I woke up bright and early looking forward to a great day at work after resting on the national holiday in celebration of Nigeria at 66, but it turned to a black Friday.
I lost a friend today.
He started off as a family friend when I was younger, and now that I’m married, he had become a good friend of my husband. Somehow, over the years, the friendship grew, and today, we are left with the painful reality that he is no longer here.
This morning, my husband and I woke up encouraging each other to love and live in the day. To take each day as precious because we really don’t know what tomorrow holds.
We ended that conversation agreeing that it is God’s grace that gives us the privilege to see another day.
And today, that conversation feels different.
Life is truly a gift. Tomorrow is never promised. Love your people. Say the things you need to say. Make the moments count.
Because sometimes, you wake up expecting an ordinary day, and before the day is over, everything has changed.
Today, I am grateful for the grace to be here. And I am deeply saddened that a friend is no longer here.
Ladies First
Yesterday, I logged in to watch something I’ve been holding off on, on Netflix. And what actually caught my attention was Rosamund Pike.
I was wondering how she was in a comedy. Not like she doesn’t do comedy, but I’m used to seeing her in roles like Gone Girl and I Care a Lot, where her character is… I don’t know how to put it, very strange.
So I was curious to see what comedy Rosamund Pike was in. I watched it and I enjoyed it.
What I took away from it is how amazing the whole idea was portrayed, and I give kudos to whoever came up with it. It’s a movie about a parallel world where women are in charge, and the men are in second place. The men have to work hard to be appreciated, to achieve something, and to prove themselves.
So this more or less just goes to show us what women go through. A man finds himself in this parallel universe, and suddenly he has to navigate a world where everything is the other way around.
I really liked it. I like the message. I hope people get to see it. It’s nice. It’s really nice.
I don’t want to spoil it by saying more, but it’s Rosamund Pike, and it’s reverse roles.
Nigeria at 66 🇳🇬
This morning, I wrote a message to a young man I mentor. His name is Sesugh.
He sent me a beautiful message wishing me a Happy New Month and Happy Independence Day. In responding to him, I found myself saying something that I genuinely mean:
I want to see him grow… not just in his career or achievements, but as a person. I want him to keep learning, asking questions, making wiser decisions, and becoming more intentional about the kind of man he wants to be.
I want to see him excel, but more importantly, I want to see him become a man who can look back and be proud of the choices he made and the life he built.
And then I paused.
Because today, Nigeria is 66.
And somehow, as I was writing to Sesugh about the man he is becoming, I began thinking about my country and asking myself:
What have we become?
We talk about independence. We celebrate the fact that 66 years ago, Nigeria gained independence from British colonial rule.
I am happy to be Nigerian. I am happy to celebrate this day. I am grateful for our people, our resilience, our creativity, our culture, our ability to keep going even when things are difficult.
But I also find myself asking questions.
Should we celebrate simply because we are older?
Or should we also be celebrating what we have become?
I’m not saying we have not gotten anything. Of course we have. There are things we have achieved. There are Nigerians doing extraordinary things at home and all over the world.
But I really wish we had more.
I wish, at 66, we had more to offer.
More stability… More opportunities… More things that work… More systems we can trust… More leaders we can depend on… More reasons for the young people coming behind us to believe that they can build meaningful lives here.
So, maybe, just maybe, that is why my conversation with Sesugh stayed with me.
When you mentor a young person, you don’t just want them to get older… You want them to grow and you want them to learn from their mistakes.
You want them to make better decisions and to become wiser. You want them to discover their capacity and use it well.
You want them to become the kind of person who can look back one day and say, I did something meaningful with my life.
Maybe countries are not so different.
Maybe the question at 66 shouldn’t only be, “How old are we?” but most importantly: “What have we become?”
What are we building? What are we leaving behind? What are we teaching the generation coming after us? What are we doing with the enormous potential… Yes, very enormous potential, that exists within this country?
So today, as Nigeria turns 66, I celebrate independence, I celebrate our people and I celebrate how far we have come.
But I will also hope that we pick ourselves up… pick up our pace and do better and greater things.
Happy Independence Day, Nigeria. 🇳🇬
Higher Standards
I saw this image on a friend’s WhatsApp status and I proceeded to have a conversation with myself.
Okay, so maybe I don’t need a new goal. Maybe I need a higher standard, right?
