Scared witless.

(Because, PG.)

My birthday is in a few days and I've never been more ... emotional. I'm so afraid of what the rest of my life looks like, because right now it doesn't look like what I'd thought, or hoped, or, quite frankly, imagined.
I'm freaking out.

But, you see. I turned on some worship music (because, by force snap-out-of-it) and here's what clicked to me:
We go around with ideas in our heads, and most of the time there are constructive ideas in there. Valid dreams, hopes, plans, schedules, timelines, and, ultimately, greatness.
And. When these things don't happen quite how we imagined, we assume we haven't done enough of something to deserve it, and so we try harder. And then we fail, and then we blame ourselves for not being ___ enough. Disciplined, hardworking, connected, motivated, ambitious, feminist, strong, courageous, enterprising, smart... There's always something wrong with us.

For the Christian ones among us, we also think we're not Spiritual enough. We haven't prayed enough. We haven't fasted enough. We haven't woken up enough in the middle of the night enough. We haven't served at church enough. We haven't gone to fellowship enough. We haven't read our Bibles enough.

And. It just hit me: All the while, we're breaking God's heart. He's our ultimate lover. He's the one who gives us everything, He wants us to be more successful than we can ever want for ourselves. He wants us to be more "individual" than we want for ourselves. He wants us to be more everything than we could ever want.
It's not even that we ask too little, and He's scoffing at our petty requests. It's not even that He's begging us to receive from Him so much and now we have to try to figure out what it is we're doing wrong if there's so much and we're not getting it.

It's simply this: we already have everything.
We already have everything we need.
We already have everything we could ever need to be where we are, and everything we need to get where we're going.
The contacts.
The ideas.
The friends.
The church.
The prayers.
The hope.
The finances, even.
We have enough to take the next step.

But, here's the real thing: the next step is in the future. We don't know what it looks like and we can't predict how it'll go down. We have enough for right now.
Right.
Now.
Is.
Enough.

Thing is, we run to God because of a picture we have of the future.
So we think we need to be His friend so that He'll give us stuff. Since He's the Ultimate Santa, if we're good He'll be happy to reward us. And sure, that happens, but everything He gives us is everything He was going to give us, anyway.
Our prayers get us closer to Him, yes, but they don't assure us of receiving the things we ask for.
(Uh oh.)
They assure us of getting close enough to hear what He is already going to give us. What He already has planned for us.

BUT EVEN WITHOUT ALL THIS, HE IS ENOUGH.
And we are enough because He is enough.
If there was no tomorrow, or if tomorrow looked exactly like today, or whatever. He is with us and so therefore we are enough.
Everything we ask for, everything we think we need, everything is in Him, not apart from Him.
When we get things that are outside of Him, they don't really fulfil us.

I'm in danger of entering into rambling territory so, in summary, here's the thing: Godliness with contentment is great gain. There are things we want, but He is everything we need.
And, guess what.
We already have Him.

So, I'm about to be thirty and I'm trying to figure out all the ways my life can be slayed and on-fleek because I 'on need no man and yay feminism, yeah, but God is like, "Baby girl, I gatchu. You're exactly where I need you to be. And I'm with you, so you have everything you need."
I don't promise to be permanently chirpy henceforth, acting like I'm hashtag-kinging, shouting out to the haturs and instagramming the lemonade emoji like I don't curr. But I do promise to take a good look around and start to realise that, truly, ehn, my life is hashtag-blessed.
And thirty is the beginning of being grateful for everyday, without dreaming about the tomorrow my 16 year-old wanted for me. (Because real life is what is real.)

Freestylin'

Do what you wouldn’t normally do.

Do what you’d like to do.

Do the opposite of what you’d normally do.

  

The 50-50 fear.

There are more things in the way of our freedom than we realise. And most of those things are things we put there. Or someone else put them there, but even though we keep bumping against them and tripping over them and stubbing our foot on them, we refuse to move them away. We are comfortable with familiar pain, and that is at the root of our unhappiness, our discomforts, and our lack of success (in our careers, in our relationships and in our spirituality.)

The funniest thing is that a lot of the hurts are more irrational than we would like to admit, and yet we hold up rational arguments in defence of them. Like: if you stub your toe against a boulder overtime you cross the road, you should either move the boulder away or cross the road at a different point. Instead, we do the same things, and complain about how other people have contributed to our hurts.

