Thought Picnic: Rest, Sobriety, and Social Sacrifice

Treasuring Rest and Sobriety

There are two things I treasure: the opportunity for rest and keeping my sobriety. I get my sleep whenever I can, except when it is interrupted by obligation or responsibility—work or other necessities.

This means that even when I do not get sufficient rest during the week, which is usually the case due to what is essentially nighttime insomnia, I make up for the shortfall at the weekend. I will have a good lie-in on Saturday, not getting out of bed for most of the morning if I can help it, and sometimes I do give my Sunday to rest over religious commitment.

It is strange that some who are aware of these irregular sleeping patterns still seem totally oblivious to this knowledge in some self-serving way. I suppose that is to be expected.

A Teetotaller With Exceptions

On sobriety, I would consider myself generally a teetotaller, though not to the point of total abstinence. I do like wine. My work experience in a brewery laboratory at the age of 15 quite literally put me off beer, lager, cider, and ale.

It is not for religious belief that I rarely consume alcohol; rather, I have seen how drink loosens the tongue, prompting people to speak more candidly. These are thoughts they once had the wherewithal to keep unspoken. Moments of indiscretion or regrettable garrulousness accommodate the emptying of the bottle into the belly.

One core principle I keep more than ever is never to drink alone and mostly to drink only with meals. This makes drinking a social activity and forestalls the advent of hangovers. I probably drink with the utmost moderation; my experiences with light-headedness have come from prescribed medication rather than from losing control, paying homage to Bacchus.

The Darker Side of Drink

Walking up through the Gay Village near where I live, many a doorway is fouled by vomit. At night, you behold the sight of people barely able to stand on their own two feet, so inebriated to the point of incapacity.

The whole thing is quite scary to me: the thought that a portion of your sensibilities is lost to a void of nothingness, your memory failing to recall any recent event.

Then imagine a sober man keeping the fully drunk company, subjected to the inanities that make you question your own sanity. As much as it is part of socialising and being a social animal, you do you; I do me. Some sacrifices are necessary to make the world go round.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Childhood: When parents think they know best

Classic inadvertent abandonment

I happened upon a Facebook status at the end of last year, where there was a discussion about some parents sending their foreign-born kids back to Nigeria to apparently teach the kids discipline and resilience along with avoiding any possibility of their kids being dragged into inner city issues like drugs, gangs, and crime.

After reading some of the comments one especially of a parent who had successfully reared kids in America and could not countenance the idea of sending their children into the care of strangers, be they relations, paid guardians, or strict/conservative boarding schools, I offered a perspective of my own experience.

The lifelong consequence

Imagine being sent from a private primary school environment with a majority international pupillage in Kaduna to a boarding school in Sagamu, Ogun State, at the age of ten. It could have been worse as I had admissions to even more remote places.

The lasting effects of that experience apart from feeling abandoned even if it helped make me both independent and resilient, not that it was unachievable at home, but my parents knew best.

As a child, I was quite outgoing, precocious, and inquisitive, with independent views. I have decidedly refused to associate with old student activities at my secondary school, nor do I retain any enduring friendships from that time. The scars are lifelong.

A rash of parental control

I suffered serious child psychological issues just months before I was shipped off and then in the first term at boarding school, that my parents' closest friends pled with them to bring me back home, those appeals fell on deaf ears, as if they had not learnt from the experiences of being placed with foster parents in England, one of such even starved me, much of that, I have blanked out of my mind.

These seemingly benign parental decisions still affect my relationship with them, and they are both octogenarians. There might be an immediate benefit to fostering your children out to strict environments, but the long-term break in the familial bonds would scarcely ever be repaired.

While there are parents who still think the boarding school experience is a rite of passage that is wholesome and germane to child development, if I was blessed with offspring, I would have totally negated some of the decisions taken as part of my upbringing. I know many parents of my generation did not repeat that vicious cycle.

I speak as someone who will be fifty-nine in less than a week. I charted my own course and chose what was good for me in the scheme of things. Some memories are best left unrecalled. [This was drafted before my birthday in December 2024.]

Thought Picnic: Making allowances in support of others

Making every allowance

There is an aspect of character development that I strive to improve that is a work in progress, one where I am ready to make allowances with understanding and latitude rather than immediately assume, prejudge, and condemn.

I guess where I began that journey was when I realised that no matter what experiences I have had and how similar those experiences might be to another person, even if I could understand what they were going through, I could not equate my situation with theirs to the point that I felt my empathy fully embodies their circumstances. I must make allowances for variance and impact, or I risk dismissing their narrative in the context of mine.

Understand then appreciate

Part of that learning has included resisting the attempt to insert my story into their narrative even if I mean well by trying to assure them that they are not alone in their suffering. The art of listening attentively and registering with concern and humanity the experience of another is an exercise in both discipline and self-control we can all cultivate.

For instance, through personal experience, I know what pain is, the pain of cancer especially and the four different kinds of pain medication I took to alleviate the pain. When my pain medication patch fell off my skin, I laughed myself into almost delirium to generate endorphins as pain alleviated whilst the new patch took hold. Yet, pain affects people differently I try not to assume and assert I feel another’s pain just because I know pain, I understand what they are going through, but their experience can be so radically different from mine.

Blog - Laughter follows my hospital visit

Blog - Thought Picnic: My laughter and my pain

Blog - Let's treat the cancer and laugh

Even where I do not understand what is being shared, I endeavour to learn rather than react and negate, it is better I work with my ignorance to acquire knowledge than project the pretence of being fully educated even if that might leave me looking stupid.

