp your life and nudge you towards eternal bliss at the end of this very long journey.

…………..Dedicated to the young lads involved in the recent OAU road 1 auto crash with profound condolences to friends, family and loved ones of the great gem who passed away.

"THE ALIUS"

 

Dear Reader, I would like to introduce a rare people to you today. The universe would make more meaning if only they were ubiquitous, alas! But before I do that, allow me to do this, saying that I profusely apologize for being mute will not suffice and sorry I was away seems not weighty enough to adequately convey my profound apologies. Two months of disappearing on this blog was like to me a death sentence but it was inevitable. I hope you forgive me for I have being on a ferocious quest to find equilibrium amidst the recent chaotic circumstances that have plagued me and almost taken my motivation away. Anyway, it feels great to be back online with greater resilience for the turbulence of life’s sea.

Momentarily, I would introduce to you a family and like I said earlier, the world would be a better place with more of such people but too bad! Good people are hard to find so if you have any of such rare gems in your life at the moment, here is free advice from the INSPIRER- “Never let them go” but before I do the introduction, READ THIS CAREFULLY.

Growing up under the influence of my very kind hearted and amiable mother and also as a protégé of her last sibling, my dear aunt Stella, I often was confronted with the didactic saying “ do unto others as you would expect to be do unto you”. These words were my aunt’s remarkable recipe for an amazing life. As I aged and became competent to distinguish pleasant from obnoxious, I solemnly vowed to live my life in accordance with the GOLDEN RULE that my dear aunt chanted as some kind of mantra.

As a little girl, I wasn’t the sweet kid that always wore a fuzzy smile but I was good. I cared about people and I loved animals, I remember helping my neighbors take care of a couple of white rabbits. As little as I was, mothers in the estate I grew up in entrusted me with their children whom I took to and from school.

We moved out of the estate and I stopped being a child, I became a teenager groping for self discovery in the maze of life. Everything changed but my dear aunt’s mantra did not diminish by a word in my heart but Ironically, I have had it misconstrued all that time.

Over the years, I have being opined that when one extends a philanthrophical gesture to another someone or a certain group of people, the receiver is bound by some unstated law of the universe to return such act of kindness if and when the occasion to do so surfaces. Well ignorantly, I thought it was an obligation compelled by nature and scruples! But the very enigmatic events of life have subtly revamped my assertions. This is my story and here, you will meet “THE ALIUS”

BOOMERANG

Drowning in an inexplicable torrent of paralyzing negative energy for the last 72 hours, I got caught up in a state of mental exhaustion in which I contemplated not blogging at all this week because it seemed as though I hit a road block somewhere in my trail of thought every time I pick up my laptop. Anyway, I was in service today when all of a sudden the barricade damming my trail of thought broke and great ideas came gushing like tidal waves. It took all my resolve to restrain myself from jumping on my feet and screaming eureka in the middle of church. I hope you had an excellent week and with vehemence, I would like to assure you that this week holds brighter promises.

Often times, I hear people use the phrases” what goes around comes around” or “what goes up must surely come down”. Both phrases I totally agree with as a scientist and geography minor. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sea captain and his crew proved the first statement definitively when they circled round the globe on a three-year voyage from 1519-1522 and came back to the exact point they began from without encountering an abrupt end. This, amongst several other works later formed the basis on which fact that the earth is a spherical body was established while the law of gravity in physics backs up the second phrase.

Today, my mission is to prove both statements without a tinge of doubt but using a real life situation and not physics or geography. I would like to share with you an apocryphal story, didactic and very limpid.
In the remote past, along the ancient coastal area lived a simple fisherman, his wife and son. Their life was austere but beautiful, peaceful and enviable.

The fisherman lived in an isolated hut in the middle of the forest with his family and every fishing morning, at dawn, along with his little boy, he would set out with his boat to spread his fishing net.  The catch would be collected the next day, a marketing day according to their itinerary, and his wife would take part of the fish to the town market for sale and so was their routine until an impending doom struck. The fisherman and his little boy left for the river as usual on a morning but never returned. Joy and peace ceased in the little isolated hut that now housed only a distraught wife and mother who wailed incessantly for her missing husband and son.

