Today, I’m thinking of the fact that writing no longer comes easy to me. I no longer feel as excited about penning down my thoughts as I once did. I published my first book in 2010- a poetry collection- and I thought I would be writing steadily since then. I imagined I would have published more fiction and poetry collections by now. But over a decade later, I have written a great deal- more what I have to than what I want to… and the next book is going to likely be an academic monograph. I’ve changed as a writer. The wounds I have felt as a person have healed but left scars on my writing hand that make it hard to write; experiences have both sharpened my writing voice as well as left me less driven to share it. Today as I struggle to think of what to write, and who I am as a writer, I think of my poetry. The very first things I wrote were poems. Poetry- the exercise of expressing the most feeling/thought in the least amount of words possible… using imagery-infused words to paint the canvas of the readers’ heart with empathy… it is poetry that has best evidenced my being a writer over the years, and it is with poetry that I attempt to explain why I am struggling to write, struggling to believe in my writing again today.
An Interview with Myself on Depression: Episode 1
Mental health is gaining traction, more people are speaking up which is great. Getting therapy is becoming normalized (at least via Western media)- also great. But as with most things, “trending” comes along with distortion and confusion and a lot of ignorance. Between November 2020 and April 2022 I have struggled with recurring episodes of severe depression to the point that I can say my great achievement of the last 17 months has been surviving. I promised that if I survive it I’ll tell the tale because I think one of the hardest things is explaining to our family/friends what depression is. Especially when they expect/assume you to be okay. Because loving someone with a mental health problem is hard… yourself included. And because we cannot truly ‘normalize’ and properly address what we do not understand. But writing about experiencing mental health issues is hard. Mostly because writing it out means thinking about it and it is easier to escape. For instance, I have been wanting to write about my emotional eating forever. Hoping that writing would bring some sort of healing, that if I express it, it could be diagnosed understood, and I could be fixed. But I haven’t been able to; writing requires you to think/feel what you want to express and what I want to express is the fact that I eat to cope with hard emotions. Hence writing would be evoking the hard emotions making you want to eat more. I’ve regularly ended up self-soothing with food while writing/thinking of writing about self-soothing with food. So this has taken forever… That is why I’m trying this strategy: an interview with myself. Responding to questions directly, The interview format is kind of like using 2nd person. The topic is still hard, but the use of delimited question help so that feelings don’t flood all at once. You can think of it as a test you’re answering and not a baring of yourself So over a set of instalments which I’ll put on my blog under the category of #DemystifyingMentalHealth, I’ll share interviews on different aspects of mental health issues and wellness. Hopefully, it helps someone. Most of the questions I have responded to in this episode are from my friend Ettamba; if you have questions you’d like me to answer, drop them in the comment section and I’ll consider them for the next segment **** On Depression (Questions from Ettamba) When you say you have depression what do you mean and how was it different from being sad? It’s taken me a while to understand depression as a condition, specifically clinical depression as a disease which is different from sadness. And even longer for me to acknowledge it as a thing given that it’s not adequately acknowledged among Cameroonians… and sometimes I still falter over whether I’m ‘claiming negativity’ as some Christians and ‘toxic positivity’ people put it… In 2018 when I first decided to really seek help understanding what this is. I went to my university’s health centre and scheduled a session with a psychologist and asked them to test me so I can see/have an actual diagnosis. I wanted something like an x-ray to show a broken mind and explain why I was not okay… I needed something to explain that this was not a passing feeling of sadness but something much deeper rooted and that my helplessness in the face of it wasn’t made up. The psychologist explained depression in this way: everyone has hormones which affect how they feel and the balance or imbalance of those hormones means you are generally starting off from one of three points- She drew lines on a piece of paper to explain this… Very happy —————————————————————————————————– Neutral ———————————————————————————————————— Very sad ———————————————————————————————————– Non-clinically depressed people were those who mostly start off at the neutral line, so when they get sad, they can fall below the neutral line when things are bad, but not so much they are at nothing. Likewise, it’s easier for them to go up to happy zones because they’re starting off midway. But clinically depressed people, she explained start off below the neutral line. It is harder for them to go into the happy zone- it takes more effort… and it is easier for them to go down to the low point because they’re already below neutral… I like her explanation and it stayed with me. However, I must say the most accurate explanation of what depression is- for me- how it differs from just sadness was found in Harry Potter. Yes, I know how that sounds. But still, Harry Potter (book 3, in particular) has the best non-medical, for-the-average-person explanation of depression I’ve read. In it, Harry is having a horrible reaction to Dementors which one can see as vectors of depression. As he is more sensitive to Dementors he wonders if it’s because he’s weaker than his peers; the following is a conversation from that book that captures it: “… I suppose they [Dementors] were the reason you fell?” “Yes,” said Harry. He hesitated, and then the question he had to ask burst from him before he could stop himself. “Why? Why do they affect me like that? Am I just —?” “It has nothing to do with weakness,” said Professor Lupin sharply, as though he had read Harry’s mind. “The Dementors affect you worse than the others because there are horrors in your past that the others don’t have…” “…Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth… they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you…You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life. And the worst that happened to you, Harry, is enough to make anyone fall off their broom. You have nothing to feel ashamed of.” Replace Dementors with depression or triggers of depression and you’ll get it. People with clinical
Five Things That are Marketed as Feminist but are NOT!