Okay, now, for example, a goal says, “I want to achieve this.” but, a standard will say, “This is how I live now.” There’s a big difference there.
Maybe, Instead of saying, “I want to read more,” I can just go ahead and make a standard for myself, “I’m someone who makes time to read.”
So now, I’m setting standards about my reading habits.
We can take it deeper into things like relationships. Instead of, “I want a better relationship,” you can go ahead and make a standard for yourself, saying, “I expect to be treated with respect, and I give the same.” Or “I’m intentional about the people I allow close to me.”
Another example is our spiritual life and relationship with God. We can replace “I want to grow spiritually.” With a standard like; “My relationship with God gets intentional time, not leftover time.”
Goals have an end point. Standards become a way of living.
And sometimes, I think we set new goals because they are exciting.
Maybe we should ask ourselves this important question:
What have I already decided that I will no longer tolerate from myself?
That way, you pick yourself up from that point forward, not having to set fresh goals.
Don’t ask yourself, “What do I want to accomplish?”
Ask, “What am I ready to live by?”
That Scene
I read The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood years ago, and I was obsessed with it. So when I heard the movie was coming, I was really looking forward to watching it.
I have seen it now, and of course, there were differences, as usual with book adaptations.
But there was one scene I was actually looking forward to.
That scene where the seats are full and Adam has to carry Olive on his thigh.
And the funny thing is, I didn’t go looking for what was going to be in the movie and what wasn’t going to be in it. I wanted it to just unveil itself to me while I watched.
So I was watching, waiting…
And when I realised that scene wasn’t going to happen?
Heartbreaking.
Honestly, heartbreaking.
It’s funny how you can read a book years ago and still remember these little moments. Not necessarily the biggest scenes, but those little things that stuck with you.
I really wanted to see that one.
And it wasn’t there.
I love a woman who is one
I watched The Love Hypothesis while I was resting on a work trip a few days ago.
While I watched, I kept getting The Big Bang Theory vibe. They are not the same story… very far from same. It was the environment, the lab and science talk etc.
Also, I love women in STEM and Anh kept reminding me of Amy Farrah Fowler in The Big Bang Theory.
I love seeing women in lab coats and hearing them talk about their PhD, dissertation, blabla.
I’ve never wanted to be one, but I love a woman who is one.
The Last Song, a novel by Nicholas Sparks
It started some months ago.
I saw a preview, or maybe just a flash of a preview, on Netflix, and I said to myself, I’ve got to watch this movie. I’ve got to watch this movie.
And then, just as I was about to dig in, I found out it was based on a book by Nicholas Sparks.
And I wondered why I hadn’t heard about it. Neither the movie nor the book. Especially the movie, because the movie starred Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth from like donkey years ago.
So I put the movie on hold and went in search of the book.
I found it, and I started reading.
It is the book I’ve read for the longest time. It took me months. I didn’t know why at first.
But then I found out why.
As at the time I got to Chapter 31, I had even paused to write on my blog about how emotional I had felt reading it and everything. I knew the book was doing something to me, but I still hadn’t fully understood just how much.
Now, I’ve finished the book.
And, my goodness.
It was worth every damn page.
Every single page, from beginning to end.
No word was unnecessary. No part felt like it didn’t belong. It was amazing.
And now, after finishing the book, I clicked on the TV to finally watch the movie.
I watched for a moment and then shut it off.
I literally told myself, Let’s wait. We’ll do this later.
I can’t do this now.
I don’t have it in me.
Because I know I’m going to go through all those emotions again watching it, and right now, I’m just not ready for that.
But strangely, I think I’m looking forward to it.
Because if the book could make me feel this much, I’m curious about what seeing the story come alive on screen is going to do to me.
For now, though, I’m going to let the book sit with me a little.
The Last Song was an amazing one.
Presence
This morning, I was thinking about something that has become such a normal part of how I communicate with people in this new age of mobile phones and all.
There’s a young lady I’ve been talking to for a few weeks now. She’s actually my birthday mate. She was born on the 23rd of August too, just like me. She was born in 1996 and I was born in 1982, so technically, we are birthday mates with a few years in between.
And somewhere in our conversations, I realised that we are actually the same kind of human being. And I thought, Wait… could we actually be twins? Smiles… She likes to spend time with herself, yeah, She enjoys her own company. She reads books. She doesn’t go out much…
Since our birthday this year, we’ve been going back and forth, chatting… our conversations have been funny because sometimes she replies late, sometimes I reply late. It’s just been this back and forth thing.
