Thought Picnic: Deny bad strangers a hold on you

They do not know you

In considering the attitude of some people to others, I found myself thinking about how we could allow complete strangers to influence how we think about ourselves to the point of dejection that we become unhappy about ourselves.

Be careful not to rate the approval and approbation of strangers over the acceptance and love of those you know. A fleeting rejection should never define your self-worth or your existence. That you have not been liked at a point in time is just an episode that quickly passes on, not to be agonised over.

Let strangers be insignificant

Usually, that situation is a factor of them speaking more to their limited sense of appreciation than of you and who you are. Knowing this will give you peace and a sense of perspective, for strangers are just that, strangers. Until someone gets to know you, they don't know you. Even if it is lasting, their first impression is just theirs alone.

You may never encounter that stranger again, so, why let them dwell in your memory and experience? Obviously, how they made you feel or treated you might be bad, unfair, and unkind, but they make up an insignificant proportion of your existence, and do not give them a platform where they should never even have a toe hold.

Can you abandon your experience for the extraordinary?

Learning to trust beyond experiences

I sometimes consider my situation with amusement, for I had yesterday said Sunday might well be a day of rest. I cannot say it became the day of expected rest for in the morning I made for church after a night the tracker said was better, but I appeared to struggle through trying to get more sleep beyond vivid dreams.

The message at church was based on trust and being saved from situations and disaster as depicted in the narration where the disciples saw Jesus walking on water in the middle of a stormy sea. The majority of disciples being fishermen would have known the reality of stormy seas. Small boats at the mercy of billowing waves, the fishermen caught between life and death, terrified at their helplessness. [Romans 10:5-15 (NKJV)][Matthew 14:22-33 (NKJV)]

Beyond that, even if the fishermen were strong and able swimmers, it is doubtful that when hit by a storm they’ll just jump in the water and swim to shore and safety. Besides, they might also know other fishermen that would have perished at sea without trace lost forever in the deep as a lingering memory of the dangers of their trade.

Don’t let it be too strange

It is in this context that they saw a man, the man Jesus walking on water and obviously from their experience at sea would immediately think it impossible and suppose they were seeing a spirit. Their being tossed about in their boat was compounded by the fear of the incomprehensible.

It is then that Jesus said, “Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.” Yes, he told them, and of the many translations, I like the God’s Word Translation the best, "Calm down! It's me. Don't be afraid!" [BibleHub: Matthew 14:27]

It was as if Jesus was saying He knew they had never experienced this before and it was time for them to experience the incredible and add it to their wealth of personal experience and the full recognition of his authority on earth. You could not have witnessed this and remained the same afterwards.

How our experiences rob us of the divine

Whilst they were busy processing that information, Peter said, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” To which Jesus simply said, “Come!”. At the point Peter did step off the boat with all his fisherman experience in the middle of a stormy sea and walked on water towards Jesus. Until it dawned on him, fishermen don’t walk on water and he began to sink.

We can agree he was far enough from the boat not to grab it and near enough to Jesus when he cried from help and Jesus stretched out his hand to catch him, they both walked back to the boat, and the storm ceased.

For all the additional perspectives to add to this situation, there is one evident thing, your worldly experience limits your ability to experience the wonder and power of God. Then, if you do go against every knowledge you have to listen to and act on the one-word command of Come, you will experience the power of God and when your personal experience begins to cloud that godly experience, you only have cried out to be saved and brought to safety, whether you have little or great faith.

For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” [BibleGateway: Romans 10:13]

That was the depth and beauty of the sermon in church today

Celebrating 12 Years of Blogging

My story’s in my blogs

Twelve years ago, I was in a hotel in Berlin when I wrote my first blog as I began blogging just to express all sorts of opinions about topics that I found interesting, engaging or needing a perspective completely different from the mainstream.

Over time, I began to tell stories, mostly personal or relatable stories, I do not think I am good at writing fiction and I have rarely dabbled in that genre.

Whilst I am not as prolific as I would have wanted to be and in many ways I have been lazy at writing or even suffered writer’s block, what my blogs have become are tales of experience and life where sometimes something so ordinary and seemingly inconsequential can gain significance just because it becomes part of a story.

Maybe we can celebrate

I have found that blogs that tell personal stories have the most resonance and whilst I have watched bloggers come and go, and there have been many, I still believe everyone has a story to tell, in their own voice, in their own words to enrich our humanity.