These days feminism is a buzzword. On one hand, nearly everyone has some dastardly opinions on feminists even if they can’t clearly define what feminism is. On the other hand, every other product, event or even phrasing is marketed as if it were “women empowering” or “feminist”. For those who know what feminism is, the whole thing is pretty annoying. I’ve written about the former problem- the misconceptions around what feminism is- and that is why I’m no longer correcting people when they say nonsense like “I’m not for feminist, I’m more of an equalist”. But I have never before addressed the latter problem; the over-marketing of the wrong things as “feminist” and the way that ruins the work of the movement. So today I want to focus on that. I’ll be presenting some five common phrases/notions/happenings that are marketed as feminist but are NOT. 1. GirlDad You’ve probably seen #GirlDad here or there under some new dad’s post. The hashtag has been pushed as an impactful statement; the men using it are articulating their pride in being a father to a daughter in a world where daughters have not been valued as much as sons are. #GirlDad has also been used to articulate the belief that being a father to a daughter is a different experience; you often hear men saying “having a daughter helped me appreciate/respect women”. In so doing men reveal how they become more sensitive to the inequalities and dangers faced by the female gender when they have a daughter. So what is wrong with this supposedly impactful statement, and why is it a clear example of something which has been wrongly branded as feminist? Simple answer: it is being used in the wrong way. While the initial motive of the hashtag #GirldDad (promoting pride in having daughters) is laudable, the hashtag has unfortunately been used to reinforce stereotypes that some things are “girl things” and others are “boy things” (same problem with the #BoyMom hashtag) and this is anything but feminist. Being a girl dad on social media has been presented as being a father who is overprotective “because he has daughters to guard” (interestingly from members of his own gender), a father who does stereotypically girly things, and a father who is suddenly more sensitive to the inequalities and dangers faced by the female gender because he has a daughter. There is a fine line between emphasizing the equal value of daughters and making one gender more ‘special’ than the other and the #GirlDad hashtag often crosses it. Also, one should not need to have a daughter to recognize the equal value of girls and women to boys and men, so parading that is anything but feminist. Perhaps the most annoying thing about the hashtag is how capitalism has used it to now market stereotypically “girly” things to men “don’t you want to be a girl dad, buy this unicorn hat and prove it”. 2. “Split the costs 50/50, match his game” Contrary to popular belief, splitting the bill 50/50 is NOT FEMINIST. Hear me out, I know some anti-feminists will be vexed by this one. Feminism is used to refer to the belief (and the movement which acts on that belief) that men and women should have equal rights, opportunities, responsibilities and fair treatment. Read that again and see the word SHOULD. This- gender equality- is what we believe and advocate SHOULD be. Gender equality is the desired state where the “rights, responsibilities and opportunities of individuals will not depend on whether they are born male or female” (Warth and Koparanova, 2012). That is the desired state, the state we’re advocating for; it is the goal but it is not the current reality, NOT YET. We are still in a state of prevalent gender inequalities. Now, Gender equity refers to the efforts being made to reverse gender inequalities and ensure fairness between men and women so that the desired state of gender equality will one day be realized. We practice gender equity because we recognize that social norms and power structures have historically (and continue to) impact the lives and opportunities available to men and women differently and ensure imbalance and inequalities. We practice gender equity by enforcing measures to compensate for the historical disadvantages one gender has faced (and continues to face) to create a more levelled playing field. In sum, equity leads to equality. Without equity, there cannot be equality. Hence, until things are equitable, until the situation where men and women both have equal rights, access to work, same pay, same responsibilities as parents, same expectations of them in our society etc. we can’t be doing anything 50/50/ UNTIL THEN, there can be NO EQUALITY. To ask someone who is earning less, and being demanded more to split 50/50 is NOT FEMINIST. What that means, is you are asking them to act as if they were in the desired state when they are not. This issue is regularly used to gaslight feminists with statements like “don’t you people want equality?” Unfortunately, there are too many who trip on their tongues when faced with this question because their understanding of feminism and feminist thought is shallow. The feminist goal is fairness; so if women expect to receive more financial support from men in a society that historically and continuously favours men with higher pay, better work opportunities, and less domestic responsibility, then that expectation is not unfair, it is their way of being “compensated” for the “traditional” role they are forced to play (and that compensation is not enough, to be honest). This ‘compensation’ may look like bias against men/for women to those who are less aware of their privilege. To that, I say: educate yourself. 