In a conversation with my bro bros today, I discovered that something I did, once, over ten years ago, to one of them, cemented his opinion of me in a certain regard from that point on. We still go out, make jokes, laugh and have a good time as family, but that one thing did not change, regardless of how many other things I may have done to counter it. I didn't apologise, because I felt guilty for having done it, and resentful of having been held accountable for something I did when I was, I don't know, fifteen. But it was a little stone in a little sock that has continued to hurt until now. At the same time, some things they'd done twenty years ago, are clear memories that I have not fully let go of.
And this is family.

Okay. So what I'm saying is not new. There's a Stephen Covey quote for it, somewhere. But it didn't matter how many times we recited the Seven Habits, it still didn't help us get to the point where we could talk about these things freely. Until now.
Until now.

Look, it's probably not even important, right? It's not even a big deal. But, do you know, that being able to talk about it in passing in five minutes has already made a difference, in a little way? And do you realise that we could perhaps have had that five minute conversation ten years ago?

The truth about life and about offences is that it is logically easier to talk and let go and to freely give the benefit of doubt. It takes up less mental energy, it takes up less emotional exertion, it makes everyone feel better and it makes relationships stronger. Four benefits, right there. And yet, we find ourselves holding on to our "right" to our hurt and our pain. Can we not see how much of a lie that is?

Can we not see how, at work, it is better for both you and the company for you to take on more responsibility, whether you're getting paid for it or not? (You get twice the experience in the same amount of time and can plump up your CV with two job descriptions instead of one.) Can we not see how helping someone carry their load is better than leaving them to struggle? Can we not see how being kind to someone is always the right thing to do, whether they appreciate it or not?
Can we not see how much hurt we end up holding on to when we take offence? When we hold back? When we choose to be justified?
We are never happier when we are holding on to hurt. No one was ever happier for choosing to remain hurt. Do you see the logical impossibility of those two opposites coexisting?

We often think that "being hard" protects us. But being hard prevents us: From receiving kindness, from business opportunities, from relationship growth. "But what if they take advantage" is an empty fear, because, what if they don't? It is fifty-fifty, every time. The fact that someone hurt you yesterday doesn't mean they'll hurt you today. But your inability to let go of the hurt from yesterday is certain to prevent you from the good that could come of today.

Why are we so blind?
Why are we so willingly led astray?

Asoebi Economy

(For any non-nigerian who has happened to stumble unto this blog, asoebi is, literally, "the clothes of the family." In traditional events from weddings to funerals, family and close friends of the 'celebrant' commonly wear clothes made out of the same fabric.
That fabric is sourced and sold by the celebrating family.)

I grew up hearing about how unneccesary asoebi was. But I only had one non-society mother and no sisters, so I had no reference point.
When my friends' relatives started getting married, asoebi was ankara and cost all of N1,500, which used to be $10 but is now more like, 5. (Or 3.5). So, again, I didn't understand what the fuss was. I even bought aso for the weddings I crashed; that's how cheap it was, so I didn't understand why my father would occasionally say, "spending money on asoebi is frivolous." I mean, it cost less than a meal and a drink at TFC.

So, when we started getting married, and asoebi cost N15,000 (starting offer) I didn't understand why, exactly. But I figured, only close friends and relatives would consider taking up the cost of this emotional investment. But 15k became 20. And then 25. And then 30. And, when a dear, dear friend charged 40k for her aso, I finally began to realise the dangers of forming close friendships.

The real issue is not (entirely) that families force their friends and relatives to shell out uncomfortable amounts of money in order to dress a specifically dictated way to celebrate with them at their celebration. It is that they do so with such wild disregard, knowing fully well that a refusal to purchase such fabric would be interpreted (by the dictator) as the equivalent of serving familial divorce papers.

When I was younger, I wondered how it was logically or emotionally possible for someone else to demand that you make use of your money in the exact way that they demanded. That's what bullies and dictators did, and friendship was the opposite of that.
And, though, to be technically accurate, no one has ever threatened to stop being my friend if I didn't buy their aso, the subtle "But how would it look if her close friends didn't wear her aso," was just as effectve.


