Thought Picnic: Success, Suffering, and the System That Fails Both

The Illusion of Success

Sometimes, success appears to be a façade amid emotional turmoil, the vulnerabilities that are part of life's struggle that no one else sees. There is an assumption that if you have the means and cachet to buy anything, then you are suitably supplied to purchase your salvation.

Society simply does not recognise the struggle of the successful as legitimate. There is little sympathy for those who appear to have everything, and this dismissal creates a terrible sense of isolation in which high-achievers quickly learn that their struggles will not be taken seriously.

Misunderstanding Resilience

There is also a misguided understanding of resilience. Indeed, many of us do exhibit herculean feats of resilience against adversity, fighting storms of life that threaten to overwhelm us, but something inside refuses to give. Belief, faith, grit, or sheer guts: we are bowed but not broken, attacked but never defeated. We become the narrative of possibilities that once seemed insurmountable.

Yet this very resilience can become a trap. High-achievers are often driven by perfectionism, a relentless internal standard that demands excellence in all things. Mental illness does not respond to willpower or determination in the way that professional challenges do.

You cannot work harder to overcome depression. You cannot manoeuvre your way out of bipolar disorder. For someone whose identity is built on achievement and competence, seeking help feels like failure, an admission that you are not as capable as you believed yourself to be.

Recent Tragedies

Two stories in recent times have got me thinking that many mental health struggles are barely addressed or are given the stiff-upper-lip treatment of “you'll pull through as you always do”. We give just enough space not to interfere, and then the news drops: those stalwarts of stoicism, or what appeared to be that, have taken their own lives.

Robert Carradine, 71, died by hanging last week; he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I am in South Africa, and I have just read the news that Ian von Memerty, 61, who was Zimbabwe-born and a South African entertainer who hosted some popular television shows, had died by his own hand in Johannesburg. He had long written about the desire to take his own life.

The Reality Behind Success

None of this brings any comfort because these are successful men who had tasted the kinds of worldly success that many could not even dare to dream of, and yet it is their demons that have driven them beyond the edge of despair to suicide. The fact that these men are quite close to my age range also indicates that you probably do not grow out of the things that ail you.

Success often brings its own form of isolation. As you rise in your field, the pool of people who can truly understand your experience shrinks. Your old friends may feel the distance growing. Your new peers may be competitors rather than confidants.

The high-achiever becomes trapped in a gilded cage, surrounded by admirers but profoundly alone. This loneliness compounds mental health struggles, leaving fewer people to turn to, fewer spaces where vulnerability is possible, and fewer relationships where you are seen as a whole person rather than as your achievements.

There are also practical fears that make seeking help feel dangerous. Will your employer question your ability to perform? Will clients lose confidence in you? Will colleagues see you differently?

Despite progress in mental health awareness, significant stigma remains in professional environments. For high-achievers whose identities are deeply intertwined with their professional success, the risk feels existential.

When the System Fails You

Moreover, even when they overcome these barriers and seek help, they often find the available support inadequate for their specific needs. Therapists may struggle to understand the unique pressures of high achievement: the constant scrutiny, the isolation that comes with leadership, the weight of others' expectations.

The two times I have used therapy, because I presented none of the symptoms of depression, suicide, or a mental health crisis, it was felt I was trying to abuse the service. Yet, I had a compelling narrative. I was recovering from cancer, mounting debt meant I was about to lose my home, and my status was rock bottom.

Surely, with such a catastrophic change in life, I was a candidate for therapy. I guess because I had a modicum of coping mechanisms and I was too articulate for my situation, only shocking assertiveness could pierce into the needed support framework.

The scheduling demands of high-achievement careers often conflict with traditional therapy models, yet their chaotic schedules are often part of what is driving their mental health crisis.

Bridging the Gap

It is impossible to tell how much help, consideration, or support Carradine and von Memerty got through their struggles. For their survivors, bridging the gap between the sorrow they feel and appreciating the release that death brought to the suffering of their beloved ones is something you cannot begin to fathom.

Perhaps the most fundamental challenge is the myth of self-sufficiency that high-achievers internalise. They have succeeded through determination, intelligence, and hard work. This creates a belief that they should be able to handle anything, including their own mental health.

Cultural narratives about success emphasise individual agency and resilience, celebrating the self-made person who refused to give up or give in. These narratives leave little room for vulnerability, little space for acknowledging that sometimes, despite all your strength and capability, you need help.

A Personal Reflection

Even with my encounters with suicidal ideation, which I have written about as recently as a month ago, my only prayer still is never to be presented with no other option but to end it all. This is not said from any position of strength, ability, or capacity; rather, it is a recognition of human frailty and vulnerability. We are faced daily with a spectrum of mortality, but for the grace of God, there go we.