Days turned into nights, nights into fortnights………market days passed, years went by but the fisherman and his little boy where nowhere to be found! Notwithstanding, the sad and lonely woman in the isolated hut didn’t give up. Somewhere deep inside her, she had the fleeting assurance that her son and husband were still alive and would come back to her some day. She stopped weeping and dedicated her life to doing good and helping strangers. Feeding and sheltering weary travelers who got lost in the forest.
On a sunny market day, she stumbled on two young but ragged looking strangers. Weak and feeble from the perils of journeying. They looked alike but one seemed younger and had a deep cut on his left feet. He had walked into an animal trap in the forest and was bleeding profusely.

She immediately helped them to her hut where she tended to the wounds of the young lad with healing herbs. Fed them with a nourishing fish meal and gave them a warm place to spend the night. The next morning, they decided to continue their journey but she persuaded

THE GRINDING STONE.

GRINDING STONE

Over the last seven days, I have been engaged in a ferocious soul searching exercise consequent from feeling like a huge weight was lying on my shoulders making me usually lethargic and tardy but as I perused through the chapters of my life’s book I caught a shimmer of light from some phrase I had learnt long ago.
“keep your nose to the grinding stone” that idiom from my days of learning figurative expressions in my English Language class as a teenage girl struck me like lightening from a tremendous thunder bolt and as I mused over it, I smiled from deep within !
Back in the day, it was one of those idioms I found hilarious and almost preposterous.  Each time it came up, I found myself conjuring in my subconscious an image of a maiden bent over the ancient grinding stone, hot chilly splashing over her eyes and then a rapid distraught and ironically comical reaction to her doom. Alas, it was a teenager’s prank mind envisioning nasty things. That phrase perched like a gentle dove on an olive branch on my mind and all week, I worked at fathoming it out. My finding didn’t exactly lift off the invisible weight off my shoulders but it gave me the strength to overcome that incredible lethargy and tardiness. I felt able to combat a troll all by myself!
Today, I would like to share that finding with you but
before I do, read this:
“Ebiere was born into a dynastic family. Wealth and affluence were the first words she spoke as a toddler. Everything came to her easy. She had the best things in life and was the apple of her parent’s eyes as an only child. She didn’t know the words poverty or struggle ever existed until catastrophe struck. Her parents were killed in an auto crash and she became an orphan. Barely eight years old, her vile uncle took the family’s wealth and in a house where she once was a princess, Ebiere was reduced to worst than a mere domestic staff. Her cousins who once doted on her, turned her into a cheap rug and walked all over her, their mother, her uncle’s loving and caring wife, morphed into Jezebel!
Ebiere’s life was like that of a promising seedling that sprouted happily at the call of the impeccable sun and was squashed by hideous darkness, it had ended even before it got a chance to begin. So she thought but providence dissented.
A colossal tragedy was to shape the life of a young orphan or dent it but amidst gross darkness, showed an ember of light in the disguise. Her obnoxious uncle had fired all domestic staff employed by her late parents but allowed her nanny to remain in his new employ. He didn’t want anything to do with his niece so the nanny was meant to be the only source of liaison between them.
Ebiere was literally born into her nanny’s hands and the elderly woman had loved and cared for her like a grandmother over the years. She soon became the centre of Ebiere’s world- her only family.
Life was turmoil for Ebiere and when it was time for her to go to secondary school, her uncle’s wife enrolled her in the community secondary school while her cousins attended the best private school but her nanny always told her this one thing every night she wailed uncontrollably, “have faith my

ANCIENT JUNGLE.......

Astonished, I exclaimed in exhaustion

It is not here either!

It is all a farce, vacuum I mumbled

Now I feel extremely feeble

Insistently I had struggled through this hurdle filled jungle

Tumbling endlessly in rubble

Desperate to find that twinkle that will calm my jingles

Gaze fixed on the horizon I continued to paddle

Certain I would find it here but no

My head in great tumult as my mind began to juggle these thoughts

“If I had searched through the bubbles, leaving out the jungle, would I have found my twinkle?”