3. “A Beauty with brains” First of all, I forgive myself for once believing this was a compliment and smiling at being described as such. Most who use the “beauty with brains” phrase as a compliment have something alike to those who used #girldad;
Want to have a successful year? How are you defining success?
What if I told you, there’s a way to guarantee you have a successful 2022? Well, I can; because a successful year all depends on how you define success. Here’s a definition I recommend.
Christmas Reflections for Those Who are not Merry…
Season’s Greetings to you dear reader! I truly hope the holidays are a happy time for you. Yet, I am aware that this is not the case for everyone, and today I decided to share why this is not necessarily the case for me. I never thought of myself as someone who dislikes the holidays. Even now, I can’t say *dislike* is the word for it… I love the break from work which gives me time to rest and plan and do…other work lol! Still, when a friend replied to my Christmas card on the 24th and began a conversation it led me to do some overdue reflecting. See, this friend asked me what I was doing for Christmas and I replied saying: “nothing much, just going to try and avoid binge eating, crying, and hope for productivity”. I’m Christian so for Christmas I do believe in praying and praising in ode to the birth of Christ… but not any more than I do on any given day I pray and praise. Not only because of the debates on if this specific date is his accurate birthday but just because I rarely feel extraordinarily praise-y on the day. So, what is the problem? Why am I not merry? The easy answer would be depression. But nah, that’s not quite it. Many people detest the holidays – for what it has become due to capitalism, or because they are lonely, or because it reminds them of someone they lost (like a dear friend of mine who died in 2018 on Christmas Eve)… There are many reasons, and it is so accepted that the holidays can be a triggering period that I had never really thought about it why this period is not simply joyful for me any longer and what exactly about it may trigger depression. This is the first time someone asked me so pointedly that I was forced to find the words for it. And in finding the words, I discovered something about myself. It seems some years ago (I don’t know when exactly but I think it was 2016, perhaps earlier) holidays began losing their luster for me because I was no longer content with being a makeshift family member. Holidays are for family and home. I have family, lots of family, especially friends who have become family. I am not short of loved ones to spend the holidays with; at least 3 of my loved ones near me made it clear that I was to join their families to celebrate the day (and I eventually did spend a bit of time with each of them and their families on Christmas Day). But as I have come to do in recent years, I made sure I spent as little time as possible at each home. Playing either the role of helping in the kitchen, visiting aunty, or just plain guest. Because it’s still not the same. Because my family has their own family. So ‘going home’ often means going to a place where you’re reminded that you’re not exactly family. Or that your family is not like this family. Or that what you call family, is a collage of a variety of individuals belonging to other families. I wasn’t always aware of this, not in such clear terms at least. This realization is coming this year following the conversation on the 24th. It was fine at first, or rather, it was unnoticeable. I did not notice that with every holiday spent with another family, I was trying to create something. Either creating some family holiday tradition with those who had adopted me as theirs, or create my place in another family… In one house I tried to create the tradition of having Christmas gifts put under a Christmas tree to be opened on the day. I was an undergrad student and broke so I wonder how I did it, but I managed to get everyone in the family I was with at the time gifts. But, when the day came all the gifts under the tree were the ones I put there lol! They received in gratitude, but it wasn’t something they would think of, so not something that continued. In later years, I tried