Loving A Man Is

Loving a man is quite different from giving yourself over to a man. (A man here is both genders). The great example of loving and giving one’s self over is Christ or for the romantics Romeo. We seem to do both when we accept a man's name with his pedigree or when we share our names, identity with another opening our bloodlines to a new person. 

Giving ourselves is a high state of love and trust in the person. We all give time, affection, money but giving the totality of one’s self is quite a sacrifice. We seem to confuse loving with forgetting our own existence while sharing another’s. Loving a man does not equal to forgetting you’re someone with the right to be loved.

Back to the difference between loving a man and giving yourself to a man. For a person struggling with alcoholism, security and anger issues, loving is the best remedy. Loving such a person entails praying for him/her (sounds religious but trust me it goes a long way), encourage him with your words, give when and what you can. Now giving yourself entails opening up all the way, being vulnerable to him/her which can lead to getting entangled in his issues to the extent of becoming someone else. A man that has not yet learnt to handle himself will no doubt break you; it might not be conscious or intentional. I’m a fan of the ‘power of love to change’ but let’s be conscious of what we are giving in a relationship, if truly we can afford it.

Beauty and the Beast

This happens to be a favorite story of mine; it’s a popular story of how Beauty’s love transformed a beast to a charming prince. We somehow confuse or act this fairytale in reality. I no doubt believe in the efficacy of love to change a man but that I think is a divine love. Love is no longer love if you start developing amnesia towards who you are.

What this great story missed was the fact that beasts have fangs and fangs bite. Have you ever wondered if the beast had a deadly venom and what’d have happened if Beauty was constantly bitten?

Back to real life, we (both women and men) though it’s more obvious in women tend to think our love can change the most brutal beast to a charming prince. Many have gone on this honorable quest as a savior to save and turn beasts to charming princes. If beauty was constantly bitten by the beast, would she have had any beauty left to be beautiful? I guess you know where all this is headed: Abuse, all kinds: domestic violence, emotional abuse for both genders. Compromising I understand is necessary in relationships but why compromise on something that violates your right as a human being.  Fixing a person when you’re not in that career line is not a healthy way to live for the rest of your life. Believing in someone enough for him to change is good but putting yourself in the equation to rearrange deep aged issues is not exactly a nice way to live unless you are called to do so. The moral of the story is to learn when to love and when to give yourself to a person.

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Becoming

Becoming involves a transition from one level to another, but in this context, it’s a transition from a knowing to another knowing out of which we emerge becoming more of ourselves. This trend is noticeable as a child turns a teenage, a teenager a youth, a youth an adult. Each transition involves an experiential knowing. Enough of this transition thing, let’s get real.

In becoming the real or most true version of ourselves, we consciously or unconsciously sieve ourselves of other’s opinion, ideals and thoughts. The change might be negligible and might  as well be obvious. We tend to check and weigh the influence others exert on us.  As we grow older we note people’s influence in our way of life; how they affect the way we think, react to situations. For example, I’m a little bit adventurous in my personal style but I was used to wearing what my mom thought fitted me best but still in trying out my own sense of style I looked pretty silly many times with awkward moments of awesome awkwardness (that’s to say how awkward things got) but these silly and embarrassing moments got me acquainted with myself. Realizing myself as a whole entity with different needs and thoughts from friends or family members had me checking and weighing how much of me was me. How much of the weight do I account for?

Realizing who we are entails us verifying our so called truths, defining our truths, establishing our reality and debunking myths and illusions. It might be as silly as realizing that there’s no Santa Claus or as serious as finding if truly God exists. It’s a quest to understand who we are, what we believe and what we don’t.  For me it started with my parent’s odd story of purple lipsticks make girls wild.

Becoming requires us to admit how much of us is us, recognizing people’s influence on us and how much of that we’re retaining.

It’s quite difficult to break out of predefined expectations of who we are because in trying to break free from the confines, we appear fake to others though true to ourselves. We don’t find ourselves by looking into others; all we ever get to see is their ideals and insecurities silently projected into us. As hard as it can be, we deserve to see the world with our eyes, build our realities outside what we’ve been told. This is the origin of confidence. I went as far as buying all shades of lipsticks and to tell the truth, many of my escapades ended up with me learning rather than conforming and that’s the point.

Well meaning friends will try to stop us from trying things and I’m not including trying to know how it feels to drown or checking to see if fire burns, that is known already, it burns but things like knowing ourselves beyond the powder that fits our skin.

This process of finding or knowing is perceived as rebellious by most parents, friends and colleagues. It’s a period where we desire to learn on our own, see with our eyes, walk with our feet and can be frightening for parents and friends as they feel threatened or scared for us. Prior to this time, we were taught how to walk, how to see, how to breathe, how to feel, how to think but there comes a time when we of our own accord desire to walk , feel life, understand pain, give and let go of love by ourselves. This process is similar to a child learning how to walk on his own only that this is a mental leap, a mental crawl from being told what to do to realizing/understanding what to do.