Suddenly, it came to me in a ripple

And as it expanded, I dazzled

Fellow comrades all tremble and stumble deep in the jungle

In their ferocious search, had not sought out guidance

Desperate they neglected the wise gaffer, “keeper of the ancient jungle”

And have all fumbled aimlessly being self-reliant

Awed, I guffawed at their ignorance

Content, I smiled smugly

I solved the puzzle

All I needed to do which no other comrade ever did was to shift my gaze

Yes, to get the twinkle that will calm my jingles

I only had to focus on the gaffer of the ancient jungle

Often times in life we struggle and work so hard chasing after all the pleasant things we crave for but there is a secret we most times neglect or are too busy to discover. A secret that would eradicate and mitigate our struggles as well as save us a lifetime of perturbation. Like a brand new machine could be sabotaged by ignorance on the path of its operator, so can the beautiful gift of life, freely bestowed on us by providence be ruined by a lack of knowledge.

In the midst of our turmoil, pain and incessant labor we ask ourselves if life could get any easier and we are tricked into believing that life has to hurt to turn out beautiful but does it always have to be true?

Imagine two little boys in a toy factory that have just being given a gift of the newest toy train. Euphoric, they raced out of the factory, headed to their respective homes to show off their new trains but they were both confronted with a dilemma back home. They couldn’t get the trains to start!
They tried all they could and it just got harder. Finally, they respectively came up with these decisions.

The first boy thought the factory had deceived them and given them bad toys. He locked up the train in the basement and never spoke of it again. He was fraught with anger.

The other boy got out his bike

WISHFUL THINKING.....

FANTASY WISHING WELL

“What is yours will always come back to you”. Severally, I have heard this axiom spoken and used to imbibe assurance into the simple folks by the seemingly wise and accomplished philosophers but I have always thought that the cliché was overrated. I equally believed that it was mere consolation for complacency, tardiness and ultimately, it depicts dangerous folly.

As an individual, I aptly believe in being ambitious and strategic. I set out to achieve seemingly mammoth tasks and a smug smile lights up my face after every deserved victory. Anyway, another unwavering belief of mine faced imminent alteration or modification as a result of a didactic occurrence early last week.
Here goes my tale:
Diligence, hard work, good deeds, recompense and consequences are popular words in my personal dictionary. I vigorously pursue what I want and trust me, I almost always get it.
However, that has not being the story of my life in the last 16 months. I have had series of disappointments, delays in the stead of my traditional “touchdowns”. The most recent of which became consequential of my publication “FIGHTING” but in the midst of thick darkness, when not a flicker of light illuminated. A pale amber beamed.
Depressed and frustrated over losing something I desperately wanted, I turned to my fall back plan which I had treated with negligence. Unfortunately, it seemed as though my plan B wouldn’t work out too but I was about to become a believer.
Sometime in May 2012, I applied for an MBA in a federal university. I was certain I would be admitted but the admission process stalled and out of pressure from every angle, I worked out a plan B as a strategist, I Picked up another form, this time for MSC in a different university in September, 2012.

It turned out that I didn’t get the MBA admission and this I discovered in January 2013. My only option against my desire was to take up plan B. To my astonishment and horror, plan B had being sealed since November 2012 and admission letters were already distributed. Pandemonium erupted in my head as my beautiful strategy came crashing down and I watched helpless.
Well, like people say, life goes on and I decided to forge ahead. I made a trip to the plan B University for frivolity sake. Guess what I discovered!
An admission letter had already being mailed to me a day before but how? I had no recommendation letter from any one that mattered. I was bemused and decided to look for answers. I later unraveled the mystery behind the admission. After all recommendations had being sent in, received and processed. The department decided to pick out a few deserving candidates using past academic records as criteria and viola! I got in.

It wasn’t my first choice but it definitely has the word providence written all over it.
As I walked out of the Department, I met with my good old buddy and after I narrated my story, he said the following words. ”what is yours will always come back to you”. I guffawed and replied, “that is an overrated cliché” but he didn’t stop talking, he went on to add, “Only if you give it a little push”. Immediately, it hit me like a stone thrown in water and the epiphany widened like the ripples the stone makes. Yes, I gasped. It makes sense now I guess.