to join the traditions of the other families. And I loved it, for a while. One of my families has a beautiful tradition of gift exchange (Secret Santa) which is elaborately planned for a month before… it is so entertaining how well we hide whose name we picked and the coy ways we go about trying to find the gift they would like… I recall praying in 2016 that I would want to emulate that tradition in my own home in the future… That should have been a warning. I didn’t consider myself at home. But still, I have spent Christmas Eve with that family and enjoyed that tradition for over 5 years. And another of my families has the tradition of going to the beach on New Year’s day with colleagues… I have loved that tradition too. Let me tell you, everyone should ring in the New Year by having the waves wash over you as if carrying the dirt of the previous year away. It is unspeakably refreshing. Still, I did not recognize that these traditions were family heirlooms I was trying to inherit, nor that my participation was an attempt to make family memories for myself. So when I no longer wanted to spend holidays with others I also could not recognize that it was because a part of me had realized that I could not create what I needed in that way. Spending holidays in this way meant felt akin to living as someone else for a short while. Spending the day enjoying my nieces and cousins and sharing food and joy, but then going home to my space. And my own home sometimes feels lonelier when returning to it after that, with memories of the baby you carried, or thoughts
Unlearning Episode 1
I am jealous of the love black women, African women reserve for men. Their men, the men yet to be theirs, the men who we are not sure exist yet, or who exist but just don’t show up. The sort of love that has us ready and willing to edit ourselves to be what you desire. The love that has us buying fabric and thinking of how we’ll make two outfits instead of one. The love that has us learning skills we wouldn’t need otherwise, just to please/impress you. The love that forgives without neither complete apologies nor changed behavior. The love that hopes in things that are not seen and builds futures on potential I am jealous of that love which has been so normalized evidence of it is no longer considered extraordinary… Like the fact that The Power of a Praying Wife sells out every Sunday outside of church and yet the bookseller hasn’t bothered to restock The Power of a Prayer Husband since he barely managed to sell the last one. Or the fact that you can enter a shop and tell the salesperson “I di find “Papa e Dish’” and they will know what you refer to. A dish reserved for your gender, a status symbol you are eligible for even if you are not sure you want to be ‘Papa’. I am jealous of the love women like me have earmarked as just for men like you; the way we save everything from the best piece of meat to the best seat at the table, to ourselves… just for you. And I am jealous of how easy it is for you to find a place to belong because of this; Jealous of the advantage you have because we believe that we can/should/must earn the love we so eagerly want to give you, because so many of us are convinced you are the ones to fill the reserved spaces we kept… I am jealous of the prayers my kind pray for men. How does it feel? To have all the women in your life praying for you, when you forget to pray for yourself? I am jealous of the kind of love that makes us aspire to be superwomen; that makes us desire to be everything a much less than “super” man desires. I am jealous of the love that makes us plan our aspirations around men who never asked us to. I am jealous of how ready we are to offer what these men are not ready to take. Of how well we have been shaped for a time such as this – years of grooming on how to give love unasked, to accept less than we offer… decades of conditioning that leaves you wondering if what you do is what you want to, or what you know is expected of you… I am jealous of men like you, for being offered such love on the regular. Jealous of the position of power you don’t recognize you have because you think this love is merely an individual choice… blissfully unaware of how that choice in itself is externally orchestrated. I am jealous of your confidence and the corresponding nonchalance that the love we offer you breeds; because our love sees us as the author and finisher of the family, and makes us responsible for all that goes wrong or never goes at all. We are the neck, the rib, the backbone. Anything but the head. I thought I was angry at you, you probably thought so too. But no, what I am is jealous. I envy you for being offered the kind love I wish someone would give me. And if I am angry, I am angry at myself. Because I continue to reserve for you what I wish I could give myself. Because despite love being a good thing, this brand of love is yet another thing I have found that I must unlearn.
