How we live the life or death of our spoken words

Mind what you say

I was recently involved in a conversation that left me quite perturbed as my interlocutor stressed and hammed on about their difficulty with one issue or the other. Their belief in their precarity was such that I found it impossible to intervene and an intervention was dreadfully needed.

Usually, I stop or probably warn people about saying unwholesome and unprofitable things because I believe our speech has a spirit of creative energy and purpose. The words we speak carry weight about who we are, and how we think, and for all, consequently, define the circumstances in which we find ourselves now and into the future.

If you continue to speak about incapacity, inability, difficulty, and hardship, and hold expressions of pessimism that you inadvertently say with conviction, these words create the worlds around you and sadly you become a prisoner of your thoughts that have become your beliefs; what you say in words become your world.

Having the wrong perspective

It is a discipline to hold one’s tongue, choose words carefully, and keep one’s peace if we have nothing good to say about ourselves or others. Practising silence over expressing oneself might help review what we have avoided saying.

Then you ask, what best informs the background of thoughts that become words that show up as lived experience? You need a new perspective, a positive and progressive perspective, one that sees you in a different light, with opportunity, capability, and an unquenchable undefeatable spirit.

That is only possible especially if you are of the Christian faith, if you begin to see yourself as God sees you and then you say what God says about you.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ [that is, grafted in, joined to Him by faith in Him as Savior], he is a new creature [reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit]; the old things [the previous moral and spiritual condition] have passed away. Behold, new things have come [because spiritual awakening brings a new life]. [Bible Hub: II Corinthians 5:17 (AMP)]

The new creation truth of knowing you have been reborn of God and living a new life is one we rarely grasp in any understanding or fulness, but knowing this change and that it is not one of effort, but of the grace of God is the beginning of renewal.

Know all good things about you

That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. [Bible Hub: Philemon 6 (KJV)]

We need to find out who we are from God’s perspective and acknowledge every good thing that is in us, not out of our own doing, but by and in Christ Jesus. Knowing this and thinking this along with seeing the great promises of God toward us would change our perspective and the words we begin to speak.

This brings me back to the crux of the matter, what we speak can create life or wreak the havoc of death, you would want to give life to ambition, to health, to prospects, to opportunity, to happiness, to the fulfilment of dreams and much else.

The tongue is a master controller

A good deal of this comes from what you have conditioned yourself to believe borne of the limitations of your perspective as a mere hapless human being or a creature of God’s manifest and limitless creativity.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it and indulge it will eat its fruit and bear the consequences of their words. [Bible Hub: Proverbs 18:21 (AMP)]

What fruits and consequences of our words are we living and is it time to start speaking differently by aligning ourselves to what God thinks of us and the value God places on us that he sent His only begotten Son to the world to save us?

“For God so [greatly] loved and dearly prized the world, that He [even] gave His [One and] only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him [as Savior] shall not perish, but have eternal life. [Bible Hub: John 3:16 (AMP)]

Please click on the links shared with the Bible verses to see parallel translations for more understanding and context.

Thought Picnic: Between writing and speaking

Effective and polite conversation

The art of communication and more so the one of being effective at it matters a lot. Even for those of us schooled in the old-fashioned use of language in courtesy, respect, grammar, and correct address, we must not be tempted to dispose of it for the sheer ease and modernity that attends to current trends.

Whether it be letters, emails, or text messages, I follow some basic and critical rules. The form of address along with a greeting is essential. The statement and context are written with a style that respects both the correct use of grammar and punctuation, whichever language I choose to write in. The closing is properly made too.

Chains of email angst

In a recent series of back-and-forth emails where nothing seemed to be moving, we had generated an enviable email chain that would tire out a casual observer just as some frustration began to set in. I suggested we seek a resolution by telephone conversation to understand where the apparent miscommunication or misunderstanding was because we were getting no further along.

My feeling is that this suggestion prompted my interlocutor to review their workflows and processes after which certain ameliorations were made without conceding the fact that the issue was always on their side.

Suddenly, the shunted wagon of bureaucracy lethargic woke up in a fit of uncharacteristic vigour, trundling forward towards the realisation of intended or expected outcomes.

Words to any effect

One would not want to apportion blame as much as the admission of fault should not suggest a loss of face. Though the facility to admit wrong with the finery of language is hardly taught and acquired without extensive reading, especially of the classics.

I get commended for having a way with words and that my writing conveys my views better than my speech. At my most cantankerous I am neither eloquent nor articulate, and enunciation is good enough, I hope. Yet, where you have no opportunity to write, what you say and how you say it is the only device by which any listener might give due recognition.