Keeping your legs crossed and occupying a stationary position is all dangerous folly and mere wishful thinking when attributed to the axiom” what is yours will come back to you” but the moment you launch out of that inertia and “give it a little push” it will of a surety become yours. So, while I still maintain my stand that the axiom “what is yours will always come back to you” is overrated and reeks of complacency, I would like to note also that I am a believer of the axiom if the prefix “only if you give it a little push” is attached to the end.

Don’t cross your arms and tarry for it to come, push a little, set the ball rolling and see where it takes you. After all, I bought the form first!

  

FREEDOM

 FREE OR BOUND?

 December last year, I witnessed an occurrence that caused a partial volte-face in my definition for the word freedom. I observed that perhaps the concept of freedom was entwined grossly with man’s psychology. In fact, I inferred that freedom is a state of mind and two days ago, while visiting the zoological gardens of the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University, along side my irreplaceable friend of over a decade, I modified my observation into a hypothesis. The incident of the previous year, augmented with my discovery at the zoo led me there.

Amidst the numerous activities that characterizes the yuletide is featured a unique act of benevolence and exchange of gifts pioneered by the legendary Santa Claus and mimicked by the millions of mortals occupying the planet earth and so, in the spirit of Christmas, gifts are given and received.

We received a turkey for Christmas though it has long gone down the sewer via appropriate channels beginning with the mouth, I would love to tell a little tale about our Christmas turkey that was not bound but at the same time not free.
Our Christmas turkey was delivered to us late in the day and so we could not perform the traditional beheading rites immediately. Hence, our Christmas turkey had to spend a cold long night outside exposed to the dangers of the dark. Delivered to us with both feet bound, a unanimous decision was made to untie the turkey in order to give it leverage for self defense just in case!

Here is the baffling thing, we arrived the next morning to take our Christmas turkey on a trip to the slaughter but we realized that it was lying on the same spot we left it the previous night, untied! All through the drive to the slaughter, my mind was ravaged by the thought. I pondered over and over it until I saw the light. Our Christmas turkey had been tied up for so long that it didn’t even realize the ropes had being cut off. It had been held bound for so long it had no idea what to do with its freedom. I was consumed by a heart wrenching empathy for the poor bird.

I felt its pain, for how long did it struggle for its freedom before it finally succumbed I wondered? A tiny rope kept a huge bird bound almost all its life and a night before its demise, the rope was physically untied but our Christmas turkey remained bound subconsciously and didn’t even try to move from the spot!
Freedom is defined as the condition or right of being able or allowed to do, say, think, etc. whatever you want to without being controlled or limited. My emphasis lies on the second part of the definition, “sans control, limitation, restriction, impediment, obstacles” which could be physical (substantial) like in the case of our Christmas turkey or mental (insubstantial) like in this other instance I am about render.

 I met an hyena two days ago while visiting the zoo; of course it was being confined but trust me, it wasn’t some kind of “level A” confinement. I was thinking that the hyena could break out and so I became petrified and perturbed.  I guess my buddy read me like a book, like he always does, and assured me the hyena wouldn’t even move and it didn’t!

I looked closely into the carnivore’s eyes and I recognized a mental exhaustion. It had acclaimed mentally to being bound and nothing could probably ever change that.

You may wonder why I am narrating the story of our Christmas turkey and the hyena at the zoo, don’t you? I believe both stories are didactic.
We were all born free, thank Heavens and we all walk free except for people confined in facilities but how free is that freedom?
It not the presence of shackles and fetters that suggests that a man is bound but his state of mind determines how much liberty he possesses.
FEAR, REGRET, HESITATION, INDECISION are all mental fetters and shackles that limits a man.
The FEAR of what the future holds, REGRET for things that happened in the past, HESITATION to break new grounds and INDECISION over significant matters at auspicious times makes a man crawl where he should have been flying.
What is holding you back? I can very well define it as an impediment, a limitation, or an inhibition but what I cannot do is identifying it for you.
To soar high beyond where the eagles tread, lies the obligation to break out with exigency but break out you can only after you have identified what it is that holds you bound and only you can do that. A wise man once said “the only limitations that will keep us bound are the ones we place on ourselves”
How free is your freedom?
You will never know how far you would go until you let that fetter off and stride on.