Addressing these challenges requires a fundamental shift in how we think about success and mental health. We need to recognise that achievement does not immunise against suffering, that success can indeed be part of what drives mental health crises rather than protecting against them. Until we can create space for high-achievers to be vulnerable, to admit to struggling, to seek help without fear of judgement or professional consequences, we will continue to lose talented, accomplished people to the silent epidemic of mental illness.

The deaths of people like Robert Carradine and Ian von Memerty should serve as a stark reminder that success is no protection against despair. The answer is that success and suffering are not opposites. They can, and often do, coexist. Recognising this uncomfortable truth is the first step towards ensuring that achievement does not become a prison from which the only escape seems to be death.

May their once-bothered souls rest in eternal peace.

Blog - Suicide When Academia Forgets Its Humanity (January 2026)

Blog - Thought Picnic: I think I need therapy (March 2011)

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

On parental interference and sundry matters - III

A Problem Child

I have a blessing; I still have my parents who are alive and well, but we have a situation where we are estranged. This estrangement is probably because they are embarrassed or ashamed of me, and that is something we all have to deal with in life when it comes to how we live and the choices we make.

In those circumstances, I have taken measures to manage their exposure to these things, sometimes by reducing or eliminating communication.

For those children who have made their parents proud without having to sacrifice anything of themselves, I guess you are doubly blessed. The stars were aligned, maybe angels were even singing to the shepherds in the fields, as wise men journeyed with presents of gold, frankincense, and myrrh from the East to herald your birth. Oh, the prophets foretold it all.

I was not that child; I was different, difficult, and diffident. I was at one time smart and then considered stupid; for a while, trusted, and then not trusted. I was a handful to my parents, yet a product of the environment I was in.

We Were Not Friends

My African parents made many assumptions about what they thought I had learnt from examples that were not always obvious, for instance, the handling of money. Heck! My father is an accountant, but tell me, how do you pass down the genes? I guess only one of my siblings pursued a career with any semblance of that profession, so much for the power of example.

My parents are of the generation that maintained a certain status and stature, with a school principal for a mother, someone moulding impressionable young lives. The pressure to perform was even more stifling, the need to impress was necessary, and every failing was condemned with such excoriation it left an indelible mark.

Then I failed. I failed woefully, twice. I started courses at two polytechnics, both ending with the advice to withdraw. When I look back, I realise I was clinically depressed; my mother had Psalms and white-garment prophets on the rolodex of that time, and I found religion. I had finished secondary school at 15 and was starting all over again at 20.

A Different Parent

The difference this time was being under the guardianship of an uncle, my sadly departed Uncle Cash, a close relation who had experienced failures early in life but had become very successful in his chosen profession of insurance.

That relationship was different. It was not built on a yearning to show power by demanding and comparing, but on engagement and an appreciation that I was a person first, with my own beliefs and persuasions that could be accommodated within his mentorship and guidance. My parents backed off a bit, and I thrived.

The purpose I gained moved from setting goals to make others proud to achieving success for myself. I had the power to make my own decisions, based not on what others thought, but on what I thought was best for who I was, what I was doing, and what I aimed to achieve.

We Are Really Strangers

In their eyes, I could very well still be the child they once knew, because we grew so far apart from the day they sent me to secondary boarding school. They knew one child; I am a different man, and their child still.

In the same vein, my parents have changed from the people I once knew, even as some characteristics remain, and we have never really had the time to compare notes about who everyone turned out to be.

I have issues and misgivings, many of which I have written about in my blogs. I think I have had a reasonable relationship with my father and a rather volatile one with my mother. Even as I think of them and love them, there are elements of past resentment and abandonment that have taken hold as I review their parenting of me as an individual.

My parents, I can understand, have their concerns too: they have a firstborn son who is gay, has never married and will marry a man, has no offspring, and whom they have not seen in decades. And I am comfortable with all that, because it is my own life and not theirs.

Let's Do This Again

On my Facebook page, I have a friend request, the inspiration for this blog, because it is from my father, who I once blocked, then unblocked, but did not re-establish the friend relationship. After all, he conflated the situations of parent, participant, and policing.

Allowing him to participate in my social media activities meant that he began to police me, and then I got the message: “The earlier you make a good change in your lifestyle the better; it is not too late. All the best”. I was 53. I am going to be 60 in December.

You know what? I’ll accept that friend request.

Blog - This is my life, this is me

Blog - On parental interference and sundry matters

Blog - On parental interference and sundry matters - II

Thought Picnic: That honour rarely comes

We live for others

We grow and yet we do not grow up in the eyes of some usually out of proximity and familiarity or distance and estrangement. We seem to be caught in the amber of time, fossilised in the peat of an eternal past that has never changed. We are seen in the prism of light that no longer reveals or reflects who we are.