A review of language tutoring in my experience

Speaking Yorùbá with pride

Watching a video clip on Facebook and later shared on WhatsApp from the BBC Yorùbá website of the Portuguese-born Tiago Isola speaking Yorùbá had me thinking of my experience language teaching through the years. [BBC Yoruba: Tiago Isola, akẹ́kọ̀ọ́ Fásitì Ibadan]

Tiago Isola arrived in Nigeria with his mother who was part of a cultural exchange programme with the Oyo kingdom at the age of 10 and has immersed himself in the Yorùbá culture, language, foods, and practices, he appears quite somewhat integrated, and his command of the language is quite well above average. He speaks with pride of his knowledge of Yorùbá and I am sure from his international travel would be a good Portuguese and English speaker too.

I was a foreigner too

I was born an Englishman with a Brummie accent from the West Midlands, my first language and mother tongue is English, and whilst there was some Yorùbá spoken at home, it was never part of our regular conversation, My parents conversed more with me in English, though less so with my siblings. My mother is a polyglot with an ear for languages, my father, much less so, struggled with even Pidgin English, it just did not sound right when he tried.

On returning to Nigeria, we lived in the north for just over 6 years, in that time, between Kaduna and Jos, I picked up some Hausa, read a bit of it, even attended the ECWA church where Hausa was the spoken language of instruction. I still get by on what I learnt in the 1970s, with the occasional opportunity to practice when I meet Hausa speakers.

Getting serious with Yorùbá

It was when I was 10 years old that my mother acquired Yorùbá primer Aláwiyé (To speak to comprehend) books to practice the fundamentals of the language. However, it did not get immersive until I had a psycho-paranormal encounter for which the apparent remedy was reading the Psalms multiple times to cups, bottles, or buckets of water from which I drank or bathed to ward off evil spirits. She compelled me to read the Psalms in Yorùbá, it cultivated my proficiency in the language.

However, before that, I had no serious language teaching apart from standard English reading, spelling, comprehension, and composition lessons. In the fifth class in primary school, I found a basic French-language book in the cupboards and began to teach myself French, not in the pronunciation as I had no guidance, but in knowing the words and the meanings, I did not get very far.

Remembering sadistic language tutors

At secondary school, apart from the English teachers, the other language teachers were basically sadists, quick to punish but slow to impart or enthuse us in their subjects. Mrs Odutuyo could well have been high up in the ranks of the Spanish Inquisition, she conjured up such inhumane punishments, the thought of what she got some of us to do still makes me quiver. She taught Yorùbá and it was a chore. I never passed a Yorùbá test in school, but I mastered the use of accents and diacritical marks, which has served me well until today.

In Form 2, Mr Okonji was the French teacher on secondment from the National Youth Corp Service, French could have been a joy to learn, but he had no wherewithal to make it accessible. What he mastered to the level of genius or ogre, if you prefer was the wielding of the birching cane, going through the classes urging ‘Study-Study’ telling us to lie forward onto our desks whilst he carved welts on our backs.

I always got a language waiver

When we came to Form 3 and we had a better French teacher in class, we were nowhere useful enough for her to lift to any standard, we just trundled through the year expectant of the moment to drop the subject, which I did in Form 4, apart from the compulsory English language that I usually scraped a pass on, as I did not exert myself academically to achieve distinctions, and did the bare minimum that was asked for, I have never had to prove my standard of English as I am a native speaker.

After secondary school, we had some formal English lectures as part of our engineering courses, I always thought a good command of language was essential to being able to take projects from idea, through conception and implementation, to a conclusion and full successful commissioning. I have always priced the need for quality communication, and it has helped me through my career. As for the lecturers, they were poor bordering on abysmal, one took to sesquipedalianism for no other purpose than to impress than educate, I was far from taken by the superfluity of vacuity.

Contrasting language tutors

It was not until 1999 that I took another formal language class and that was German, the lady teaching us in a further education school carried us along and of all my language teachers, she was the very best. Every waking hour, I was playing back German language tapes, brushing up my German and looking for opportunities to use it. At that point, I was also looking to emigrate to live and work in Germany, I ended up in the Netherlands instead.

I enrolled on a Dutch learning programme organised by my employer, and it probably was the worst decision many of us made. The teacher whose business was predicated on providing language classes to blue-chip companies got comfortable with those who had a better grasp of the language and left the rest of us behind, we became disillusioned and dropped out of the class. To my shame, I ended up living in the Netherlands as an Englishman abroad, barely able to get by in Dutch, though not a complete novice.

I am for more language learning

It is likely, I would find myself learning Afrikaans and Ndebele, it would be down to first my enthusiasm and then the quality and ability of the teacher to impart the knowledge in a beneficial way. When I reflect on my use of language, I am quite proud of my mastery of the Yorùbá language, it is challenging at times, but it is one of the richest modes of expression.

I can also be quite purist in speaking Yorùbá, preferring to speak entirely in one language rather than mixing languages. I converse more with my parents in Yorùbá now, however, especially when it comes to my father, English presents the essential mode of address when the power distance index requires the delivery of some hard and difficult things that genuflection in Yorùbá tradition would frown upon.

