So Choose Love

There is a lot of perspective I have gained from the humility University Life has so much endeavored to instill in me, and I am still learning my lessons. When I have occasion to reflect upon my High School days, I do it with lots of nostalgia that paints it in a light that makes it appear perfect, when, in fact, it was everything but perfect. It is among the events in my life that have been beleaguered by uncertainty and the fear that things weren’t going to work out; yet they did! Figuring out the directions of our lives is certainly among the imperative yet most difficult things to do, especially when the effort we put in just doesn’t seem to pan out.

Our lives aren’t linear, though most times we actively seek out the opportunity to see or define them as such. The temptation to round off the edges is one that exists for most people.

What if our lives weren’t as messy as they are? What if we were just disciplined the way so and so is disciplined? What if we were in control? Some people seem to have figured out the directions of their lives, most of us haven’t, the truth is that we aren’t worse of for it.

I seem to have a terrible problem with my communication. That means that I have been unable to maintain some of the relationships that were so dear to me. My taciturnity butchered them, my apathy buried them. They have remained to be relics of a passionate past. I still wonder how I manage to clock months without getting to hear of how some of my closest friends are faring on. Though I believe I never love them less even after months of incommunicado, I have been tempted to think that their love for me has waned. But after a while I realized something that has really changed how I see my life today, or how I try to see it at least.

Whatever it is we feel we are not receiving could probably be what we are not giving. While we crave love and attention, are we giving them in the proportions we desire it for ourselves.

The bane of our existence is rooted in our solipsism. Self-absorption earns us nothing but needless anxiety and disillusionment, even in the people who love us the most. Some of the people we want to appreciate us may not be good at it, but that doesn’t mean they spun our achievements. Are we able to appreciate them ourselves? When we only think about ourselves, its so easy to be disappointed. It so easy to judge ourselves and other people, when in fact we could ask ourselves what it is that we could and would do. In order, to give ourselves the opportunity to find peace and fulfillment, we have to teach ourselves how to make heaven for other people. May be the way to find joy would be to create that joy for others, and while we make them smile, we will definitely smile as well. It is more blessed to give.

While our lives are fraught with frustrations and pain, we don’t lessen our suffering when we project this frustration at others. Other people aren’t to blame for the darkness in our lives, neither are we. When we bully others because we were bullied by our bosses we set out a domino effect that causes a mess in the world which in some way eventually gets back at us; the cat spills the milk we worked tirelessly to bring home because he was kicked by the kid who was slapped by her mother who had been insulted by her husband who had been reprimanded by his boss. We are strong to the degree that we can smile at others even when our lives aren’t all roses and rainbows. So many people have come to the realization that the easiest way to happiness is to make others happy. You have no right to claim what you are not giving. You cannot earn other people’s respect when you are rude and patronizing, you have to respect others first. When you do the right thing, when you are kind and courteous to others, it is a small thing when they do not return it. What matters is we do the right thing, whether the world meets it with indifference at best or insults our efforts at worst should not worry us. People don’t degrade us when they insult or slander us, they degrade themselves. To love is the most courageous thing to do; to know that someone will hurt you at some point, but to still love them anyway. Those who don’t want to be hurt cannot love; those who cannot love will never be happy.

It is the same thing with forgiveness. People are not perfect, it is both unfair and impossible to want them to be so. There are millions of people on earth, it is almost impossible not to step on each others toes. What we do not know is we ourselves have hurt many people while we thought we were joking; we have vociferated stinging comments that have harrowed the hearts of our victims to date ―we have caused wounds unable to heal. Yet, when people wrong us, we have never been willing to bear it. We have called it disrespect or even insubordination. To be free we need to forgive. We need to let go and let God in the most literal sense. Vengeance is his; let’s not claim part in it. Forgiveness isn’t what you do for someone else, its something you do for yourself. Love yourself enough to forgive.

With that If I have ever hurt you in any way, in my words, actions,or even inaction, I am sorry. Be kind enough to forgive me.

Life is meant to be messy, people are meant to be messy. We live because we love, and its true the other way round as well.

So choose love.