Be kind in questioning

That is not to say one does not have doubts or one is yet to be convinced, much as engagement is inadvertently the art of persuasion which might or might not be successful, the line of inquiry should engender a quest for understanding rather than an immediate and brutal antagonism especially where one has a sense of disagreement. I have to appreciate that to whatever extent in depth or superficially and only if I have clear discernment, whoever has engaged me has fully thought through what they intend.

The questions are phrased in ways to help clear the blind spots to provide additional insight I learnt from my professional life where implementations are assessed now on the premise of why they have done something in a particular way, but on whether they might have seen the significance of another perspective. Be careful not to repudiate and put people you would be working with on the defensive.

Exert yourself in support

It brings to mind a question I have dwelt on in terms of certain opinions, ideas, or plans that have been presented to me, how can I best support this person in their quest for whatever they have purposed to do? If at the time, I have nothing supportive to add, I should apply restraint, the least I can do is listen and be neutral, and I could go better with some encouragement, beyond which there are opportunities and a fuller engagement to help them achieve their goals.

Much of this includes having a lot of patience, and a readiness to allow people to move at their own pace while they sort out issues knowing that your support, understanding, and love are present whenever they choose to update you. In some way, I also realise that I cannot expect that from others, this is my personal character development programme, others are also doing whatever they can to relate better to others.

It's walking and it's working - XIV

Get on up and go

There are mornings that I have woken up early as I like to do my walking exercise at dawn just as the sun is rising and the city is less busy, apart from trying to avoid meeting up with that devil dog and its atrocious owner. Then I feel, I am not that up to it, I need a bit more sleep.

Often, I do levitate myself off the bed by the force of will and get on with it, because I am left needing to get that 10,000-step threshold in the reckoning or I feel I am losing something. However, I do not beat myself up, like for instance, in April, for the last 6 days I barely got 5,000 steps done daily because I was a bit indisposed, however, since I had more than the 10,000-step average for the month by the 20^th day, it was not that bad, it just pulled down the average for the year.

Just pressing on regardless

The walking exercise that I began in late July 2020 is a lonely and individual activity that requires some discipline, dedication, and determination, I want to believe that somewhere in my lazy bones, I have some of all that. I get up, come rain or shine, in the light or the dark, feeling strong or weak and get out to do the steps.

For a while, I was seeing no effects, my weight stuck up where I never wanted it to be, I could not for the life of me understand what else I had to do, I was not going to go down some dieting route or get into the gym to find muscles in places I never knew they could exist. I was focused on the walking, keeping at it and convinced that eventually, something would begin to show. Observations by my boyfriend during our video conversations did not convince me of the expected changes.

Improvements are showing up

However, in the last 6 weeks, things have shifted, I have gone from the highest weight that the scales have truthfully displayed to losing over 8 kilograms. I am not at the best weight I attained in October 2020, but I feel it might soon get there and better.

When I started walking, I barely made 3,000 steps in a half-hour, now, I easily breach 4,500 steps in 30 minutes, though I do not think I can make it 5,000 steps, even if Brian has suggested I walk like one of the cartoon characters in Scooby-Doo, at first I thought he was referring on the one of the four-legged variety, but it was one of the bipedal females he was alluding to that I first thought was Daphne, but he meant Velma. He says he can’t keep up with my walking, even though if he stood by the Eiffel Tower, his legs might just dwarf the edifice.

The statistics are an impetus

In general, I can get my 10,000 steps done in 75 minutes, I have even managed 64 minutes, which is good going. Today, I stayed in bed and then for my late lunch break stepped out for just over 11,000 steps and then after a post-work nap, I added just over 18,000 steps leaving me with around 500 steps to hit 30,000 steps, so, I went for a quick stroll down that street and back to get that number done.

The way my health app breaks down the statistics of my activity gives me an idea of how well I am doing, the times when I could do 7 kilometres in an hour seems to have eluded me, I barely get a kilometre done in 9 minutes. However, getting my heart rate up for intensity is good and I try to work within the aerobic and anaerobic range, the cadence is usually around 140 steps a minute, though my eyes almost popped out when I saw 174 steps a minute this evening and then 177 steps a minute in my earlier walk. I must have been gliding or floating on air as I rarely get 160 steps a minute for my morning walks.

As a creature of habit, the morning walk has a route that yields just over 15,000 steps in 1:50 hours or less and that is before I start work at 8:00 AM. Even without an accountability partner, someone to imitate, or the urging of a coach or mentor, I can say more confidently that it’s walking and it’s working.

Thought Picnic: In writing to get it right

Writing to a sort

Sometimes I wonder if I would successfully fill a month with its daily quota of blogs as both the exercise of discipline and the demonstration of consistency that I occasionally fail to achieve. It is not for the want of determination or the absence of material to write about, the unintended along with the unexplained just seems to invade the appearance of order leaving one thinking things are spiralling out of control.

Then you assess the point of necessity, for none of this is done under any duress, it is just the willingness to act and the preparedness the perform that dictates the frequency or the lack of it. I enjoy this activity and it is not done for the purpose of monetisation as I was asked of recently. I guess when that comes to mind, you acquire both duty and responsibility with the pressure that could portend avoidable anxiety.

Remember to relax and learn

If the themes of some recent blogs are anything to go by, the circumstances I create for myself are ones in which I seek to thrive rather than suffer. Even when I consider the idea of resting on laurels of blogging for almost 18 years, I am no less enthusiastic about blogging which ranges over a broad spectrum of the serious to the unserious, opinions that I once spelt opinono in a primary school spelling test, perspectives, experiences, and reports.

What surprises me as I write is the things I remember, it is like an active archiving and searching operation is going on in my brain and there to type out at this moment are times when I did not know how to pronounce bronchitis, yacht, quay, beau, or Islington, and then I knew. The blog presents opportunities for learning and learning afresh. Now, what did I start this blog for?