For all the journeys and experiences of life we have acquired, it is meaningless as those who never really journeyed with you through the wildernesses and the triumphs are totally unaware of how you have changed and who you have become. Jesus Christ painted that picture clearly; “A prophet is treated with honour everywhere except in his own hometown, among his relatives, and in his own house.” [You Version: Mark 6:4 (The Passion Translation)]

With achievement and recognition garnered from many endeavours, appreciation and praise greeting you as you navigate the fields of toil away from home, you are to them the boy, the kid, the child, the son, stripped of all standing and respect, reviled and contemned with belittlement and contempt, if you crave it, your disillusionment and disappointment will be great with the pall of disconsolation.

Continue in what you know

Yet, you must stand, if not to be heard, at least not to be stymied in the expression of who you have become. Be unrelenting in the resolve that has brought you the success you have earned through the sprinkled ingredients of example, training, experience, guidance, or even indifference.

The thought I started with as with many of my blogs has been lost in the flow of this snippet of self-appreciation. When you realise how impactful the little you do is to others, it matters less whether your kith and kin acknowledge you. If they eventually do, it is a bonus. If they never do, do not let your goals be defined by those who only see you in the past and have never moved beyond it.

Embrace the mistakes and learn

 Breaking out of perfect

Attending an interview that became the impetus for an almost 13-year sojourn in The Netherlands, I was asked a question about a scenario I had never encountered in all the environments I had ever worked in before. I had no answer to what the interviewer must have thought would be the dealbreaker of suitability to fill in the role.

Having answered all other questions, I was asked if I had any comments, and I took the opportunity to seek an answer to the question that stomped me before returning home to research what it was all about. I concluded to myself that the reason I had never encountered that issue was that the environments in which I had worked were almost too perfect and where no problems arose, there was no challenge to normalcy or quest for any resolution.

Problems and practice are necessary

In my professional life, there is a lot of documentation about how to design, setup, and implement features and products, but what do you do when things do not work as required or expected? That is where knowledge and experience are created, the art of troubleshooting is honed in the hard craft of practice and research, seeking out where things might have deviated from the norm and reviewing experiences of others in the field to augment, enhance, and improve your knowledge and expertise towards becoming a subject matter expert.

That aspect of practice and discovery is all too necessary along with the inevitable mistakes that dot a life of determination, adventure, application, daring, and accomplishment. We all know we are not perfect, but we are always getting better, the more time and effort we put into understanding how things work and consequently why they fail to work as intended.

Face the fear of failure

Yet, this does not just apply to the narrow area of the use of technology but any useful endeavour. As a conversation with Brian, the other way gave birth to some conceptual thinking about the fear of making mistakes. The strains of what I said turned into what might be a saying, a note to myself and to anyone else with whom it might resonate.

“If you don't make mistakes, you can't correct them, you don't learn from them and you have no practice necessary to perfect your craft. The fear of making mistakes ultimately robs you however close or remote, of the possibility of genius. Mistakes help you become the best.” Now, go and do that thing you were afraid to do because of your fear of failure or embarrassment.

Thought Picnic: In aid of posterity

The absence of skill for success

I spent 6 hours attempting to remediate something I had planned to do for not more than 90 minutes and this was fielding a request for assistance in which I was asked to cast an eye on some activity for its correctness and suitability for the purpose intended and it failed woefully at both.

If my patience was tested, my calmness did little to betray it. Something in my nature demanded the kind of endurance with keeping my counsel in the hope that our engagement which had not fully delivered the outcomes might just bring into focus the functional inadequacies in my quarry and the desire to do better.

Almost hopeless at method

I needed to review the meanings of two words, ineptitude: the lack of ability or skill, and incompetence: the inability to do something successfully. We do have the tendency to conflate the meanings and consider them synonyms, but they are very far apart in terms of context.

My interlocutor had planned to do some things or imagined things had been done and even with following a clear set of instructions failed at implementing what he intended. I could say ineptitude contributed to the inability to use the instruction set and the result was incompetence because whatever he set out to do was not accomplished and he could not understand how and why it was not.

A call upon absent ability

Just to imagine that someone has been bestowed to such responsibility having convinced the unlearned that they are capable and there is no challenging assessment or scrutiny of their abilities apart from the pressing demand to fulfil requirements that within that setting they know can be done but have no wherewithal to achieve.

It is a different thing if, in some way, there was a prospect that growth was possible, but my doubts outweigh my hopes. I am lumbered with a sense of kindness, maybe also of duty to ensure that whoever might replace my friend will not be assessed by the propensity to the maladroit of their predecessor by reason of any form of similarities that might prejudice the process.

The significance of posterity

At one time, I thought I was doing it for him and it might well save his job and lengthen whatever employment contracts he has if he can learn from this, but posterity is of pertinent consequence, the ground we lay determines how we are succeeded and the legacy should be praise at your departure rather than relief that what you have done has not laid the situation to ruin if the opportunity presented itself.