The Dilemma of Believing
If you are a Christian who takes the faith journey seriously and one who uses their thinking faculties, then you may have come across the dilemma I want to discuss here. Believing requires striking a delicate balance of faith. As Christians, we have been called to have faith that God is able to do all things, and that we are able to do all things – according to God’s will- by His power at work within us. Thus, a lot of preaching suggests that we PUSH (Pray Until Something Happens) in faith. We are taught that keeping expectant hope for what we want is faith and that is the way it will come to pass somehow, someday. However, as Christians we are also called to surrender, to give thanks in all circumstances, to not hold God as a genie who exists to give us what we want and to note that this world is not our own and we may not get good things in this imperfect world. In this way, when you no longer ask, and surrender to God’s will –whether it is what you would like or not- you are also acting on faith. This constitutes the quandary of believing for something. If both of these are acts of faith, which is needed when? When is it time to PUSH and when is it time to surrender? I have had to face this dilemma over and over again in recent times and in confronting it, I have come to discern within myself some hazardous indoctrination. The more popular teaching of faith in our churches is that which says we should “push” and that which underscores God’s blessings as a reward of faith. You are more likely to hear a sermon on the parable of the widow and the judge than to hear a sermon on Ecclesiastes verse which says all is vain or the part of John’s letter where he says he has learned to be content either way. And although the Old Testament story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being thrown in the fiery furnace is quite popular when teaching us to have faith in God’s ability, the part where they say “But even if he doesn’t” is often left out. In fact saying “but” has been likened to not having enough faith. Our teaching today claims that if we are asking for a ‘good thing’ and still haven’t gotten the answer we are asking for from God then it means we have not prayed enough, fasted enough, cried enough. I’ve carried this sort of thinking with me for a while now, feeling like I have to earn the answer from God. Suffice it to say that thinking is hazardous because it makes God’s blessings out to be ‘trade by barter’. This thinking is also founded on human logic. We have ascribed to God that human scale of assessment. We think that he- like the teachers of this world- will give you points based on what you do, because we see that as fair. It doesn’t occur to us that our human sense of justice/fairness may not be God’s notion of justice/fairness. Perhaps God’s notion of fairness is not giving to someone who checked all the right boxes, but rather giving to someone undeserving so that they can eventually check all the right boxes. If we consider that our metric may be wrong/different from God’s then we can see the danger in how we go about believing. This brings to mind a conversation I had back in 2012 after I introduced myself to a guy and let him know that I have a hearing impairment and would prefer to communicate by text message and not calls. I’ll never forget his reaction. He asked me if I was a Christian, I said yes. He said well if I have faith, I should go to a particular prophet of his for healing because as a Christian I cannot have an impairment, I am eligible for healing. To be honest I was offended, but I did try be cordial in explaining that such logic was not Christian teaching at all. Still, the conversation has remained with me because it has occurred in other ways; too often we are made to believe that we need to pray until we get the answer and if we give up praying for something, we don’t have adequate faith. I think this is wrong; yes, we should pray incessantly. But, if we are praying expecting for a certain answer then we’ll end up frustrated because whether we like it or not God is not obliged to answer us and give us even that which we think is good. As our churches tend to want to cater to human desire, we are made to believe that God will give us all that is good. But that is not the case, God give us all that he deems best for us to have to fulfill his purpose. Not all that we think is good. So when I no longer pray for healing from a hearing impairment and decide that “God your will be done impairment and all”, should I be accused of not having enough faith? Am I giving up? Nt, I think I am surrendering. Surrendering often feels like giving up though; because being humans we tend to do it only when we have no other choice. I do not claim that my perspective is the correct answer, on the contrary I wish we would have this conversation in the church more. These are just my ramblings on the delicate balance that we need to strike as believers… believing enough to go to God’s throne confidently for an answer, but also believing such that we do not need the answer because we have faith that either way good or bad it is well. This conversation is particularly necessary because hoping is hard work, keeping up expectations is draining. So I find it necessary to
A Mother’s Day For Each Mother
But behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begins.– Mitch Albom In Cameroon, it is taboo not to love your mother. I have no sources to cite to prove the fact of this. But consider this, if one were to do a survey of songs written by Cameroonian artists, they would no doubt find that there is a tie between songs written in praise octogenarian president and those written in praise of mothers. I was in form three when I realized just how much of a taboo it was to express any disdain for one’s own mother. The only music channel our cable in Bamenda provided was finally airing the video of Eminem’s ‘Cleanin’ out My Closet’ and I was eagerly rapping along to the lyrics in those little M.A.D booklets we bought for five hundred francs during school outings. Pa and Ma, my adopted grandparents were out so I was comfortably sprawled on the carpet, the parlor the doors shut to keep out the dust Bamenda is notorious for. My cousin Stella had her friends visiting and one of them brought up the conversation. She hated Eminem, she said, it was obvious he was a bad person. Only bad people would hate their own mother so openly. If an ‘adult’ had said same I would have ignored it. I already knew they supported what suited them. But my cousin and her friends were different. I looked up to them, university students with their stylish clothes, more educated than their parents they knew how to manipulate things, and I depended on Stella for novels to read and interesting conversations to listen to. So if they agreed- and all three of them did- that only an evil person would not love their mother, then they were likely right. And I who understood Eminem, I who could relate with him as I rapped along, was likely wrong. Or evil for doing so. My cousin’s friend had no clue what she had done. I would think about it over and over again in the weeks and months to come. To reconcile my understanding of Eminem and my admiration for Stella and her friends, I would conclude that it was just one of the differences between Cameroon and the US. In the US, having a bad relationship with one’s mother was generally expected. In fact, it can be seen as a staple of the teenage years, a stage all kids must go through. Is there any family T.V show where a teen has not slammed their bedroom door and shouted: “I hate you”? Definitely something not applicable in Cameroon. First, slamming a bedroom door requires that you have a bedroom of your own, and next, shouting ‘I hate you’ is an invitation for even more things that the child will hate. My conclusion made sense to me. Motherly love was just one of those things the two countries I had lived in saw differently. A loving mother-child relationship in America was what was illustrated by Clare Huxtable and kids on The Cosby Show, or what Tia and Tamera experienced with Lisa on Sister, Sister. It was the regular hugging, the girls nights with popcorn the little talks about everything from peer pressure to boys and yes the scolding but more the makeups after the scolding. In the American version of motherly love, mothers said they were sorry just as much as kids did. And kids are reassured that no matter what they did, their mama was never going to stop loving them. In Cameroon, that definition did not apply. Loving your mother was a different connotation altogether. It was allegiance to taking her side in fights she would have with her siblings, or between her and co-wives. It was promising to build her a house when you grow up and give her a reason to boast that my child is a doctor, engineer, lawyer or banker. It was a duty to be fulfilled and acknowledgment that she is always right irrespective of what may be…and if sorry ever left your mother’s mouth it would likely take the form of “come and take this meat and finish it”. For a while, this differentiation would help me console myself for understanding Eminem, for being like him and not feeling like I loved my mother at that time. For a while, I would think the differences meant one society knew love more than the other. But later on, by the time I was a university student myself, Cameroon would have taught me to measure love by the number of sacrifices made and hardship endured and I would find that no one can top an African mother on that evaluation. And so, I too would come to pledge allegiance to the mother who is always right, and aspire to be the child who will be bragged about at CWF meetings…to love out of mindful duty if not the fullness of heart. I would try to love like that and fail because I am one of those people who needs to know you to love you. One of those who need to be able to reason their love prior to expressing it. And that is why Mothers’ Day stumps me. **** I will know my mother when [god forbid] she dies. I have no recollection of my mother before the age of six. There is evidence of us being together, of course. But I don’t remember it. I recall being tucked to sleep by Aunty Susan. I recall being bathed and dressed by Franka, one of those distant cousins brought into town by relatively better-off family members to serve their households in exchange for their education. I recall there being a house with grey floors of concrete smoothed to a slightly glossy finish and low wooden chairs that formed a semi-circle around the T.V, positioning us as the audience to whatever was playing on TV. But I do not recall my
Being Intentional in the Journey