Thought Picnic: The whip that stole a father's confidence

Differentiating the import

Until the time I realised that my father’s word was not an order, a command, an instruction, or even advice that I was duty-bound to follow to the letter with all submissive obedience along with fear and loathing, our relationship was defined by what I saw him do to others and how he treated them.

Today, I consider his views an opinion limited by his perspective of things to which I have the full volition to entertain or discard, albeit respectfully and with a clear understanding that the decisions I make are my own responsibility and no one else’s.

Big brother and little sister

No relationship with another was more impactful to how I saw my father than the one he had with his youngest sister who came to live with us in Jos in the early 1970s. Obviously, my father was the king of his entire, his word was law, and there were standards of behaviour and conduct expected of his wards, the breach of which attracted the severest sanctions.

My aunt had an independent, if not adventurously wayward streak, and one day she tattooed her thigh using the alkaline sap of a fresh cashew nut. When my father saw this indelible adornment, he unleashed his fury on her with such a fiery vehemence in his room. Having her lie forward at an angle, feet on the dresser and hands on the floor, he horsewhipped her mercilessly. I hope I have been a better big brother and I have had some regrettable failings.

A matter of consequence

Her cries and howling could not be assuaged as he locked his door that no one could entreat him to have any leniency. Whilst I did not see her bruised body after that ordeal, there was no imagining what happened in that room and that crystallised my view as a 7-year-old that my father could be implacably cruel at the meting out punishment. In essence, he was unapproachable, and I could not have him in confidence about anything, even the things that mattered. I rarely faced that wrath, but what we had as father and son, into my twenties, was full of the foreboding of wrath.

Invariably, anything I could do to escape his ambit of influence, I probably did, until I left Nigeria. Now, we do not have that fearful relationship, but that lasting effect of that event is I engage on my own terms and at my own convenience. I probably will be quite sorry and regretful if he predeceases me, I guess we unwittingly laid the ground for the fraught because we lacked the anticipation of consequence.

Do well to all

Then by extension, much as I love to be treated with courtesy, respect, and dignity, I also watch how those who make allowances for me deal with others because it is not a singular thing but a broader expression of character and integrity that regardless of status, position, means, ability, standing, or representation, everyone deserves to be treated respectfully, fairly and justly.

I do observe how people interact with others and if they deal badly with others, there is the possibility that a confluence of events might create the opportunity to do the same to you. If you cannot call them out for correction, you want to give them a wide berth before their odium becomes the perfume you are forced to sniff.

We should be anything be character schizophrenics, having many faces to different people, allowing a sense of superciliousness or superiority to get the better of us, because there might just be someone thereabouts ready to give you your just deserts when you need them most. If you can’t be nice, be good, or just hold your peace in neutrality that your offence is not reckoned in the book of Karma.

Blog - Childhood: My aunts saw red

Character in Amsterdam

Absent from presence

Amsterdam, and what comes to mind is the Red-Light District and coffee shops, to the initiated, the former refers to legalised sex trade and the latter to easy access marijuana. There is a likelihood that people would visit Amsterdam to observe and experience that part of the city which is hardly the full story of a city of culture, architecture, music, and amazing diversity.

Fundamentally, Amsterdam residents do not spend their lives in sex shops or getting stoned, there is more to life than that and I lived in Amsterdam for almost 13 years. Now, I appreciate that when I first moved to Amsterdam, many of my colleagues did get carried away with the fun at the expense of their purpose for being there, once the novelty wore out, many had exhausted the goodwill of their sojourn.

Some of us knowing what was available chose not to be amenable to the vicissitudes of lasciviousness, regularly invited we did not participate even if we had the freedom and latitude to indulge with reckless abandon.

Damned either way?

We must however separate the place from the person, that a person visits a place should not mean the person defaults to the reputation of the place in its notoriety. People have discipline, character, and purpose, in the midst of great temptation, people do have the resolve to resist and not succumb just because the opportunity and possibility presents.

In the same vein, there is a need to know the difference between the person and the place by reputation. Knowing the person and trusting what the person will do especially unsupervised is to ascribe a modicum of integrity on the person. The person might be given to mischief and yet be quite honourable and full of consideration for others. Then by reputation, Amsterdam can be a crazy place; damned if you do, more damned if you don’t.

The sheer willpower of typing

What I would want

I have not necessarily set myself the goal, but there is a sense of satisfaction in getting to post at least one blog a day. It just happens that it is not an easy task, you are never always going to be inspired to write a masterpiece of extraordinary thought and psychology just on the whim, at least not in my case.

There are times when it appears there is so much to write about, yet you are stumped at how to start to make sense of what you want to relay before a jumble of words typed out becomes a means for others to question your sanity.

Then it just happens

Then, I have decided not to be too hard on myself, I will not always succeed in knocking out a daily blog just as I have not broken my old record of writing 5 blogs in one day. You get to a point where when it flows you glow and when it does not, another time will come with thoughts to sow.

I guess another thing about blogging is sheer willpower and discipline, switch on your laptop, and just start to type, in time, it all begins to take form, make sense, and before you know it, a blog is complete, and four paragraphs is a blog done indeed. Thank you for coming to my blog. 

Keep doing the good things for yourself

There I go

The thought that I would think nothing of walking 3 or even 5 kilometres to a tram stop to take me out to a walk for nature walks no more surprises me. I decide I want to go somewhere, chart a course the tram stop furthest away, yet on a straightforward route and make out for it.

In the 5 of so directions I ply from my home, I have a good sense of where the kilometre markings are up to the fourth in at least one case. I know that if I have gone out 5 kilometres, I probably will do at least 10 kilometres, my 10,000-step count is usually between the 7^th and 8^th kilometre.