This is how we become each time dusting off the world’s opinion. How we emerge from teenage crisis, mid life crisis, quarter life crisis and identity life crisis with a better understanding of who we are. In order to develop an independent mind with healthy ideas, we need to go through this, to realize our truths, build our faith from scratch, and understand our doubts and become ourselves.

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Good Morning

Sometimes you wonder if anyone ever notices. It's like jumping amidst the crowd with no one noticing. You want to be a writer but you think "we already got John Grisham, Chinua Achebe, Titilope Sonuga". You want to be a comedian, but then you say "there's Kevin hart or better still Bovi". You want to be an actress yet Nigeria has Funke Akindele and you wonder if you'd actually make a difference.

You wonder if anyone sees how good your writings are or if anyone sees how funny you can be or how your voice is sweeter than Simi's voice.

*You ask; who cares or what else is there to do?*

But then Kevin Hart was certainly not born cracking a joke for the doctors or born with a role in Jumanji. Titilope Sonuga was not born spouting words or with an audience, Funke Akindele was not born acting. All they had were tendencies they fanned to existence. Funke could have been a dancer, Titilope Sonuga a model or a TV anchor. 

And that's what we have!!! The ability to become anything we desire. 

The stage is scanty waiting for more scripts to unfold , more songs to be sung, more laughter to be laughed and more words to be written. The best is never on ground, it's always yet to come.

You see,  all we all have are tendencies, possibilities to make history.

All we are given are opportunities to make things happen.

And all you need to do is to make yourself happen to the world.

Have a great day

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Writing Is Relative

Understanding is relative.

Unlike scientific or technological contraception whose affability is tested and confirmed before being patented and packaged for commercial use. A writer’s content has to be ingested, its efficiency measured against individual’s thoughts pattern, perception, sight, background, openness, understanding all of which vary from person to person so you no doubt have to accept different comments about your work unless your content offers more diversity in its depth which still might not appeal to people with fixed mindsets. Hence, it requires a complete understanding and a strong believe in what you write or else you as a writer would be disturbed by various recommendations, complaints and compliments which can be unnerving. Even if it is read by friends and ascertained to be perfect, you have to live with people’s varying opinion about your works as it would span beyond the locality of your territory and ideologies of your friends. 

A writer and the Audience

Being a writer means you’re writing for an audience. Problems arise when as a writer you don’t have a boundary to which people’s comments affect you. Being a writer is a little bit tricky considering the fact that one might get attracted to the likes especially on social media. As a writer, your self worth shouldn’t be dependent on the number of likes you get. It’s easy to get used to being liked and a certain post not being liked might result in a decrease in how you feel about yourself. It’s normal to feel elated when one's work is appreciated but to let that be the determinant or basis of your worth or happiness is not healthy. I appreciate it when people like my work and for the record I would if you like this post but if you don’t it does not make me feel “unliked” or unwanted because my self esteem or worth is not built on this. This doesn’t erase accepting constructive criticisms, or being motivated by other’s comments, it is recognizing the boundaries. Self love is part of what you give to people around you; it’s not something you try to squeeze out of people by getting the ‘likes’.  There’s a place your audience as a writer fill (the accolades) and there’s a peace, a sureness about yourself that has nothing to do with what the audience thinks or not and I think this is where creativity is born, the courage to write things out of your depth, outside popular opinions. You can’t use your gift, skill as your self esteem bank because not everyone will like your work.  

 The freedom to own what you write. That’s freedom. The accolades will come but don’t be nailed by it. Surprise yourself more than you surprise the audience. It’s still about you. 

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Simplicity Is Relative

Simplicity is relative. The famous cliché of if you have it in mind to be simple, it’d simple is not entirely true. Simplicity depends on our individual ability to grasp a concept. There are some children whom if you tell this is simple in order to prepare their mind to understand would feel dumb or find it to difficult to assimilate it after not getting it a few time. I was a victim of this technique; I would become unusually apprehensive when my teacher or big bro told me something was extremely simple. I’d realize I needed to live up to the expectation of it being simple by getting it immediately. I’d freeze up after a third explanation, my mind clogged up with the idea that I needed to get it on time so as not to frustrate his efforts so I’d nod even though I didn’t understand a dime.  The more he kept saying it was simple, the dumber I’d feel. But if I was told it was difficult, I’d be freer in mind to think that it was not a deduction in my IQ if I stalled in getting it and so I preferred the so called difficult ones because I not getting it on time was not cosidered a bad thing and my persistence led me to finding the answers. Now what’s the moral of the story? Here it is, it is pretty simple (I know right might not really be) simple is relative. 

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