Happy New Year folks! Towards the end of the year, I attended a vision board workshop at church with a good friend and Christian sister called Olivia Mukam Wandji. As a project management specialist, Olivia often uses project management language in her speech. As she led us through our vision board construction she compared our lives and the ambitions we have for it to the life cycle of a project. She said as we begin this new decade outlining our visions, we should consider that we are planning a project and note that there will be different phases; the planning phase, implementation phase, another for monitoring and evaluation, before the project end. Each phase requires ‘planning’ and guidance. This morning, I am thinking of her remark in another light. What about the cycle of our Christian lives? We rarely ever plan our Christian development the way we do our self-development, why don’t we care about the growth of our faith the way we do our professional growth? I understand that would be hard to do because faith isn’t something we should regard as mechanical, achievable in steps and such… after all, our Christian development is dependent on God’s grace, mercy and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. Yet, I also think that our lack of planning in this part of our life is evidence of our lack of intentionality in our development as Christian. I recall reading some piece that admonished us to ‘respect God’s time’. The idea of respecting God’s time was odd to me, he is master/owner of time. It’s all his anyway. What time I commit to give him is my own out of the [surprisingly] inadequate hours I have to be productive. Yet the writer made a sound point that convicted me. Our lives run on scheduling and that speaks of intentionality. We have appointments entered in our calendar for months ahead, we have birthday notifications to remind us to wish those we love well, we respect meeting time and interview appointments and dates by being on time and ensuring we have nothing going on concurrently. We are very intentional with respecting time with fellow humans, our career and social commitments. But when it comes to God? Not so much. Going to church is an option, not something we’ll be fined for if we miss- as is the case with missing some classes. So what if we do prayer and meditation at 5am today, 11am tomorrow and 3pm the next? At least we did it, there is no prescribed time to worship. Thinking this way is not altogether wrong, of course, God cares more about your heart and motivations than if you have a perfunctory routine of bible study at 6am every day. Yet, thinking this way also shows that we regularly take God for granted. In the absence of intentionality, we often short-change God. Give him less, because we didn’t intentionally set out to give him more. When we aren’t intentional about what time we do that meditation and prayer, or that bible study, etc. We end up giving God what’s left of our energy, attention and time after we’ve done everything else. Or worse, we forget altogether as we postpone it saying “I’ll do it later”. Now imagine if we were more intentional not only ‘respecting God’s time’ but with our Christian journey as a whole. Imagine if we looked at our lives the way we look at our careers and said ‘I want to grow to this level of Faith’ the way we say ‘I want to reach this managerial level’. Imagine if we set out to develop habits that would develop us as Christians? This could be taking a course in scripture exegesis, training for youth ministry, or learning to be more forgiving? Imagine if we had Christian growth goals and targets as we do career goals and weight loss targets! I’ve imagined it and I can already see that if I did that I would be a lot stronger as a Christian. Vision boards, five-year plans and all forms of goal setting are renowned for helping the individual stay focused. Having a target written down, broken into achievable steps and such makes it easier to achieve a big seemingly overambitious goal. Whether that goal is ‘becoming CEO of a multinational company’ or ‘becoming a better disciple of Christ’. Please note that being intentional does not mean we set out to ‘earn our salvation’ nor does it insinuate that our Christian growth is solely up to us. The primary fact of our faith is that our salvation is freely given by Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for our transgression. Likewise, we literally cannot be better Christians without God himself enabling us to do so via the Holy Spirit. So why be intentional? The battle is not ours but the Lords, right? How does our being intentional or not matter in the grand scheme of things? The answer simply: being intentional is proof of our own commitment to God. You may not have to earn salvation, but if you have given your life to Christ and received salvation by his sacrifice, you are now a ‘slave’ to him. As a slave, you are to serve your master. Being intentional ensures you are an efficient servant. Similarly, though we cannot be better Christians without God himself enabling us to do so, we must first submit ourselves to God for the Holy Spirit to work in us. The act of submission is on us, and THAT part must be intentional. Submission doesn’t come easy, you choose it EVERY DAY. A quote by Rick Warren captures this perfectly. He says: “as humans, we are to be a living sacrifice to God. The problem with a sacrifice that is still alive is that it can crawl off the altar”. How often have you submitted yourself or even just a problem to God in prayer at night, only to wake up in the morning and
Making a ‘To-Undo List’ for the #ThrivingThirties