The pleasure in doing

I do not know how long the walking will go on for, last night was one of interesting determination, for it was in driving rain, I put on my waterproof poncho to make up the just over 5,000 steps for the day’s target. I am on a mission, there is a badge for walking at least 10,000 steps daily for 21 days and I am just a couple of days short of it.

After that, I wonder if I would get the 100 days in a row before I hit 5,000,000 steps. In the absence of an exercise buddy, you have to set your own goals and targets, using that as motivation and impetus to keep going. I suppose I have applied the same spirit to my blogging, that even in the absence of anything to write about, I write all the same.

Much as I hate the word discipline as it suggests compulsion to varying extents, sometimes, to stick at something, you need it, even if you don’t acknowledge it. Accomplishments, personal or celebrated are good for boosting one’s self-esteem.

Thought Picnic: When to bin the traditional hand-me-down rags of parental control

I was quite distressed

A few days ago, a video clip of a boy negotiating with his mother went viral. To many, it was pure entertainment, I, however, was very distressed by it that I do not intend to share it to propagate the scenario.

We have no backstory to the episode, but from what I could glean, the boy had done something wrong, probably seriously wrong for which there was to be some severe retribution. The boy crying with terror showing on his face, and in his terror was pleading with his mother to calm down, take a rest, or have a break before she unleashed her anger on him.

Some commentary suggested the boy was smart and trying to run rings around his mother. That is possible, especially when you know the kind of parents you have, you adopt strategies to escape their ire. The conversation mostly controlled by the boy was instructive and reflective, his mother is no doubt prone to irrational anger venting her frustration with severe punishments, else she would not have been advised to calm down.

Awareness lost to expediency

Towards the end, he asked to be given the last chance, the last chance in the world. That scared me like the boy could consider doing himself harm than face the wrath of his mother. None of this got through to his mother, she was insistent on beating him because somehow the boy had probably handled and broken something he was not supposed to touch. At the same time, he asked if his mother was videoing him.

This boy is aware, very much aware of himself and his failings, I am not sure his mother who decided to make a global show of his distress is half as much. In my view, a boy so mentally alert even at the imminent threat of harsh retribution needs to be dealt with in another way. The times when corporal punishment was the only tool parents, guardians or teachers had to command and demand the unflinching ultimate respect and fear of their wards is fast becoming useless.

Find better discipline tools

Corporal punishment is for mules and whatever your religious leanings, I would suggest it be the last resort having exhausted everything else and there is much to do, much more to learn to do to adapt to looking for more useful means of instruction than inflicting pain and nursing bleeding welts on the buttocks. The deprivation of freedoms or privileges with the prerogative of mercy is novel and yet effective.

I have watched some parents brutalise their wards in the quest for discipline and correction, sadly, the children now approaching middle-age are estranged, they do not have a wholesome relationship with their parents and that is sad. No, children do not outlive the cruelty meted out to them by their presumed protectors. Those who appear to do so are simply being pragmatic and able to compartmentalise usually for their own peace of mind in spite of and despite what they have suffered.

The future is a harsh judge

If you want a useful voice in the lives of your children, not so much to command or instruct them, but to have the honour of being approached from guidance when they are at crucial junctures of their walk of life, you need to review the hand-me-down rags of bad parenting and break that vicious generational cycle of visiting trauma instead of counsel.

Watch the child grow and begin to use reason and conversation, offer autonomy with good guidance on how to use the responsibility they have been offered, make mercy and forgiveness with consideration visible in times of disappointment or conflict. Find the expression of love beyond the provision of shelter, protection, sustenance and education, by being a bit emotional, because it shows you’re human and approachable. You can even give a hug and said the occasional “I love you, child.”, from deep in your heart.

You cannot tell how much that would mean to a child and how that would redound to their development in adulthood. These are the kinds of circumstances that make for good parent-child friendship and takes away the need for the child to scheme with cunning when they know they can trust you with anything going on in their lives.

Consider new possibilities

I am a man in my fifties, I have looked at many things about my relationship with my parents and other guardians. One uncle stands out as the one who gave me both the time and nurturing, we have one of the tightest relationships that even my parents would envy.

I would not be ambitious as to suggest how anyone should raise their children, but if you are going to make a public spectacle of them, ensure you are not making a worse spectacle of yourself in the process. Whilst many might agree with what she was about to do, I have no praise, commendation or encouragement, my disappointment cannot be more palpable for those who cannot learn from history, especially their own personal history are destined to repeat the failings of the past more worse than the precedent.

We can agree to disagree, but do not completely dismiss this perspective, I think it matters along with everything else in the toolbox of child-rearing. Thank you.

Some reference blogs

Blog - Childhood: My aunts saw red

Blog - Child sexual abuse requires greater parental indignation

Blog - Thought Picnic: House helps in the family setting

Blog - Thought Picnic: Don't mistake a troubled child for a bad one

My dialogue as blogs

A slog of blogs

I never planned it this way, I was surprised that I was able to tap out more blogs than there were days in March even though I did not blog for every day in that month. In April, I found that for the first time since I started blogging, I blogged for every day in that calendar month, I just pressed on through ease and pain, the surfeit and the dearth of ideas of what to write about, then smashing through Writer’s Block to pen inanities.

Blog - A calendar month of blogs

In May, I repeated the April feat and in June, it was at least a blog a day for one hundred days. Imagine, the blog I am writing today gives me three straight months of blogging every day.

Blog - Cent jours de blogs

The log in blogs

You then wonder whether this self-congratulatory tripe is worth writing a blog about. I never said you will get to read fantastic material on this blog. It probably tends more to the trivial than the crucial. Maybe I am just celebrating a determined effort of discipline, proving to myself that it is possible to blog daily and I may just relent and relapse to the lazier type.