I had hoped to celebrate this landmark anniversary leading on to my 50^th birthday in less than two weeks with getting people to contribute to my blog as I as did with the Decade Blogs of two years ago, but have been away from home and been quite preoccupied to many other things to give it much attention, it might yet happen.

However, I do ask, if you do blog and do read my blogs, please write a story, one of life and experience in commemoration of blogging and having a voice speaking loud and clear about the joy of living, the pursuit of happiness and the zest for life, because despite many other blogs I have written, I think those three themes do light up my blog.

Thank you

Thank you to everyone who have supported me through reading, commenting, added expression, given inspiration or just browsed on their way to something more engaging. I hope to do better at this thing called blogging, thank you for 12 years of stories.

My blog masthead remains the purpose of this blog, “Essential similar to what is known, compatible to what is expected and related to the unexpected …” It is a redefinition of my name ‘Akin’ and how my stories begin.

The damage done when parents fail to listen

Present and past meeting

I am not one to watch horror films, but I happened upon the compelling viewing of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark which against my wiser instincts I watched.

What occurred to me was the very familiar story of a child seeing things and that child having serious problems convincing their guardians of their experiences.

We have been schooled with the view that kids tell tales or tell lies for opportunity, advantage or attention, even when those things begin to affect the emotional, social and mental stability of the child.

Choosing not to believe

Sadly, the issue of child sexual abuse, nightmares and ‘seeing things’ fall into the same category of experiences that parents or guardians flimsily dismiss as trivial and fantasy, leaving the child to suffer until more damage is done.

At times, they will find some rational or logical explanation, and for their benefit, they may be right, but it should never be grounds to dismiss whatever the child has been through. At the very least, trust the child and strive to verify exactly what troubles the child. Maybe get professional help, not elders, not pastors, not rituals - PROFESSIONAL HELP - Like psychotherapy.

I had a similar experience when I was 10, during the day, my aunt and our houseboy shared stories about unexplainable events, those stories which I heard and can still recall to complete detail became seeds fuelled by the vivid and fertile imagination of a child. My nightmare was about to start; we only needed the dark and the quiet to enliven it.

That evening we had guests, my mother’s childhood friend and her husband, she was also the step-mother of Tola Awobode, the Lare of Cock Crow At Dawn (Music video).

I can’t continue

Let me digress, I will have to write this story fully another time, in fact, every time I have attempted to write this story, I have been distracted. It is possible, I do not know whether, the story will really be written, and I’m in shock.

My memory serves me well, that only yesterday, as I wondered how I remembered parts of the home address of my friend, he asked how far my vivid memory goes and I answered, back to about the age of three.

I began this blog to write about the need for parents and guardians to pay greater heed, sometimes against their better judgement if that comes into play to certain radically life changing experience of their wards, the scars of which I still bear and part of what sometimes still informs the way I interact with my parents.

The need for professional therapy

My experience was dismissed as fantasy by my father, my mother however was anxious, he left her to throw whatever she could into the situation to help me when probably professional therapy would have helped rather than visits to spiritualists of different persuasions, which with hindsight heightened my anxiety and weakened my ability to deal with the situation for decades after the event.

I read Psalms over bottles, cups, or buckets of water, seeing religious service as a fearful dreadful experience that required you pay for any comfort or peace through some laborious routine of service, recitation and ritual, it was not a lovely episode in my young life that continued into my first term in boarding school.

I guess, I have gotten the substance of my intent across without touching the detail of my personal experience.

However, in digging up this memory, I just now found out from the Internet that Tola Awobode had died just over 4 years ago. We knew her as Auntie Tola, it was a pleasure to watch her perform as Lare on Cock Crow at Dawn, I never knew what else she did – that is what I have now just read in her obituary.

Thought Picnic: In the mists of the lost

Masts of mists

The thoughts wander marooned in the wildernesses of the mind, wells of knowledge and memory too deep to draw from that stretch to the limits of imagination only constrained by active engagement of the senses.

There have been good times and there have been bad times, they interweave and interleave with each other in recurrent clockwork motion as if there is a continued certainty that each time will have its time. The hour hand crawling through the bad times just as it races through the good times.

For he has walked the mountain tops and strode the plains, just as he has found his paths traversing the deep valleys under the gloom and dullness of life overcast by the sometimes terrifying shadow of death. Life cannot ebb out yet.