On the 11th of this month, I excitedly entered my third decade of life sharing loads of photos taken by a dear friend Melissa Lucas with the hashtag #ThrivingThirties. As is my tradition, prior to birthdays and New Years’ the days leading up to the birthday were filled with a lot of introspection. The annual exercise of questioning who and where I am now vis a vis who and where I want to be, editing my vision board, re-writing my life purpose statement, etc. usually results in me making an upgraded version of a to-do/to-be list for ‘a fulfilled life’. However, this year I paused mid that exercises and opted for something different. As I looked at the 7-year plan I made at the end of 2012, the goals I had outlined, the lists of ideals… my ideal physique/appearance, my ideal career, my ideal home, my ideal man, etc. I laughed. As per those outlined ambitions, I should have had my Ph.D. by now and published at least two academic papers. As per that list, I should have at least a million (FCFA) in savings which I can ‘forget about for emergencies only’…. and the lists literally go on. But as per that list, achieving those things would make me happy, more fulfilled, successful. I now know that is not true, those things are very valuable but why they matter let alone why I felt they should have been attained/ticked off by a certain age required some examination… Goal-tracking across the years… Ultimately, I decided I won’t be making any edits to the vision board or new to-do/be lists. I have yet to check off the things which I’d outlined at 23 so why bother? Don’t get me wrong, I love that I made those plans. That I wrote them down. Above all, I love that going through my old journal, I can see that I do know what I want and why I want it. I am at the very least, someone who has examined their lives in spirit with Socrates’ famous quote “An unexamined life is not worth living’. It is clear I am on the right path. The timelines I made may have been crazy, but the goals and dreams were things I genuinely contemplated on, things close to heart and things I am still working on. So if there’s nothing wrong with a to-do/be list, why did I shun it this time around? Well, the answer goes back to the Socrates’ quote again. Upon examining my life, I didn’t think more goals to achieve was what I ought to prioritize. This year I am learning that what keeps me from fulfillment is as much what I am yet to unlearn/free myself from as the things I would like to achieve. My to-do/be lists had things like: Learn another language, lose X amount of weight, save this much money, apply to that program, bag that dream job, build that relationship etc. things I’d like to achieve/gain… These are not bad things, but as I am finding out, not necessarily the main things leading to happiness and fulfilment. So I am now a firm believer in the need for To-Undo/Unlearn lists. Rather than make goals for the next decade based on notions of what success means and what I need to be happy and fulfilled, I am contemplating on the things I would like to erase from my mind, the ways of thinking, learned behavior that I have realized keep me from living wholly and completely every day. Author Victoria Dhal tweeted in 2018 “Women are raised from the cradle to be hyperconscious of what we say & wear, how we walk, talk & smile, how we give in or resist or flirt or ignore, who we talk to, where we are…”. The last two years have taught me that my greatest obstacles are things that I have been socialized with. In many ways, I am my own worst enemy because I have been cultured to be. So here is an exercise I am sharing with you: rather than focus on what you feel you ought to achieve to be the ‘ideal you’, consider what you must undo/unlearn to be a better you… Make a ‘To-Undo/Unlearn List for yourself. A bucket list would have experiences we would like to have before dying, a vision board would illustrate ambitions and goals we would like to achieve or our version of a successful life, but a ‘To-Undo List’? That would outline chains we have recognized that restrict us, chains we must break to live our best lives, to live freely and true to ourselves. Here is an excerpt from my own To-Undo list: 30 Things to Unlearn in My Third Decade Unlearn unhealthy coping mechanisms Unlearn fear of failure Unlearn resistance to vulnerability. Unlearn shame over all things sexual Unlearn fear of being unlikeable/not being accepted. Unlearn the habit of postponing living Undo/free yourself from the need to be impressive. Unlearn the idea that you must be ‘good enough’. You are enough, period. Unlearn pre-defined conceptions of everything from art to beauty to knowledge to wealth. Learn to question what you’ve been taught these things are, be open to new conceptualisations of them and define them for yourself. Unlearn the instinct to shrink yourself for fear of being perceived as ‘too much’… whether that means, apologizing prior to airing your concerns or wearing muted colors so you don’t stand out… The to-undo/unlearn list goes on, but based on the above excerpt you can see how unlearning is just as empowering (if not more so) than acquiring. We typically strive for certain things based on our learned desires for them. You may want to be a wife because you’ve been socialized to see it as a status you must attain for social acceptance. You may want to lose weight because of learned ideas of beauty being a particular size and shape. I am not saying these things are bad goals, not at