There is no saying what might happen, I would take a month at a time, or ambitiously, a day at a time, keeping doing it for as long as I can find myself able, inspired and determined to do it. The blogs might get serious or be a commendation of extant idiocy. It won’t be for the want of trying.

To flog some blogs

As we come to the end of the first half of 2020, I am not of the mind that the Coronavirus pandemic has ruined the year. Some plans have been postponed, we are sat at home working, living and for me, in retreat, making the best of things. This year is one of reset, we will rethink, redo, re-evaluate, relive, re-assess, and realise that there are opportunities ahead of us, to seize.

It would probably mean amazing inspiration for blogs, things I never thought possible becoming commonplace, dreams becoming moments to cherish for which incomparable words would materialise with descriptive abandon, and if we cannot live for the miracles of the joy of living, we can with faith find the substance for our hopes and share it in the bosom of love from the deepest part of our hearts to one first and then to others. Nothing is lost, rather beyond this is great gain and beauty unmatched.

My thoughts on the Deepak Chopra 21-day Abundance Meditation

Persuaded to meditate

Three weeks ago, I was invited to participate in the Deepak Chopra Creating Abundance: 21-Day Meditation Challenge, the introduction from my friend was easy enough and non-committal, most particularly, it was non-judgemental, we could choose to exit without having to explain ourselves or suffer for it. [Spotify]

I believe everyone invited stayed the course, which speaks more to the persuasive acumen of our friend than anything else. On reflection, I cannot think of anyone else who would have been able to persuade me to engage in this sort of thing that was patently so left field of my vision. I had heard of Deepak Chopra before and I thought he was one of these New-Age gurus who have a surfeit of motivational feel-good spiel that left you just feeling good.

All on willing trust

The medium of communication with the group was a WhatsApp group where the principal for each day posted instructions, a task, a phrase to remember, a mantra, and an audio file that guided the meditation process. There was a preference for documenting all activities in a notebook with longhand writing, something, I do rarely do, yet found quite therapeutic.

I would normally have researched a programme like this before committing, but I took it on trust that it would be a new experience and bought into it. The slight misgiving of chanting mantras of words I had no understanding of left me concerned as I hope that I guard my utterances enough to choose the words I speak carefully, measuring what message I am about to convey.

Tasked tasking tasks

The first day required listing at least 50 people who had influenced my life, it looked like a daunting task, yet, I did exceed that number, and documenting how they have influenced me was a revelation in itself, some assignations would not have been in consideration, if it were not a task. I could see myself working on appreciating all these people more.

By the fifth day, we were being asked to create our own meditation groups by inviting others to participate from a new Day 1, flashes of multi-level marketing went through my mind much as I thought it was quite ambitious to insinuate and expect that level of trust and allegiance to the scheme. Deeper down, it was the most challenging thing of the whole exercise as it pitched itself against every English bone in my body.

It showed that despite the adaptation of the meditation activity to Western cultures the mantras in Sanskrit with the background mood music more classical than Asian, this was not going to leap over cultural boundaries with effortless ease, we are too individualistic to subscribe to communal New-Age and alternative medicine philosophies. I almost dropped out at this point, but in a discussion with my boyfriend, I stayed the course.

Some benefit in it

In general, I think the exercises or tasks were illuminating about relationships, anxieties, understanding place, person, and personality, how we fit in the universe of ideas, events, and people, and how to unburden ourselves with cares, worries, and difficulties that might beset us. Many of these aspects I could relate to from my Christian philosophy, for I could see what we were getting at. Calmness, resolve, and resilience.

I am glad I was invited to participate in this mediation challenge, I saw it as a useful experience, and the daily phrases will come in handy for meditation and thought processes. Though it is unlikely I would enter a challenge like this in the future or in this format, I could see gathering friends for times of reflection, introspection, and the exchange of views and ideas.

My conclusion is, that the challenge is a participatory exercise in discipline to be considered at least once, and you might gain a lot more than you put in it, for me it is knowledge and insight along with a sense of calm. Once I got into the spirit of things, I was looking forward to the next day along with the surprises of leading and direction which inspired me in ways I appreciate a lot. From the audio track, there were times when all that seemed like thank you for taking on this challenge was the Namaste greeting at the end.

Opinion: Granted the privilege to father, he chose to murder

People are better than this

Marvyn Iheanacho, 39 has been sentenced to life in jail for the killing of his stepson Alex Malcolm, he is expected to spend a minimum of 18 years in prison and I honestly do not think that is justice enough. [BBC News]

Through fables, fairy tales and stories passed down from generations, we have heard ugly stories about stepmothers and their evil machinations. Tales that immediately coloured our views of people and stereotyped them long before they had the opportunity to prove they were much better and just as loving as any parent can be.

Recently, I saw a viral video of a stepson asking his stepfather to legally adopt him as his son, the stepfather broke down in tears at the request, but also showed a great love for not just the mother he had a relationship with, but also for the stepson who he loved and treated as his own. The fundamental point is we all have the ability, facility and capacity to step into loving guardianship and parenthood of those, not of our loins, stepfathers and stepmothers all. [Metro]

It should never cost a life

Having a parent figure in the home during child development can be a wonderful experience for child and to be given the opportunity to impart into a life must be a privilege.

Now, I do not know Marvyn Iheanacho’s background apart from the fact that his name suggests a Nigerian heritage. Some of that might have informed his need to be a disciplinarian in the family into which he was accepted and that is not a bad thing. The problem is when discipline crosses into battering and brutalisation occasioning harm and in this case death.

Alex Malcolm was 5, he lost one of his shoes and at that moment was in the care of Marvyn Iheanacho. Maybe Alex as prone to losing things for whatever reason, I was quite a bit careless as a child too, whilst I was scolded and maybe excoriated, I was not inflicted upon with physicality. In the same vein, Marvyn can find no excuse in the way he physically abused Alex, denied him immediate and needed hospital treatment which consequently led to Alex’s death two days later in hospital, in November 2016.