REFLECTION

 

 

Look at me, and what do you see? Some years back that really mattered to me. How much I cared about what other people saw me as, what I looked like through the lens of another homosapien’s optics and the adulations from the world until I disengaged from that school of thought.

An inexplicably talented young woman wrote a song I fell head over heels in love with and its lyrics amidst other excruciating soul searching exercise became consequential of my disengagement from the “what do you see” cul de sac and got me trailing the paths of a brand new close I love to call “what do I see” and I ceased from there on to ask the question I opened with because I realized that the efficacy of the answer that follows could come from only one source- me! No mortal could ever unravel the intricacies of another mortal’s being and shed light to the stark darkness of a man’s core save for divinity and man himself and so I made a vow to look inwards always. Not totally disregarding exterior opinions of course but meticulously after intense inward ferocious foraging, subject the exterior opinions to evaluation by the internal findings.

So, each time I stand in front of my body sized mirror, I ask myself this- who is this woman I see starring straight back at me? Trust me, sometimes, my reflection is someone I don’t know! Sometimes I cannot hide who I am even though I try and I wonder endlessly when my reflection will show who I really am inside. It is certainly an odyssey but every day I discover the woman starring straight back at me, I get closer to unraveling the enigma, me!

Maybe you have entirely discovered who you are or you are embarked on the odyssey to fathom out whom you are, I hope you find the paths that takes you straight home and I say congratulations to you respectively! But if you do not fall into any of the mentioned categories, that implies one thing- you are still groping in the dark, struggling and seeing yourself from the optics of the world which in almost all cases is disadvantaged and I am putting myself under the moral obligation to announce to you today that   an imminent danger of inevitable abuse looms like in the saying “a misunderstanding of purpose results inevitably in an abuse of an invention”.

Of all the wonders of creation, a mortal is the most mercurial and so self discovery becomes a herculean but eminently significant task!
Who is the man or woman that stares back at you when you look in the mirror? What does your reflection show?
 
Allow me a partial digression; I would love to share a tale of quaint events, of the times when man survived primarily on hunting and fruit gathering and lived in caves.  In the days of the early man who enjoyed virgin nature- landscapes, sky, water even the air lived two brothers. One beloved of his father and the other

FIGHTING!!!

YOU'VE GOT TO GET UP AND TRY!

I had been sitting here, starring at my computer monitor for about an hour and wondering what point to begin from. Well, an apology wouldn’t be a bad start I guess. Accept my profound apologies for last week, I was on transit. Seems like 2013 is on rocket speed! I thought 2012 was fast but right now, I am thinking not so fast. About three weeks ago, I was cajoled or better still, certain coercive measures were imposed on me by my very mushy sisters to watch a Korean love story. I hate love stories but a Korean movie is definitely a NO movie for me, so imagine the horror and disgust that was coursing through me when I sat sandwiched between my sisters to satisfy their misplaced generosity. They eminently thought they were doing me two mammoth favors- softening me up and helping me relax. Well, I did oblige them and we began the movie, a series of about twenty three episodes but something happened.

My initial disgust and horror began to fade as I changed my sitting position from uptight to something more relaxed. I thought the movie was hilarious, and the female lead was an incredible lunatic! But what I didn’t realize at the moment was this- the crazy Korean movie was about to become my source of inspiration, encouragement and strength in a potential adversity.