Yet, we have not all been so perfect, we have made errors sometimes too shameful to recall but quite defining of our careers and the determination to better and strive for excellence. It is not a hopeless situation, just one where the prerequisites for hope are not very present.

Blog - Showing courtesy to others' time

Observing the subtle racism at black success

Racism touches us all

Racism is a general story and a personal story, the tales I have to regale are many in my almost 30 years of continuous living in Europe. Whether it be in the UK where from when I was beginning to become reacquainted with the land of my birth or on mainland Europe where somewhere between being patronised and being belittled was a covert disrespectfulness you just ignored, you grew a thicker skin.

Racism became a topical issue from the weekend and in football, when the England international and Manchester City footballer, Raheem Sterling, was racially abused at Chelsea Football Club.

Raheem Sterling took to Instagram to give context to how and why racism appears to thrive against young black footballers through the way they are depicted in the mainstream media.

The @BBCNews and @BBCWorld are contributing to the race-baiting that @sterling7 highlighted. He said his teammates "bought houses for their mothers", but Auntie left off the "for their mothers" bit. https://t.co/v9XnMol03U Once again, the black players are painted in poor light.

— Akin Akíntáyọ̀ #FBPE (@forakin) December 10, 2018

Commissions of omissions

He gave the example of how the reportage on two young black football playing colleagues had bought new houses for their mothers, “mothers who have put in a lot of time and love into helping them get where they are,” he said. The press had found a slant to paint these grateful boys in a bad light.

Not long after I had read that post, the BBC was reporting on Raheem Sterling’s Instagram post, quoting the post but incompletely and out of context. The BBC reported the boys had bought houses and left out the positive and mollifying message which was the boys had bought the new houses for their mothers.

That subtle omission of context painted the boys as excessively profligate rather than as endearingly grateful. That was enough to give a platform to forming negative opinions about people who had done some good, but in the reportage were made to look bad.

Jealousy needs no inspiration

It then no surprise that a black footballer as reported by BBC Sport who cannot exculpate themselves from being part of the problem, pulled out of appearing on TalkSport after their coverage of the Raheem Sterling story, for apparently, “former Reading striker Dave Kitson told the station that Sterling had incited ‘jealousy’ by exhibiting a luxury lifestyle on his social media.” [BBC]

Like seriously, a successful young man who happens to be black is exhibiting a luxury lifestyle on his social media? Nothing could be further from the truth, especially with Raheem Sterling.

In my own life, people would be jealous regardless of whether you’re frugal or profligate, the simple fact that you’re successful is enough to accentuate negative feelings, they need no inspiration to be rotten to you, given the opportunity of proximity in the hope to rile you.

We thrive, nonetheless

We have found accommodations or a state of mind, we have no reason to take offence, we ignore them, it is their problem and their headache. At other times, there is a gift of a quick wit, a riposte that sends them back into the crevasses from whence they emerge to glow in our light. Sometimes, it is others who observe the reprehensible and take action at no one’s behest apart from their good-natured disposition and humanity.

We are grateful for good fortune and success in our various fields and long may we have great stories to tell.

However, I leave the last word to one Jonathan Northcroft, the football correspondent for the Sunday Times, “Raheem Sterling represents the type of young black footballer that middle-aged white men of a certain type can’t deal with.”

“Raheem Sterling represents the type of young black footballer that middle aged white men of a certain type can’t deal with” - 🗣Jonathan Northcroft (football correspondent for Sunday Times) @sterling7 pic.twitter.com/ZdqxLgiIvr

— LDNRBS (@LDNRBS) December 11, 2018

Thought Picnic: Don't lose the honour of the opportunity to help

Regaining opportunity

“Opportunity once lost, can be regained, albeit, after a temporary setback.” This was a saying shared with me by an uncle figure when I was in secondary school. It became one of the most important pillars that stood for times when everything else seemed to have crumbled around me.

My parents from what I know were high-flying successful people in their academic lives and into their careers that I am not aware for any failures in anything they were educated and trained to do, except when they appeared to dabble in areas where they had no expertise. What I learnt from them was more along the lines of the age-old saying, “Opportunity once lost, can never be regained.”

Confidence and nothing over

Invariably, apart from aspiration and confidence, I cannot say I learnt anything about facing failure, really failing and finding the resolve and wherewithal to rise from that scrapheap to find new achievement. My dad would have been top of his class in his accountancy examinations in 1969, whilst he won other prizes, I am told he fell short out of over-confidence.

That story was told me when I decided on a minimum of 6 subjects for my West African Examinations Council finals out of secondary school in 1981, my mother intervened citing that I was exercising the same over-confidence that plagued my dad and ensured I had 8 subjects to contend with.

On finding opportunity after failure, that honour and privilege goes to other uncles who faced failure head-on, understood what it meant to fail and fail again, yet never relented until they succeeded. It is to them that I owe that other story of my life’s achievements, successes, privileges and good fortune. To them, my gratitude must remain inexhaustible.