There was a better way

Marvyn could have approached this matter in a different way, he would have taken Alex by the hand and gone around with him to look for the missing shoe. By so, building a bond between himself and the boy, because the missing shoe was eventually recovered.

However, Marvyn was less a man than his physicality belied, he harmed the boy who sustained head and stomach injuries in the assault, lied to the mother about what happened, attacked the mother when she sought help for her son and when faced with taking responsibility for his actions, he pled not guilty.

Rot in jail

I am glad that the judge saw through his lies and perfidy, his sentence should be a veritable lesson on the role and responsibility of parenting. A child left in your care is first vulnerable and then dependent on you for protection and safety for themselves, their happiness and their lives. It is a role that as an adult one can choose to excel at, bringing all the resources of our deepest humanity to bear to mould the child into someone better than ourselves.

Marvyn Iheanacho failed to grasp that opportunity, he killed a poor helpless boy out of rage or ill-discipline and for that, he must go to jail for a very long time. My hope is he never again sees the freedom and pleasure of life he denied Alex Malcolm. Only then would justice be fully done for the sad and unpleasant demise of the little Alex Malcolm.

Rot in jail, Marvyn Iheanacho.

Opinion: No man!

If

Just imagine if when Oba Rilwanu Akiolu, the paramount chief of Lagos in that moment of unguarded irresponsible verbiage had been challenged rather than applauded.

Wonder if the Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini, had been circumspect about foreigners if his views met with immediate disapproval as he spoke.

If in that interview cum media chat, President Goodluck Jonathan when he did not give a damn, the obsequious, star-struck and fawning interviewers had the temerity to ask him to responsively give a damn.

If those we look up to were given a piece of our minds contrary to blind followership begging for subservience.

If we balanced our respect with a modicum of irreverence that allowed leaders to lead without thinking themselves infallible, omnipotent or inviolable because they were conscious of their humanity and listening for good and sometimes difficult counsel.

Sadly

I believe the story would have been about the reconsideration at that setting than the overheated reporting of the outburst. Maybe, just maybe, the world we see would have been a better place.

Sadly, leaders fail themselves when surrounded by acolytes who do little to complete and complement their leadership by vying for favour and recognition when they should be accentuating the good with fervour and curtailing the bad with wisdom.

There are too many 'Yes men', men without cojones, self-interested minions whose activities eventually show the whole enterprise they are in, in a bad light.

Invariably, they excuse the inexcusable, support the intolerable, defend the reprehensible and promote the atrocious with utterly damnable and illogical arguments as their acquiescence gives licence to impunity without any discernible consequence.

Speak

Yet, what a leader needs is a fearless and bold courageous follower or counsellor. Like the man who whispered in the ear of gladiators of old on victory processions: 'You are but a man, mortal and at the mercy of the gods and the times'.

No men, one who can stand up when all are bowed in worship and obeisance to say, 'No man! You can't say that,' or 'No man! You can't do that'.

The person to stay the folly, quell the anger, appeal to the better nature or arrest the stupidity that leaves men as sheep when they should be lions.

Just imagine if the courts of kings, leaders, the powerful, the rich, the elite, the privileged or those with responsibility or authority had viziers with gravitas or jesters with levity rather than Yes-men. Just imagine how much peace and harmony will reign.

Opinion: Wasting talent toward instant fame

Awesome humanity

This is probably a difficult subject, but one that needs addressing in many ways. We have to ask, what makes the world go round and gives us the comforts that we enjoy and others crave for?

Whilst every profession in its way brings value, there are professions that are more than essential and without creating or engendering rivalries, might be more important than others.

In areas of medicine and technology, if people did not make careers out of the looking to ease pain and discomfort out of curiosity and determination, what kind of a world will we have?

Other professions

In my case, I know that the absence of health can literally mean the absence of ability, will, strength or purpose to do anything else. Last weekend, I hopped on a plane to Bucharest, just because I thought I could go there.

However, I would not be here if not for the doctors, the nurses, the medicine and more invisible but critical support systems had not come to play over centuries of repetition, standardisation and perfecting to find a way to put cancer into remission and keep my health at one of the best levels I have ever had.

My journey to Bucharest also would have been impossible without the fundamentals of physics, the applications of chemistry, many mathematical equations, visionary and sometimes daredevilry thinking that has made cars, trains, airports, aeroplanes and all the backend systems down to the person who has to do the graft work of lifting and throwing my luggage about as it follows me on my journey.

Nurturing talent

This brings me to an aspect of discipline that will apply to literally any vocation, in an opinion piece for the Evening Standard under the title of “Talent is worth little without the hard graft that must go with it.” Sarah Crompton writes about the absence of star English dancers in ballet or contemporary dance.

She mentions three of the leading choreographers who have expressed concerns about the standard of contemporary dance training, Akram Khan for instance says, “I am concerned that somewhere, somehow, the training young dancers go through in the UK is not supporting them in the rigour, technique and discipline that I am looking for in a dancer.”

Lloyd Newson, says, the students trained here “lack rigour, technique and performance skills,” then, Hofesh Shechter suggests, British dancers are “consistently outclassed by fitter, stronger and more versatile dancers trainer internationally.” Let’s not go into the fact that these three leading Britsh exponents are Bangladeshi, Australian and Israeli, respectively.

Then Tamara Rojo, who is the Artistic Director of the English National Ballet, gets to the heart of the matter, “Do we want to promote instant success and instant failure, or do we want to promote self-esteem and hard work?” Now, did I say, she is Spanish?

