The first time I
wrote a book, someone said, ‘That’s great. Take it to your Dad. He’s Chairman
of the Education Committee. He can get it on the curriculum.” And I said, No.
Not because it was wrong. But for what I think success is, not so much as what
you achieve, but how. For the rot
in Nigeria is not a person, but the little compromises we’re groomed to make at
every entrance, no matter how minute the elevation it leads to, to get in. Yes.
Never enough to say – Judge me sir. And if I am good, let me pass.
Have you ever
tried insisting on this? You will find what I have found – a hunger in the land,
a crippling hunger that’s blunted the edges of our spirits. No. This is not
poetry. This is a description of an all too common fear, one that regularly
advises us against acting out our deepest intuitions, all because ‘the naira is
falling’, and ‘interest rates are rising’, and ‘there are no jobs’. So, rather
than see a seed and let it grow, we demand of it a bribe – first – so we can
‘feed our children’.
But who has not also
been a victim of this thing we all do? Tell me how many times it has been said
to you – ‘Oh, yes, I know you’re the right person for the job, but…’ ‘Oh, yes, I
know you’re telling the truth, but…’ ‘This project, this concept, is a
beautiful one, I know, I know, but…’ Too many buts on the road to Paradise;
turning faces from the sun, bending us all into hunchbacks with rote responses
to the big questions of Life. But diversification is not the top-down policy
you think it is, sabotaged only by an unimaginative government. No. It is you too
who continues to sit behind a desk accepting what a monolithic economy gives
you to do.
For people are
people, you know, we like to travel with the herd. But sometimes – and this is
also true of people – the heart may nudge you towards an idea you cannot find
in any textbook, a career that does not yet exist. And on the morning after it
does, you will wake up and find yourself toying with this mysterious belief, one
that nothing you know or ever experienced can explain, that – connection or no
connection, masters degree or no masters degree, empty wallet or no empty
wallet – there is enough power in your focused mind to do what you just dreamed.
Honestly, many
of us will consider this for a few seconds…this inexplicable urge to begin to
pursue something we do not presently stand a chance of becoming… then laugh out
in derision, and continue with Life. Yes. But for those who will still wake up
the next day, and the day after, and the day after, with the same thoughts
knocking on the windowpane of your hearts; let me say this. Should you decide
to grasp it with both hands, that urge to live from inside out, and begin to use
it to strike repeatedly against the cold and hard and unyielding ground of this
country, you will discover something I am even now discovering. That there is nothing
in the world that is more frustrating. Yes. That there is nothing in the world that
is more satisfying. Yes, yes. It is always like this with our acts of True Love.
14 Feb 2016.
Love and Poetry Live.
Image taken from:
http://jennifercovington.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/follow-your-heart-print.jpg
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