So, everyone buys aso, and everyone complains about the cost of aso, and the cost of getting the fabric made into the desired outfit, which is typically worn once and forever discarded (there are several sub-issues in here that I will not delve into.)

With the recent decline in the Nigerian economy (a temporary on, by the grace of the Lord God Almighty), one would have thought that there would be a tightening of purses.
One would have imagined that, with the same force and focus we as a people have dedicated to railing against the ineffective government (made up of people who also believe in the asobei principle), we would have applied a little force and focus to cutting unnecessary costs.
That has not been the case.

On the one hand, the celebrating family says, "Everything is so expensive, the economy is bad," and on the other hand they say, "our asoebi is 40k, please understand, it's those market people who keep hiking their prices unfairly." There's the expectation that the traders would reduce their prices, and the expectation that family and friends would be willing to increase their spend.
So, even though Pure Water is now ten naira and poverty is increasing faster than the economy is growing, the traders should starve?
Ladies and gentlemen: cognitive dissonance.

And, even as I type this from my moral high ground, what does it say of me that I have bought almost every asoebi that has come my way? The asoebi conundrum has led me to realise that the problem of Nigeria is not the declining naira, neother is it not our poor electricity supply: It is the ability for a people to unfairly demand things from others that they are not willing to do themselves. And isn't that what corruption is?

The Asoebi Conundrum:

We live in an asoebi economy, driven by fame, fortune, pressure and perception.
It's not rocket science: if a country person spends more than they earn, they'll be broke.

Notes from Yanga

I was looking for something to write to cover up that last post so that the two people who read this won't judge me and I found this, discarded drafts from the Yanga series I wrote last year:

There's stigma attached to being single, but it's not real.

Your value is not defined by the lack of ring on your finger.

30 is significant for many things: it can be a great wake-up call for the woman that was hoping she'd have married been married by now.

Since you didn't want to be too intimidating to your husband, which was why you never took a significant job or never did a masters, now that you're staring thirty in the face perhaps you should start making different choices. Feel free to write a business plan. Feel free to do things on your own: go to the cinema. Go to a restaurant. Travel.

And for you who were waiting to get married to become more spiritual, you've reached thirty. Perhaps it's time to start booing up to God.

It's hard to be single - when you want to be in a relationship.

Don't lose touch with your married friends. 

Have a good single friend you can moan with. 

Stay busy: work, volunteer, hobbies, Church, visiting friends, traveling.

Be yourself: if conforming to societal dictates of what a woman should be like was going to get you a husband, you'd be married already.

How June is June 2.0

In January of 2016 I "had a Word" about June. Sigh.
How did I even get here? How did I become one of those people who mixed up their own fantasies and desires with "hearing a Word from God"? Had I now become so over-spiritual because I was desperate and about to turn the dreaded age beyond which there's no turning back?

That has been my fear for the entire year. And here we are, in June. And I still believe. If my dad only knew. (He would be so disappointed.)

Here's how my year has gone:
January: I met the guy I wanted on the semi-last day of the year, so when I "got my Word" I was like, yup, that's him. I already met him, so it all works out. Then it fell apart. Then I met another guy. I didn't really like him but I figured, if he was the one I wouldn't reject "the gift". Then I met another guy who was ready to be the one by June if I so desired. Then it was February and then it was March and then it was April, so I called Mr December back, because, what if. And in May I realised I was hurting myself, and on the first of June I finally calmed down and decided that I really didn't know what my June "Word" had meant.

Oh, June.

Here's what I've learnt:
1. I am not superhuman.
2. Logic and rationale have absolutely zero power when pit against hopes and desires.
3. God will never "make" you like someone you don't like to punish you for having overly high standards. His standards are higher than yours can ever be.
4. It's June and I am not married.
5. It is a lonely journey trying to hold on to an impossible Word, and I finally understand Moses, Noah and Abraham.
6. "What if I heard wrong" will only be applicable starting July.
7. I'm clearly braver than I realise because I'm putting this information on the World Wide Webs. And the blog has my name attached to it (!)
8. I am 98% certain I've still not met "him".
9. It's easier to be comfortably single than to be hopefully single. Hope hurts.
10. It's easier to be single and luvvin' it than to openly acknowledge a desire to be married, in 2016.