The honour of opportunity

Which brings me to another perspective of opportunity and the use of the situation for the benefit not of ourselves, but of others. In all walks of life, we are provided to opportunity to open our hands and open our hearts, someone needing advice or help, a recommendation or reference, sometimes we are given the magnitude of influence to affect the future of someone else in ways that would put them on the trajectory of success well beyond what we could for ourselves achieve.

At some point in the life of another person, we are the sentinel, the gatekeeper, the possible force for good, that opportunity that has come in its time, yet, I am privy to information and circumstances where the myopia of some has beclouded their ability to see that for them to be in that position, it is an honour and a privilege, for that time alone, everything depends on them, and what do they do, they close the door.

You are not omnipotent

They have the power, the influence, the authority and maybe even the audacity and for their small-mindedness, they refuse others the allowance to progress. To them, there will never be gratitude, no praise shall be sung of them by others because they have sown bitterness and the curmudgeonly in the hope that all opportunity is destroyed.

Opportunity once lost, because of what you have done or refused to do, can be regained without you eventually, albeit, after a temporary setback that you put in place, but power and influence in transient.

The opportunity you once had to help can be lost forever, that does not mean opportunities are closed to the person providence honoured you to do something about at a particular time. The help you give is just a bonus, it makes you part of a better story, people would succeed with or without you.

Prepare yourself for gratitude

Yet, I must come back to the need for thankfulness and gratitude, honour those who see the honour of helping you as a privilege they would never let go of until they have contributed their utmost to the very best to see you get along. We have good people in this world amongst the fair-weather friends who are hollowed-out dregs of humanity, who pretend to smile with you only to find ways to be your detractors.

You know yourselves, you have betrayed the sacred trust of friendships and relationships, when you had the means to make a difference for the better. Your time will pass into ignominy. I am saddened to have lost respect for those of whom much more was expected.

Gratitude is an amazing uplifting spirit like I had my contract extended without prompting last week, on getting the news, I wrote to my managers thanking them for their confidence in me and the contract extension. In response, my manager wrote, “You’re welcome Akin, you deserve it!”

How climbing up the rungs of failure was my ladder to a successful career

Thoughts on how I was taught

If I had the charm and the gab, I probably would be in a professionally different place, but it really does not bother me, I love what I do.

It is strange that in deciding on a career, the many ideas that came to me were not so inspired by some passion, but by example, the example of the passions or decisions of others. I dreamt of being a brain surgeon or an avionics engineer, I never really caught the bug for the grades, especially in additional mathematics, my teachers did not have the tinder that when lit caused me to combust to a cinder.

How I would have loved to master French, I was teaching myself from a book in primary school until we landed in the cane-wielding tutelage in Mr Okonji in secondary school, his sadistic pleasure was to see us parrot French phrases contorted in pain from the beating he generously administered urging us to study. His nickname became Study-Study, he was a nasty piece of work and a bad teacher.

Wailings and failings

After secondary school, I toyed with the idea of Quantity Surveying after a brilliant uncle but ended up on a Chemical Engineering course by the persuasion of an old student. I did not get far with the course; one lecturer was so German in speech and mannerism than to be understood and more than half the class failed mathematics that the engineering department had to lay out special classes to pull us up.

Gbenga Daniel who eventually became the governor of Ogun State was the acting Head of Department and besides learning chess and playing Scrabble, I made nothing of that year. I, however, learnt enough to realise that I was more interested in Electrical Engineering as a gateway to electronics and computing, so as I failed that year and was asked to withdraw, I was admitted as almost the youngest in the class at another more prestigious polytechnic.

After three years there, student politics, religion and somewhat undiagnosed depression, 4 years after secondary school I had no further paper qualification beyond secondary school in Nigeria where the comparison with other failures was the persuasive force towards greater achievement. I was a lost child.

Mentored by one who knew the way

A year out and away from the overbearing influence of my very successful parents, but a ward of an uncle who knew failure young and with luck, good fortune and opportunity had become one of the leading insurers in Nigeria, I began to build my life again, not out of comparison to other failures, but in the spirit of knowing what could be possible for me, if I put my heart and mind to it.

The belief in me, culled the depression, managed the anxiety, emboldened my daring and sense of adventure and though, on my first day back at school, my junior in secondary school was 3 years ahead of me, I neither flinched nor shirked, I faced what I had to do, with dignity and purpose. The little detail that this junior was the very person I first wielded the power of secondary school seniority on, was a minor lesson of karma that I refused to allow consume me.

This was my second spring, no more the youngest in class that I had been from primary school through secondary school into two years of school after, I was a mature student with more knowledge of how tertiary education worked than most of my colleagues. I led the class, represented my colleagues and brooked no nonsense from either veteran students or lectures. Some came to respect the confidence and authority I exuded. In controversy, I was as measured as I was revolutionary, persuading rather than being confrontational. It served me well.