Really nurturing talent for life

This is not to say there is no raw talent in Great Britain, we have much undiscovered and unrefined genius lurking in the inner recesses of the many youths who have not had the teaching, lecturing, mentoring, coaching or just help to realise their potential.

In other cases, and this is where it gets rather unfortunate, the syllabus structure in many disciplines beyond dance, in schools and universities are not equipping our youth for the varied careers needed to have a thriving country that is building for the future.

Much as we hear that the UK has the fastest growing economy in the developed world, the fact is this is not trickling down or lifting people up, it is the rich getting richer and the poor sinking further into poverty. The political battles of our election already show that the visionary has deserted our leadership; we are aiming for nothing, just fame.

That seems to be the career goal of most of our youth, instant fame, lots of money and a jet-setter’s life, without the really backbreaking hard work, but what is instant is just what it is. There is no depth, no rigour, no discipline, no attention to the fundamentals stemming from the patient and painstaking attention to detail and we wonder why people crack. Just imagine lifting a weight you have never practised for and the back gives.

Project Manager fame

I see this in my field of endeavour, Information Technology, everyone wants to be a Project Manager and they have all acquired the certificates like garlands to litter their CVs with the jargon and superfluity of words as pertains what they seem to have done.

The British in its Empire days had one amazing exportable skill, it was one of managing people, organisation and application, recognising ability and gathering men to perform. This is what put the Great in Great Britain, between negotiation and plunder, we created an Empire on which the sun never set. That is now history.

Sadly, what we now find in many Project Managers who usually get paid a lot more than everyone else are people without the rigour, the technique, the discipline, the depth or basic understanding of the management of projects, the management of people, the fundamentals of the project, the appreciation of the talent pool necessary to achieve project goals and how to nurture that skills pool to achieve results.

Then you wonder why projects fail, because in most cases, Project Managers are an abstraction from the core reality, task masters who have rarely done the task, let alone understood the task and they only have to converse with you to lay out their ignorance like a billboard.

The need for more dirty hands

I have only found a few Project Managers in my 25-year IT career who have taken the time to get involved enough to understand what we want to achieve so that they can take some realism away into crafting their project plans.

I have in certain instances had to take projects I am on by the scruff of the neck and assume the role because my reputation is at stake. Yet, this is the instant success or instant failure Tamara Rojo talks off, the absence of the essential grounding and pain of long-term practice and application that becomes evident when we are really tested by the reality of getting things done.

Objective tests will no more cut it, we need comprehension tests, application tests, less simulation and more practical hands-on, hands-dirty work with the sweat and hard graft that brands perfecting whatever we do into making us completely dissatisfied if things are not just the way they should be.

I salute everyone who does that extra bit beyond the necessary to ensure what they do, even above the call of duty and responsibility makes our world a better place. Thank you.

Opinion: It is not African Time, it is deplorable conduct

This is the limit

At an event I attended recently, I witnessed attitudes that left me too appalled for words that the need to address it head-on is pertinent.

This event was to begin at a scheduled time and I arrived with one of the organisers ahead of schedule to help set up the venue. Soon guests started to arrive and quite many were on time, including Africans from other countries.

Two hours into the event the celebrant made an interesting observation to me as I was already seething with rage that our ‘people’ had not yet arrived. Most of the guests were friends and acquaintances of the partner and they were also on hand to run last-minute errands for the event.

I’m calling them out

After the third hour, the familiar Nigerian crowd sauntered in, amongst this lot were supposed organisers too, without apology or regret and they ensconced themselves in isolation to most of the early arrivals, there was very little mingling and I doubt most of them even introduced themselves to others, talk less of shaking hands. I was both scandalised and appalled.

We have somewhat embraced the rotten and reprehensible cultural trait of not being punctual and given it a seemingly respectable moniker of African Time. It is not African Time, it is deplorable conduct, excused by too many.

With African Time, you can descend into sloppy timekeeping even if you are wearing and expensive watch, since the purpose of the watch is not to keep time, but to show off your shiny baubles like a primitive given shiny worthless things in exchange for jewels of antiquity.

With African Time, you are under no obligation to give adequate notice of your estimated time of arrival if you will not arrive on time as other better-bred and cultured people do, it is an accepted norm to absent yourself from discipline and rigour, because Africans do not do order.

It is a thing of honour and respect

Sometimes, I wonder if the irredeemable purveyors of the African Time practice will arrive at interviews for jobs late too and what stupid excuses they might have to proffer that the interviewer will be too embarrassed to comment, but that simple act of late coming will be an automatic disqualification for the job.

Some suggested, that this African Time concept is a values thing, I will go further to suggest it is first a sign of indiscipline and unreliableness, which means I will never be able to recommend such people in a professional setting and I know some recommendations I have given count for much.

Beyond this, it is an expression of disrespect apart from surreptitiously dishonouring the host. Now, whilst any host will appreciate being respected and honoured with the attendance of guests at any function they arrange, the greater honour and respect are shown and fully acknowledged when guests arrive on time and more so when they stay to the end.

Keep away if you can’t be punctual

I cannot imagine myself arriving at a function late without giving advance notice, besides, I try to communicate to ensure my host is not left worrying where I might be. If the matter is tentative, we can work on probabilities, but if an assurance is given, then, my word must be my bond.

I write this blog utterly disgusted by conduct that leaves me close to reaching for a sickbag, African Time attitudes are learnt and to see this contemptible activity deployed to the point of expert utility by Nigerian youths is both unacceptable and untenable.

I have many times raised this issue with some of these youths to no avail and I am no more to condone or tolerate this utter uselessness. If you cannot respect and honour your host with being punctual or giving proper notice of why you will be late, please just stay away from the gathering of respectable and cultured people, it is evident that swine associating with people will not turn swine into ladies or gentlemen.