As Tiago Isola has suggested, we need to give our children a good grounding in the mastery of all languages spoken, giving just as many resources to Yorùbá as we do the command of the English language. On this, I would say, we need to speak Yoruba beyond the rudimentary street talk, with the deployment of fables, poetry, proverbs, and sayings, finding innovative and expressive ways to promote the language before it falls into disuse out of negligence.

Tiago Isola’s Instagram page

Men talking helping other men talk

Sharing a private matter

I am just listening to a programme on BBC Radio 4 – Room 5 where I think people talk about life-changing diagnoses of personal consequence. Today, it was about Jon, tall, successful, nice young family and ticking all the boxes. [BBC Radio 4 – Room 5 – Jon]

He was at Peppa Pig World with his family a couple of years ago when he discovered something wrong with his body, secretions from his penis that his GP first treated as a rash or basic infection, then he was referred to a Genitourinary Medicine (GUM) clinic where they determined he did not have a sexually transmitted infection. Now, I already suspected what it might be.

Anyway, after researching online, he found a consultant that diagnosed that he had penile cancer and it had spread to one of the lymph nodes, it was advanced, but also treatable and so they arranged the programme of treatment that has now put the cancer in remission apart from making Jon a totally changed man.

Time to be expressive

I share this story because it has resonance with me in many ways that I have written about before. As men we find it difficult to take about health issues, an irritation in a private place with the accompanying discomfort that we dismiss as trivial even as we are caught up in the embarrassment and tongue-tied when it matters.

Men are dying of conditions that are treatable if caught on time, prostate cancer especially, but also penile cancer and breast cancer, yes, men get it too. We need to cross that barrier that stops us getting help. Only you can properly explain how you feel for a doctor to begin a proper diagnosis or set you on a course of the treatment that would give you that best outcomes, you need to have your voice speaking loud, clear, without fear, shame, or embarrassment.

On sex and sexual organs, the words describing them should not be taboo and move out of the category of profanity. Penis, arse hole, scrotum, balls, buttocks, breast or whatever colloquialism or vernacular gives meaning to what you are referring to need to be words you can use freely in a describing how and what you are feeling as your life might depend on it, it is no time to be coy or shy.

You are going to be touched and prodded in places you have never been touched before or where you have not intended was touchable. Heck! Your life depends on touching the right places to feel and see what is wrong. You can’t play offensive when a situation has made you defensive.

Where my manliness was foolish

In early 2009, I allowed what appeared to be athlete’s foot to develop into a stinking sore half-aware that it might be related to a much earlier HIV diagnosis. That sore turned out to be Kaposi’s sarcoma, a kind of skin cancer and a manifestation in my own case of full-blown AIDS. My condition was that serious that at diagnosis in September of that year, I was given the prognosis that it was treatable if I could tolerate the treatment, else, I had only 5 weeks to live.

The treatment worked because there was a body of knowledge and experience garnered from people and many of whom had not survived that became the canon on which specialists could claim and assert confidence to tackle my condition. I was put on antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that I am still on and seven sessions of chemotherapy over 5 months to put the cancer in remission and reverse AIDS to the point where I have had an undetectable viral load of HIV for over 12 years.

Responsibility and acceptance

I know I contracted HIV through reckless and unsafe sex practices, I have come to terms with the responsibility and consequence of my own actions, however, I do not live in guilt or regret of that, I have a life to live and I intend for whatever time I have left to live it well. In the process, I have learnt to speak freely and liberally especially with medical personnel about how I am feeling, promptly, directly and without mincing words.

However, many diagnoses are not of commission or omission, they are accidents of nature bringing adversity, infirmity and challenges with them. We are left with ourselves and the help we can get to face these situations with the hope that we might surmount them and get to tell a better story.

My voice for my choice

To a team, I once had so say, “It’s my body first, before it is your guinea-pig.”, when I was challenging the determination for intrusive treatment not long after my ordeal with chemotherapy. To another, when I was seeking treatment for another condition, I was blunt about being aware of my mortality as a result of co-morbidities for which immediate action was taken. When I was asked to change to medication that gave me no quality of life, I presented the daily dairy of recorded side effects and contra-indications, and at my request, I was put back on my original drug regime.

I am in my knowledge and understanding as good as my medical notes, if not better. It comes from genuine self-interest and awareness along with the freedom and willingness to talk to address any medical situation I am facing. Then, I encourage the invitation and sitting in of medical students on my consultations, I believe that not only can they learn from my condition, that experience can also go into helping others. I would normally engagement them to appreciate what areas of study and research they want to specialise in.

All the help available

Obviously, for the outcomes I have had, I have to thank the open-minded, professional, considerate doctors in their humanity who have listened, understood, helped, and encouraged me on my path to wellness, their expertise applied with respect and consideration has been lifesaving in so many ways.

To us men, when you feel something, have it checked out and follow the full course with all the advice and help you can get, speak up, speak loudly and if you are not getting the best outcomes possible, challenge the orthodoxy. It is always your body first, before it is anyone’s guinea pig, no matter how good they are at what they do.