Mastery in immersion

I graduated with good grades, 7 years after secondary school and I landed in a job market without the influence peddling or favours I once could call upon out of the patronage of my father or the precociousness of my youth. Well shod for the roads of Lagos, with the choice of the industrial motors or stepper motors, I chose the latter and every computer outfit I could find I walked into asking for a job.

I had decided, I was the only one who could best represent myself and that is how I walked into this building that housed IT Systems and I was offered a job there and then. Like a sponge for knowledge, I learnt all I could about Personal Computers, repaired circuit boards, fixed software problems, taught myself desktop publishing and within a year, I went into self-employment consultancy and no one thought was a smart thing to do.

It was the smartest thing I ever did, it is strange to know that in 29 years of working in the computer industry, I have only been in permanent employment for 7 years, I suppose I have never been a corporation man, like my father was or anyone else that could have been a mentor, I was also not an apparatchik, my entrepreneurial skills are hardly top notch, but I hope I have been able to sell a skill that helps organisations achieve goals of efficiency, usability and affordability of computer solutions.

Questioning and listening

That is what I enjoy about my job, big problems reduced to simple solutions, thinking in ways that could be silly, mad and interesting, being the clown and exhibiting the furrows of a frown and then we go to town with something of renown. In large and small firms, meeting with people from all walks of life, I have made many friends and encountered the occasional prick of a manager, probably twice.

I guess that is part of the occupational hazard that weaves into a raconteur’s milieu. In that, I looked forward to new challenges, the opportunity to tackle a new subject, meet new people and craft amazing solutions. I am still excited when something works as it should and tenacious when things do not produce the expected results until they do.

My curiosity still has that childlike inquisitiveness, I have questions, I seek answers and much as I can be a fresh pair of eyes, those eyes come with eager to listen ears, each new day is fresh for learning things, tricks, truths and tips. Sometimes, it looks like I stumbled into this career, maybe I was right on course, just not by well-trodden paths.

Thought Picnic: My world, their world

Read this first - Blog - Thought Picnic: My long dance with failure

All drama and histrionics

Now for the real reason behind this blog, it was inspired by a video I watched on Pa Ikhide’s Facebook page.

A boy decided to play a prank on his father clearly identifying the idiosyncrasies of people of that generation. Typically, a Nigerian parent reacting to some failings of their heretofore precious brood.

In this event, the boy of 16 announces to his father that he has impregnated his 14-year old Caucasian girlfriend and a flare up ensues.

Now, this video was the boy playing a prank on his father, as we laugh we must realise that there is a majority of cases where this is no laughing matter but the reality of an unfortunate set of choices that presage dire consequences for that child.

I failed woefully

I have a story much similar to this, and I hope this with other interesting narratives that the video represents about parents, their children, their expectations, their disappointments, our mistakes, their reactions and the usually contemporaneous bleak prospects.

The background to this story has been written in this other blog.

Blog - Thought Picnic: My long dance with failure

Having learnt that I failed again, and there was no option for re-doing the course after repeating the class, there was just no way I could return home to face my parents; I had betrayed their trust, squandered their investment and rubbished their expectations of me.

A typical Nigerian household

That is the kind of atmosphere we are brought up in, we are to excel and do our parents proud, we are constantly challenged to improve beyond ourselves, under serious scrutiny of incessant comparison with our betters at everything and in fearful juxtaposition with uncles, aunties, relations, friends and examples of those who have failed.

The trepidation is palpable and yet, I was never under pressure to excel academically from my parents, I was a problem child of a different sort, secretive and defiled through the sexual exploitation of those who were trusted to care for me, there were things I never discussed with my parents and even today have still not brought up, but have shaped many aspects of my life.

Begging and pleading

After a week of going missing, mother in desperation had sent people out to various haunts until word got to me and the friends sheltering me. I had to face the music and deal with the consequences of my situation.

My friend took me back home, my father who had begun a second career as a farmer had returned to Lagos that week too. At first, he would not let me in the house, but after much begging and pleading, prostrating and much else; a kind of grovelling subservience I had never really grown accustomed to, he relented.

Not like my father

Upstairs, he began with his own success stories, and indeed, my father was a brilliant accountant, a successful professional, in the upper tier of adulation of his peers, and he could begin to question whether I was his son having not taken after him.

I was useless, stupid, an idiot, a failure and to make the point more strongly, I was only good for the farm and we were to leave in the morning for the farm, I had no other prospect after that.

The more forgiving aspect of this encounter was no corporal punishment, no threats of sleeping in a police cell or the order that I sleep on the floor rather than in my room in my own bed, but the future looked bleak, very bleak indeed.