Lists of losts

Yet, it is life that he lives, not uncommon to many but precipitous and rocketing like the undulating frenetic adrenalin producing roller coaster given a name to strike fear in the hearts of those who drink lion’s blood for tea.

The day seems long, the future seems short, the hopes begin to fade and the hunger is all the more palpable because it was once three, then two and now one from dawn to dusk with the hope that ursine hibernation sets in to make it last until the next when the little left will do a little more.

For where is he a year on from that day, not much further, not much better, not much having, very much roaming and just another excavated mine of memories from which minerals are have been exhausted, he is faint in body but strong in mind and all he knows to do is bare his soul.

Thought Picnic: Mansions, Rooms & Windows

Life as a mansion

Life is an amazing mansion with cellars and attics, back houses, stables, gardens and much else showing the wealth and status of the occupant.

The most important parts of the mansion that may not define status but are essential are the rooms and the windows, on the many floors that one will traverse by staircases; some grand, some steep, some spiral and others on the verge of making the climber levitate.

The halls and corridors leading to bed chambers or conveniences or those that cater for means of liveliness whilst there are forbidden places rarely troubled the haven of arachnids yet to be documented into a known genus.

Rooms as experiences

This mansion I have lived and retired in to have some doors open into rooms so stale that my opening the windows brings in a breath of fresh air, some doors have opened to other rooms that must be gutted harbouring garbage rivalling the muck of Aegean stables.

Other doors are locked shut and the keys are lost, in some cases locksmith have helped gain access to those rooms, in other areas of the mansion, they are hermetically sealed, no kicking will make the doors budge and those rooms remain a mystery.

All those one can deal with, you find alternative routes around the mansion and they least bother you if you can do what you need to do around the house.

Doors as opportunities

The worst times in this mansion have been when the door was opened, you could see right into the room and everything seemed welcoming enough to draw your gaze and your footsteps and just as you got to the door, it was slammed shut in your face and you know it was not the gust of the wind by reason of open windows.

At that point, you feel helpless, not like you will immediately turn the knob, but for a while you’ll be stood there trying to determine why, what, whether, where in wonderment that more represents shock.

Then you turn around as and find another room where there might be more pleasant company, it is impossible for every door in a mansion to suddenly have the mind of slamming shut in your face – time makes for the ebbing away of shocking memories, soon that old door will yield to your gentle opening and whoever slammed the door in your face might well have gone with the wind.

Windows as settling down

There are doors and many to open, the one that will not yield access to that room meant other rooms will get occupied and what about a new room in an unexplored part of the mansion – it just feels new and comfortable there – I’ll just open the window and let in some air, look, I have company; we’ll have tea.

Remo Secondary School (RSS) at 60

Early through school

Time passes as the 4th of February marks the 60th anniversary of Remo Secondary School in Sagamu, Ogun State, Nigeria.

I had the interesting advantage of doing a lot of things early, such that I was a year below the class average age in primary school and almost 2 years below that average in Secondary School.

My immediate sister even finished secondary school at an earlier age; she was only under 15, whilst I finish in 1981 at just 15 and a half.

We were up North in Kaduna when my parents agonised about where I should have my secondary education.

There were lots of options in the North and a very close friend of my mother really wanted me to school nearby, but there was a feeling that I needed to learn more of our traditional Yoruba background and hence, the South West offered the best opportunity.

More so, I was not that fluent in Yoruba, and with the entire commendable grasp I now have in Yoruba, I find that I speak Yoruba to almost everyone except my parents with whom I mainly converse in English.

Selection selects the worthy

Sometimes I wonder about the debate about admission selection that dominates the political debate in the UK when it comes to education.

For six months, I was in home school in Lagos with a relative who ensured I had what was necessary to do well. In one instance, as we were on our way to one of those entrance examinations we had an accident as our old banger ran into a rather expensive car.

That gave my guardian the impetus to acquire a new car which with the help of my father happened to be a Peugeot model 504 that was the car of the middle classes in the mid 1970s.

I attended a number of entrance examinations and in the end had a number of choices, but realised that whilst we did Arithmetic in the North, they did Mathematics in the South; the concept of negative numbers was alien to me, but I survived with a few lessons from an aunt.

Spooked in decisions

Odogbolu Grammer School was the nearest to my ancestral village Ijesha-Ijebu, but declined the offer when I noticed that the school literally shared its grounds with a graveyard.