Last night I got a late reply from her, a reply that was about 5 days late. She added an apology; “I’m sorry for the late reply.”
When I saw it I told her, “It’s fine. It’s okay.”
Then I explained to her why it was fine. I actually explained it to her because I felt she would understand exactly what I meant.
I told her that I save my precious chats and respond to them when I’m calmer and less stressed…
If I see your message when I’m in transit, at work, rushing somewhere, overwhelmed, or just mentally all over the place, I may read it and unconsciously forget to respond.
This is not because I don’t care. It’s kind of hard to respond in certain hours or activities of the day.
So I may not respond because I actually care.
There are some conversations I don’t want to have in between two other things. I don’t want to open your message while I’m rushing and give you a half-hearted response simply because I happened to see it.
I want to sit down with it, to read it properly, and to think about what you said… And then I want to respond in the way I would have responded if I had all the time and calmness in the world.
I don’t remember exactly who taught me this, but I know I picked it up from someone. They told me they don’t open certain chats until they are ready to attend to them.
And I thought, Hmm. That makes sense.
So I started doing it too.
I save my chats.
Especially the precious ones.
And then I come back to them when I can actually be present.
The funny thing is, I don’t think people always understand this about me.
Because when you don’t reply immediately, people sometimes assume you’re ignoring them. Or that you’re not interested. Or that they’re not important enough.
But sometimes the opposite is true.
Sometimes, you are important enough for me to say, I don’t want to answer you anyhow.
I want to give you my proper response.
I want to be calm when I talk to you.
I want to have the mental space to actually hear what you’re saying instead of just reacting because your message landed on my phone at the wrong time.
And maybe that’s why I’ve become quite comfortable with delayed replies too.
I don’t need you to respond to me immediately.
I have learned that people have lives outside of their phones. People are working. Driving. Thinking. Resting. Dealing with things I may know nothing about.
So if you take your time to respond to me, I’m okay.
Maybe I’ve just realised that I want people to give me the same grace I give them.
Perception
No matter what you do, people will not remove the version of you they already know from their heads.
Try as you may.
If they think you are this, and you are no longer this… even when you become that, no matter what you do or what you say, they will still hold on to the version of you they knew.
Sometimes, people don’t see who you have become.
They see who they remember you to be.
Nicolas
This post contains spoilers for the The Last Song by Nicolas Sparks
I think I finally understand my relationship with Nicolas.
For the longest time, I have wondered why I struggle to finish his books. This isn’t the first time I’ve started a Nicholas Sparks book and dragged my feet through it. I remember doing the same thing with his book titled See Me.
I have been on The Last Song for some months now. I keep reading it slowly and slowly. I’m at Chapter 31, and I can’t stop crying.
And I think I’ve finally answered my own question about Nicholas Sparks.
He makes you read and read and read.
And while you’re reading, you’re wondering why you’re taking so long. You’re wondering why you aren’t flying through the book. Sometimes you even think, “What’s taking me so long to finish this?”
But I understand now.
He’s building something.
He’s building you emotionally.
He lets you live with these people, he makes you know them and then he lets you see their relationships, their mistakes, their ordinary moments. You don’t even realize how attached you’ve become.
Then, at some point in all that, he just breaks you… Then, suddenly, you feel everything.
Everything.
You feel for everyone.
That’s what is happening to me now with Ronnie.
I’m at Chapter 31 and I’m crying because Ronnie is thinking about how she could have done things differently at the beginning of the summer if she had known her dad was sick.
…oh my God. That thought…
“If I had known…”
If she had known, would she have been kinder? Would she have spent more time with him? Would she have looked at those ordinary moments differently? Would she have held onto them more tightly?
And that’s what is breaking me… Because the tragedy isn’t only that Steve is sick.
It’s the realization that Ronnie is looking back at moments she didn’t know were precious while she was living them.
Now she knows and she can’t go back.
I think that’s what Nicholas Sparks does to me. He doesn’t necessarily make me desperate to keep turning the pages. He makes me stay long enough to become emotionally invested without even realizing it.
I think that’s why I keep going back to Nicholas even when I know I sometimes struggle to finish his books. Because somewhere in all those slow pages, he is quietly preparing me to feel everything… And I love it when I feel. Deep.