Simps will see Dust

From the look in her eyes, I could tell that it was bad news. The expression on her face was disturbed and anxious. Her lips were half asunder as if she meant to speak; and she drew a breath, but it escaped in a sigh instead of a sentence. She raised her winsome eyes to mine and gave me a kind of solemn and distressed gaze that immediately sent tendrils of paranoia down my spine. My heart exploded into a frantic crescendo of beats that forced an embarrassing gasp out of me. The world around me had descended into the sadistic and stifling silence of a graveyard at midnight. I desperately searched for assurance in those dove eyes that seemed resolute on dashing and annihilating whatsoever form of equanimity I was struggling to evince.

Still, I was unable to understand how fast I had moved from detesting this angel of a person to desperately yearning for her in every second of my existence. The first day we met at our Anatomy Dissection Table, I loathed with perfect passion the sight of her imposing figure and the impressive mien of control she exuded. In contrast to her riveting poses and carefully worked out intonations that made her explanations astoundingly succinct and wonderfully apt, I hated how I would drone on incoherently while struggling to put together the scrappy and expatiate points in my argument. Her smile and graceful nods then were unsettling and would plunge me into an abasing abyss of discomfiture, as if to emphasize her own indubitable composure set against the backdrop of my pitiful confusion.

Even though I had expected her to be haughty and hubristic, her replies to questions from our table mates were kind and down-to-earth. She was witty and humorous in a manner that disarmed every soul that engaged her in a conversation and made it impossible not to love the salubrious and rejuvenating air she effortlessly infused into her surroundings.

“Henry,” she calmly called out to me one afternoon while I tried to clarify the difference between Crohn's Disease and Inflammatory Bowel Disease. I grunted something close to a reply as I tried to find sobriety at a moment that suddenly seemed so critical. Excepting her glossy hair that was usually held by a black velvet band with a spray of white pearls in front, she preferred to showcase her beauty au naturel, jilting all the overtly adorned features, outfits and elaborate ostentatious styling that was typical of the repulsively coquettish ladies in our class. I did not know for how long I had been lost in the heaven of such incomparable beauty until I had that sweet and familiar voice again.

“You agree with me, right?”

“Yes!” I whispered in my mind, unaware of what she meant. “I agree that I am in love with you!” I shouted silently as a sheepish smile spread over my face and drew the flabbergasted gazes of my colleagues.

For six years of Medical School I surrendered myself at the mercy of insatiable riptides of love and infatuation that lurked beneath the veneer of what seemed to be a placid demeanor. I saw Brenda return her adoration for me in furtive glances that lingered and brief smiles that became the highlight of my long, arduous and exerting days in Medical School. I was only starting to realize how wrong and blind I had been while I knelt before her, having voiced out a proposal that was not a little bit romantic as I had envisioned now that I was being roused to a horrible awakening of my unrequited love and the misery that would mark all my forthcoming days. She shook her head apologetically and I watched her lips settle in shape as I prepared myself to confirm her say the “NO” I dreaded hearing.

“Yes!” She enthused, “I will marry you Henry!” The heart-rending surprise at my sudden felicitous turn of fortune was enough to startle me out of the dream I had been having.

“Oh my goodness!” I gasped involuntarily as I sprang out of bed. When I realized I was an hour late for my Pathology end of year exam, I knew it wasn't Brenda's pretty face I was staring at but the unnerving grin of a Supplementary Exam.

Shakespeare Says: Settle your own mess first, and always.

I am taking a risk by beginning this discourse with Shakespeare. I am aware that you would soon dispense with it than relive the abuse from literature you had to endure in your highschool. But Shakespeare puts across such an important point, one I think warrants a discussion. I am here to help you see it simply and easily.

In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, when Laertes is about to leave for France, he is careful and kind enough to advise his sister, Ophelia, on the danger of the passion of ‘green’ love and warn her of Hamlet, who seemed to have a crush on her, though that is in some regard debatable.

The piece of advice is certainly a spectacular one, but Ophelia's reply so struck a chord in me and has led me here.

Here was her reply:

“I shall th' effect of this good lesson keep

As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,

Do not as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,

Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads

And recks not his own rede.”

I understand that you don't always get it the first time, I didn't, and this is Shakespeare's for goodness sake.😂 If I didn't get it wrong, then at least I hope to be right, even if in part, in the words that follow.