I have seen a few ghosts; the experience was terrifying though the phenomenon sometimes begs for lucidity in explanation.

Mayflower School in Ikenne was considered the cream of the crop, but I was not successful in achieving the grade, so the next choice was Remo Secondary School.

As it happens it was the very first co-educational school in Nigeria, previous attempts at that model had foundered that no one expected it to work.

However, on the fourth day of February 1946, it opened its doors to new students, and I was in the class of 1976.

Admissions selection ensured we had a mixed bunch of students from all works of life and experiences, which was both wholesome and healthy.

Privilege of a good start

I was indeed a child of privilege, many who travelled from the North did so by train, which could be a very unhealthy exercise and probably unsafe for young ones too.

I flew in, was chauffeured around and kept well supplied with provision and necessities. I definitely did not lack for anything; my parents did almost too well in ensuring comfort in a wild place.

Certain events of terrifying nights which had me reading Psalm 23 aloud for hours on end lead to my being called Holy Ghost by some but more popularly Pastor.

One had to deal with the shame of bed-wetting on the one hand and just the desperation to carry on and out live that foible.

A hard life out there

The first two friends I made were just I was, born abroad with quite a bit of the tenderness that indicated we were not used to the hardships of boarding school, it probably made us ready targets for bullying, but we did have our wits about us.

You have to be wily and smart to survive in a setting where abuse could be meted out with importunity and some seniors did get their kicks out of that.

Part of the orientation included the selection into school houses; I was in Adedoyin house which came last for my  first three yearly inter-house games, the other houses were Falode, Mellor and Igimisoje all of which were names of founders or pioneers of the school.

Reverend Mellor who was a Methodist minister died in his eighties just at the end of 1976.

An academy for life

I did well in most subjects except Yoruba which was a compulsory subject until after the third year.

In the fourth year, my scores in the sciences were poor such that I had to do arty subjects like history and literature, but after the first term, it just was not my vocation and immediately, I switched to the full sciences and did quite well there.

Between the fourth and final year, we had summer school which was to help us prepare towards the West African Examinations Certificate, and in one of the most unfortunate cases of co-educational co-existences, some of my colleagues went on the rampage and attacked the girl’s hostel which left quite a few with injuries and material damage.

Judgement was swift, pervasive and indiscriminate; the summer school closed, we were sent home and not allowed to board in the fifth year.

A last year of lasting injustice

The fifth year is the most crucial year in any secondary school student’s life, the experience definitely marked everyone, especially those of us who had nothing to do with that fracas.

The board of governors then in their “all-knowing” and parochial manner did not even seek evidence from anyone, but it was also evident that the vice-principal then knew that many of us were not involved and would not get justice.

I barely did as well as I was able in my finals, however, it was enough to move on, I somehow still hold it against the school with regards to the way we were treated.

My last year was also quite interesting because then, the selection process had been abolished for just moving all the pupils from local primary schools to neighbourhood secondary schools.

Only once did I hear any of those new intakes complete a sentence in English flawlessly, it made me weep.

Schoolboys and pranks

I was quite adventurous, we went swimming in a quite notorious river at which we saw a medicine woman walk on water that much we observed as we could have broken the 100m dash record – heels touching heads – back to school, we could hardly tell the tale.

The worst times were the “mass attack” events which really meant the cutting of grass around the school which was just etched out of a forest, I never completed my allocation, sometimes, I got a good friend to help out, if he was not being feted by the girls.

We read so much pulp written by James Hadley Chase even made statements out of the book titles such as “You’re safer dead” and “The dead stay dumb”.

This in fact got other guys into trouble when they were suspected of being members of the Bucknor and Bucknor Chambers of Inquiry, I being Philip and my co-conspirator being Larry.

Well, we made our mark, in one instance; I posted a letter to the authorities about activities that involved us being forced to contribute money for voodoo amulets which would help us win the inter-school football competition.

Unfortunately, we were always second-best to Mayflower School, no matter how hard we tried.

Looking to celebrate at 70

As memories are recalled about those days, it is a shame that I did not make enduring friends of the boys I met at school; I suppose my strict upbringing forced my focus to educational pursuits to the exclusion of other adolescent pleasures.

As the school does wax older and more mature, I hope to be able to visit for the 70th anniversary, as the injustice meted out 26 years ago mingles with the joy of seeing all those whose lives were moulded as they passed through the school and the school passed through them.

RSS – Happy Birthday!!!