You’re off to the farm

That night, I prayed so hard, I probably prayed all night because I was at my wit’s end, and though I have been once suicidal at 13, I have had the grace of hope in the storm since then to know that whatever situation I find myself in, was just a matter of course.

When the morning dawned, I had not even spoken to my mother since I returned, but she left a message, with my sister. “If your father attempts to carry out the threat to take you to the farm, leave the house and come to my school.”

It was close to 10:00AM when my father said, “Akin, pack your things and get ready to go the farm.” I got 30 kobo from my sister, snuck out of the house and went to see my mother. She sequestered me with a teacher from her school for 4 months.

Rebuilding from scratch

In that time, I began to think of what I needed to do with my life, it was good fortune that at times I visited an aunt – aunts and uncles can be extended relations in Nigeria. I was related to her husband, I think 4^th cousins.

She invited me to stay with them, my uncle who had seen failure in trying to pass his secondary school finals for years reminded me of a meeting he had with my dad when we returned from the UK.

My dad had promised him £10 if he passed his examinations, and though the promise is still owing, my uncle passed, qualified as a chartered insurer in the UK, became a fellow of the professional bodies both in Nigeria and the UK, was an examiner for the institute and reached the pinnacle of one of the longest established insurance companies in Nigeria.

Mentored by one who once failed

However, it took one man understanding failure to take my failure in the eyes of my parents and whoever else had a stake in who I was to put me on the path to rebuilding my life. I returned to school after, excelled, started a career in computing and did many significant things within 4 years of that personal catastrophe.

Sometimes I wonder if part of the estrangement from my family is related to this, I have forgiven as much as I can, but forgetting what is significantly part of my life and my story is a much harder job. And much as the reaction of my father might have given place to what my life eventually became, this kind of reaction of Nigerian parents to their failed or failing kids is all too common.

The many disappointments we’ve been

Failing at school, getting pregnant, taking religion, getting involved in gangs, engaging in vice, acting outside unwritten but societally constituted norms like not getting married, not having children being homosexual; these are all drivers for apoplectic rage, repudiation, overreaction, histrionics, rash decisions and regrettable outcomes.

In my next blog, I would deal with the many narratives that the video above signifies of parental reaction to children with problems.

Thought Picnic: My long dance with failure

The smarter of a big bunch

In primary school, I can say I was brilliant, though not good enough to beat Maya from Bulgaria to the first place.

I never revised or liked homework, examinations and tests were always a chore, but I did what I had to do, coming 2^nd most times and probably 3^rd once. In my last year, I was out of school for four months doing common entrance tests for secondary schools in the Nigerian South-West, when I returned, I still came 10^th out of 22 in the class.

Just average

Secondary school was a different regime, homework and assignments were part of the continuous testing regime apart from the end-of-term and end-of-year examinations.

I probably wrote the shortest scripts and was out of the exam hall in half the time, my performance in those terms were mediocre and scores average that I was in the top fifth of the class, but hardly celebrated.

Many of those ahead were naturally gifted and smart though the teaching technique of learning by rote and evaluation in some cases of regurgitating lesson notes verbatim in answering exam questions would have had me handicapped. If I was endeared to any teacher and there were a few, it was because I was articulate, we never had oral examinations, no, not the dentist.

Succeeding at failure

After secondary school, the first four years of study in two different schools yielded nothing, I did not need to report the events at the first where I was advised to withdraw because I made it into the premier polytechnic in Nigeria of that time.

Much as there were distractions, what I realised with hindsight and I have written about before was I never really made headway academically. I attended classes I completely drew a blank in, I was like a zombie in class but able to thrive in student union politics and getting co-opted into religious activities.

I played truant in secondary school and here too, the classes were boring, the teachers were evil and the lecturer was either bombastic or had the worst command of English ever, it was tortuous beyond belief, I had to extricate myself. The die was cast for tragedy.

Depressing the F-key

I was in trouble and somehow I did not understand what it was between depression and probably something worse because the mental capacity was there, but the engagement was missing, it was like I had no purpose or direction and before long my world came crashing down.

Blog - Thought Picnic: Are those blanks signs of depression?

Under duress, I repeated my second year after my father pulled all the strings to get me readmitted but I was far gone. At the end of that year when the results came out, I left home to check my results first running an errand for my dad.

I did not return home that evening, I went missing for well over a week and there began a new chapter in my life, an acknowledged failure, the child of role model parents, between them a successful accountant and a secondary school principal of 10 years.

That is the lay in for my next blog. The link would appear in the blog below when I have written it.

Blog - Thought Picnic – My world, their world.

The matter of tying the knot

We speak now

I was chatting to my father the other day, one of those New Year’s Considerations I had to get over with.

Sometimes, I wonder about why our relationship has been so estranged as a result of a process of growth from childhood to adulthood and independence rather than some particular seminal event.

I suppose up to a point, the patriarchal survey of my father had tried to envelope my sometimes antithetical views which at certain times of expression simply created conflict.