Striving to be a better person and good at what I do has heralded a lot of frustration in my life. And I have only been able to see it not long ago. After I had learnt my lessons, or thought I had learnt them; after I finally believed I had understood the necessity of circumspect and disciplined living; after I had gotten some fleeting feeling of inspiration on what it meant and why it was important to be focused in our life pursuits, I would begin to see myself as the savior of the messed-up and broken souls I knew. I was right to think that these were people who had a lot of potential, who were able to live the most fulfilling lives, but I was wrong to imagine that I was the one who would be responsible for that turn around; I was not the one to lead them out of their captivity.

Once in a while we see paradise, and it is really kind of us to want to lead our fellow comrades and acquaintances to this place of respite and refreshment. But after some keen deliberation, we would be disappointed to find out that we never knew this paradise too well in the first place. We had not really known its incomparable joy or its sweet water, neither did we know anything of its cool shades and flowered paths. Yet we thought ourselves capable of leading others into this amazing place, even thinking we could make them stay. A place we had made ourselves believe we knew but didn't.

Our world thrives in comparisons. Comparison inspires competition that is meant to stave off complacency and keep us striving. But given the kind of comparison that has been engendered by the brokenness of our world today, we are only able to either see our inadequacies or our virtuousness when we draw these contrasts. The tendency to feel useless and a failure in comparison to our peers is certainly disquieting and one that requires addressing, but I am convinced that the seemingly innocuous tendency to think highly of ourselves is the more evil twin.

It is easy to see how better we are than other people, how disciplined, how reserved, how beautiful, how gentle, how intelligent, how sharp, how graceful. Yet this is a form of self-delusion that holds us back from improving ourselves and keeps us from doing the real and important work. The temptation to make an impression has never been greater, we want people to think highly of us, to pay attention to us and applaud us, so without knowing it we have settled for appearances. I saw this in myself when I would raise my voice in conversations, wanting to be heard and to be the center the conversation revolved around; I wanted to be the one who gave the wittiest remarks, the one who shared the most laughable and interesting anecdotes; I wanted to be sympathized with and felt sorry for. And I have never been so disappointed.

Many mistakes in people's lives remind us of how better we are than them. We occasionally claim how we could never be so careless and dumb as to fall victim to what they did. “Nijikute!” we proudly say. But are we really safe? It's so easy to judge and label other people for their mistakes and failures, and forget that we are not immune. 

‭‭I Corinthians‬ ‭10:12‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

[12] Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. 

Temptations and compromises are greatly a matter of context and environment; so many of us would be liars, drunkards, thieves, idiots, even promiscuous if the circumstances favored it. Sometimes while we express our displeasure and loathing for people we think to be social pariahs and immoral, good for nothing idiots, we would do well to remind ourselves that may be we are just jealous of the freedom with which they do these things, or the fact that they always seem to get away with it.

As much as we would want to change the world and make it a better place, as much as we would want to change other people and make them better human beings who thought like us, talked like us, dressed like us, loved what we loved, and despised what we despised, there is only one person that we can ever prod, shape or change with any degree of success: the person we see when we look into the mirror. Other people aren't some kind of robots we can program into obedience or compliance, they are facts we need to accept and acquiesce ourselves to.

We can't be careful about improving ourselves and still have the time to meddle in other people's lives. I believe it's not many of you who will honor the words I say here simply because I said them, you will respect them because you saw me mirror them in my actual interactions with others and took note of the poise with which I carried myself. That’s the reason why it's so difficult to master the courage to put these things down in writing, because I would have set a standard of performance that I would have no excuse but to meet, or to at least try to. If we begin to think of how far we have to go down this path of destiny, how much we have to do to improve ourselves, getting our hands messy and heads full with other people's business is no longer a good idea.

It is called self-discipline, a standard we apply ourselves to without wanting or forcing others to honor as well. Self-discipline is not about us burdening other people with what we think or feel is a right.

Not everyone can be like us. It's not fair. It's not possible. How bleak the world would be without the Kidakes, how boring it would be if everyone was Henry. Our energies should be marshaled at living rightly than speaking rightly. We could be the compass by living virtuously, not pointing fingers at and shaming people we think are being careless or indisciplined. Sometimes a little self-searching reveals that these things we hate in others are actually things we hate about ourselves. That is exactly why it inspires all the self-righteous outbursts. 

We have a lot of work to do on ourselves, trying to change other people and force them to be us is the first sign that we are losing grip of that goal.

Shall I show you the steep and thorny way to heaven, then take for myself the primrose path of dalliance?