Thought Picnic: Therapy into the recesses of a turbulent past

Reading me from my words

Another day of therapy yesterday centred on my writing, well my blogs, and the way the views I share are reflective of the kind of person I am, what I feel and what drives me.

Even I have found that my blog almost works like a journal, in some cases; it is a diary of thoughts, events and ideas expressed in different guises of the personal, the vicarious or the abstract.

Whilst what I write could be read as stories, much of what is written derives from experience and observation, yet I have to check myself and consider, I am not really that interesting.

A range of conflicting emotions

However, since we last met, I had written about resentment, vulnerability, bereavement, justice, participation and reconciliation.

Much as I was concerned that some answers to her questions appeared like rambling tangential responses, she assured me of the relevance of my words whilst saying she will moderate as she finds necessary if I was in danger of digressing from the topic at hand.

Beyond the veil to the past

Yet, we touched on my childhood, the home-house dichotomy of comfort and trepidation, the demonstrations of love, expressed in discipline rather than affection by my parents and the attendant growing-up problems that found no expression towards confidant or friends.

Then it occurred to me that those who really could have taken the place of confidant were those who became symbolic of the terrors and horrors of abuse and misuse; there was no one to turn to expect to oneself, within that, I was caught in the battles of comparison and criticism.

Many a Nigerian child knows that the survival within the family setting is a function of achievement and conformity driven by fearful comparison to others and the excoriating criticism of who you are. You adjusted and adapted to limit those barometers of parental engagement along with the physical abuse and brutalisation that passed for discipline.

And beyond experience?

That was the custom and culture, we being products of these having either learnt enough to stop the vicious cycle or having been subsumed, thereby, ending up perpetrating the same unto those after us.

Then, when someone shared the tribute to my uncle with a tweet written thus: - Akin Akintayo: A great man, we’ve lost, I found myself reading of my inadvertent demise or a reference to it.

Omg. I just thought Akin Akintayo died! May he live 50 more years.
— Temie Giwa (@temite) November 12, 2013

To which I had to respond, that the rumours of my passing are grossly exaggerated. I am alive and well with probably another 50 years to live. I am loved.

We meet again for therapy in three weeks to talk more about what I write and how that reflects my mood, my angst, my hopes and the story that is becoming the tale of my life.

Opinion: The Challenge of Rearing Nigerian Children Abroad

An embarrassment of heritage

I was rather discomfited by the news of the conviction of 8 teenagers yesterday for the killing of another teenager in 2010.

There are issues with gang warfare and disputes in London but the brazenness with which these youngsters carried out their assault on another in plain public view leaves one wondering what our society has become.

One teenager stood in the middle of the road wielding a samurai sword and they ended up chasing the victim into a busy London Underground Station where they as many as 15 in number attacked, stabbed, kicked and punched the poor 15-year old Sofyen Belamouadden to death.

That is bad enough, but when I read the names of the perpetrators involved, I feel a sense of eerie familiarity as Junior Bayode, Obi Nwokeh, Christopher Omoregie, Samsom  Odegbune, Femi Oderinwale and Victoria Osoteku all appear to have Nigerian surnames.

They have some Nigerian connection

That is not to say that these people are Nigerian, but one can safely assume they have some connection with Nigeria by reason of parentage and possibly heritage.

The other two might well have Nigerian connections but that is not evident from their names. What bothers me is what the parents and guardians of these kids might have been up to that their wards have ended up on the extreme side of the law having congregated with impunity in the mob act of killing someone else in plain view.

I appreciate that these kids might never have visited Nigeria or experienced what many might call a traditional Nigerian upbringing that gives the parent licence to brutalise their wards in what we broadly call discipline but discipline in and of itself cannot just be corporal punishment – we need to adapt the tools of affirmation and chastisement to the societies we find ourselves in.

Adapting parenting influence

Whereas in Nigeria it is probably enough to dispatch parental responsibility by just being a provider of shelter, food, education and basic welfare, the differences in societal values and expectations mean that parents have to be more involved in attending to the emotional needs of their wards and this is something many might not have found examples of in their own upbringing.

I dare say, where ethnic minorities fail to integrate congregating in conurbations of ghettoised indifference, they shirk in the fundamental responsibility of understanding the pressures their wards face and the society in which they wards are growing – religion and social events amongst ourselves are not enough, we cannot recreate our local villages abroad and hope that it will suffice – it does not.

Just because we cannot bring our kids up the “Nigerian” way does not absolve us of our responsibility in society to bring our kids to respect the rule of law, the dignity of labour and the earning of respect through purposeful activity rather than menace – gangs are fundamentally antithetical to this thinking and one can say it arises because parents are absent from what they are supposed to be doing.

Misguided parental goals

Over the last few years, I have found too many instances where kids of Nigerian heritage have been victims or perpetrators of violent crime, if we must have children in foreign societies it behoves us to exert ourselves to bring them up in environments where they are first not under threat and then not influenced by negative role models.

The preoccupation with keeping up appearances and status in our marooned Diaspora communities when the greater task of separation and integration is of essence for the sake of our children is atrocious – children are better inspired and encouraged by aspirational guardians who provide positive role models that their wards can emulate.

A parenting challenge

It is all too easy to suggest children have become wayward and are the black sheep of the family but if their formative years were spent under a responsible adult’s care and hopefully guidance, then that is probably where things also went wrong – what children end up becoming does not occur in a vacuum.

Looking at those 6 Nigerian names, should be a warning shot across the bows of ethnic parenthood in foreign lands that your involvement is pertinent, that the game plan for child rearing cannot follow the script we once had or experienced back at home and that we cannot spend all hours in the pursuit of filthy lucre if we want the peace of children who will in future go on to live successful, independent lives away from unsavoury encounters with the law and the shame that it brings.