Now, though I have many years ago been in outright conflict with my father, it only lasted about 8 months during which my mother secluded from an outrage that was about to consume me because of my failures.

Eventually, we made up and he actively participated in my rehabilitation for which I am very grateful. When the successes came, he was the chief cheerleader and though he upbraided my mother for not making preparations for the celebrations, I really felt that duty was left to my mentoring auntie and uncle who took over the responsibility of seeing me through my toughest years.

Leaving from the chapel of love

One topic that has been dusted over and over again is that of marriage, he has the opinion, I am scared of the issue and hence, I have not settled down.

The fact is, I did once seriously consider marriage and that was just under 20 years ago, the lady and really the one lady that caught my attention then had me in dreamy spires – Oh! What could have been – but I did not pursue it far and time overtook everything else.

I am as settled down as I want to be, maybe not as happy as I would like to be but grateful for what I have and glad to be able to count my blessings.

Incy-wincy spider at 40-plus

Then, I saw that advertisement of a lady who instead of starting a family had a very successful career, but strikingly she noted that children of old school mates as she reminisced where now coming out of university and she and her child had only started on incy wincy spider [1].

I believe that advertisement was to encourage women to start families even if they have had fulfilling careers, because motherhood also had its fulfillments – I took from it that idea that I could be still raising children as an old man.

In the background someone was attending to the toilet requirements of a half-brother that was hardly three, nay, nay, three times nay – I have been sold completely on loving the kids of others and giving them back when I need my peace.

This, considering that by the time my parents were my age, at least two of their children were out of secondary school.

Premmies hardly procreate

No, the matter of marriage and children fell off the burner a long time ago and I have spent a lifetime encouraging my parents to accept the notion that I am settled with the encumbrance of happy families with little running feet.

I would not use the next issue to corroborate my situation, but it makes interesting reading about the lingering effects of premature birth predicated on the likelihood to drop out of school which I did not do and the unlikelihood that they would bare children [2].

Born at 26 and a half weeks, I do not think I had any serious developmental problems apart from growing my feet a lot faster than my age group and having an astigmatism that was not properly diagnosed till I was in my twenties.

I was a year below the average age of my class in primary school and was always in the top three apart from the last year when I was away for 4 months doing entrance examinations and still came out in the top half of the class.

In secondary school, I was just under 2 years below the class average and still held positions well above average amongst my peers. I do wonder if studies like this would dare to explore predispositions to particular traits including that of sexuality.

Accepting the situation as is

It does not bother me that much really, I told my father, we need to begin to appreciate that there are exceptions to the idea of marriage and kids for certain people and somehow that exception happens to be closer to home than is comfortable.

Besides, in what might sound rather cruel though not expressed, I cannot say that I have many role models who have attended to the institution and sacrament of marriage with the determination of a life-long inviolable partnership to one partner.

Marriage has its purposes and I am a supporter of the proponents of marriage to the extent that I care less about whatever sexual pairing that makes up that family unit of love, devotion, commitment and responsibility.

Indeed, one does crave companionship but in many ways those relationships have fallen somewhere between a soap opera of unmentionable antics to the shrill cacophony of an opera coming to its final crescendo.

I have probably become an onlooker and observer of the kisses and hugs that sometimes get expressed as hisses and shrugs – I look away from the worst parts of something really good that has turned too bitter for taste.

Citizens of different classes

The conversation then skirted other topics as my career and other activities and then that issue about living in the West and how that must affect me adversely.

I could understand that when my parents were in the UK in the 60s they came against a number of unpalatable issues with racial tension and war going on at home in Nigeria.

It lead my father to say at one time that living here left me in a position where I could be treated as a second-class citizen; an interesting view where in Nigeria being treated as a so-called first-class citizen security and safety were at a premium as well as the gauntlet of corruption I had to run through to get anything done.

Beyond the race to success

My memory served me well because my father passed his accountancy examinations winning the Faulks-Lynch prize in 1969 – Cannot find any record of it now, but it appeared in his listing for the Men of Achievement – he appeared on television and suddenly all his colleagues who were generally condescending grew in admiration and respect for him.

In some ways, achievement and success trumps the unsavoury rudiments of racism, I wish the situation were better but like I have written in another blog, see those situations as an opportunity to educate rather than be offended – hopefully, a quick wit would see you through it all.

In any event, it was a big first step, as we exchanged pleasantries and talked at length. I know that the matter of marriage would not die a natural death, but like I told him during our conversation, he gave me an education that allows me to speak my mind – I think our conversations would sharpen my ability to express myself better on matters I feel strongly about in a man-to-man and father-son heart-to-heart exchange.

Other matters of the heart that could unsettle him are not in the purvey of what I view of settling down.

Sources

[1] You Tube – Incy wincy spider

[2] Study: Premature birth has lingering effects - USATODAY.com