With hopes as high as the Himalayas and sparkling ebullience, flowing like the long Mississippi, I embarked on a journey to the “Heartbeat” of the nation in a bid to experience the birth of a dream that had being conceived and nurtured for precisely seven months, enough time for a fetus to fully develop and be able to survive on its own. Unfortunately, I met with a still birth instead and at that moment of immense despair and frustration with tears gliding down my eyes from beneath my sunshade as I watched the heart wrenching plummet of my Himalayas of hope with a flinty expression, a temporal amnesia took hold of my cerebrum but only one word depicted all constancy. It wouldn’t fade into the stream of agony and regret. All that resonated through my nerves and veins was “FIGHTING”.
I was lost, it didn’t make any sense. Desperately, I tried to calm down and understand why I was hearing only that word. At first my thoughts seemed incoherent but a few minutes later, a nerve sparked somewhere in the intricate wiring of my nervous system, a quick lightening provoked a thunder that sucked me into a hundred and sixty eight hours before the present and it all became crystal. I jolted out of the waves and for the first time after I beheld the stillbirth, a weak smile played across my lips. “FIGHTING” was the family slogan of the female lead I earlier described as an “incredible lunatic” in the Korean movie I coaxingly watched but you wouldn’t comprehend how the word became my solace and haven until you meet GEUM JAN DI who equally was bestowed with the epithet “Wonder Woman” by the cream De la cream of the Shinwa High.

Born to a very humble and struggling Korean family, Jan Di worked at least five odd jobs to support her family whose only source of livelihood was a dingy dry cleaning outlet which also served as an housing facility for the family of four but poverty never broke their spirits. Jan Di was smart, vocal and had zero tolerance for injustice, oppression and intimidation. As a kindergarten kid, she dealt with bullies regardless of the differential in size which always was prejudiced against her.

The cleaners lived in inexplicable joy and peace in their little world until an incident that would in the future take them through innumerable hardships and hazards occurred. With her fighting spirit,

BONNE ANNEE 2013!!!

TAHQUAMENON FALLS, MICHIGAN

As the year 2012 closed up, I became a cocktail of emotions- a tremendous euphoria sprang up on my inside simultaneously as a sense of sadness over goals not achieved. I became nostalgic over the trip down south I was about to embark upon. Consequently, I was a cornucopia of feelings. I felt joy, laughter, sadness, peace all unique feelings for respective circumstances. I was in the car, journeying down to the South West after the quickest year I had ever experienced when an incident that will soon make the positive feelings gain ascendancy took place. We were driving on the right lane facing upwards since the road was not a dual road and a Toyota SUV  was racing downwards on the left lane but suddenly, this car lost control and was swerving into our lane, my uncle was at the wheels and was quick to respond with admirable aplomb. The SUV somersaulted into a ditch at the other side of the road, when it eventually stopped, all it's four tyres were facing the air, the windshield was gone!

We parked at a distance and hurried to the scene, it was near a village and so the villagers also were dashing out of their houses to the rescue. Pride welled up on my inside as I thought how great a people we are as Nigerians! Inexplicably, the driver and only occupant of the SUV came out without a scratch! It was a miracle and as we continued our journey, I received an epiphany that brought about a transmogrification of my thoughts and obliterated the ingredient sadness in my emotional cocktail as I again affirmed that the greatest gift of all is the air we freely breathe.

Of a surety, you made strategic plans at the beginning of the just concluded year as I did. You mapped out realizable goals and had unwavering hopes that dreams will come through. Maybe a few you achieved and many began to seem impossible and as the month of Immaculate Conception waned, your agitation grew like mine when it seemed like the dreams had faded into oblivion. The resultant effect then becomes a cocktail of emotions- sometimes you are up, excited, ecstatic even until you remember goals not achieved and your ebulliences collapse but have you thought about the greatest gift of them all?

LIFE!!!!!!!!!! Your ability to breathe guarantees that those dreams would and could still come to birth.  I would then like to welcome you to a year that dreams come true! The brand new 2013 whose womb is over fraught with greatness and my wish for you as well as my wish for me is that the blessings interred in the womb of this brand new year will be delivered to you and I without pain or labor. You and I will partake significantly of the greatness embedded in the heart of this year and it will be for us all a cornucopia of unprecedented events that will cause us to smile from deep within.  Get inspiration and stay inspired this year, it is all right here on THE INSPIRER.