Numbered Among the Wanting - by Oluwatobi Kolawole

Suddenly, it hits you, maybe the iPhone is just an overrated gadget. So was the thought that was floating around your head as you watched your friend bring out the newly launched model, just like Aragorn would draw out his sword against the orcs from Middle-earth. Certain iPhone series are now like orcs. Even the 13 series is not spared in this. You take a second look at your friend, appreciate that the Google Pixel has an outstanding aesthetic, and then all your corporate work theories start to unpack themselves in memory. The plot thickens with each reasoning cycle. You were once financially at par, but not anymore. Someone reshuffled the deck, and now you have to look at each other from a distance. The space within accounts for an ineptness to leverage relationships to your advantage. Cut that out, let me rephrase it: the inability to bite deep into the benefits of nepotism. When people make bank, the closest consequence is that they own the world, and the happiness they exude shows it. Some necessary ground rules, one must refrain from uttering statements coated with extreme subterfuge and pretense that only make life bearable for a few moments. I think that when people rehearse to the hearing the banal sound of money not buying happiness, most times, I assume they are standing at the pinnacle of a humorous display. The proportional element of comic relief and jesting contained within those words is at a high percentage. People with defined liquidity laugh, smile, and look better. Perhaps, they even give better hugs, too, because someone has to testify to their colognes. It’s lucid how the people with so much love to give are the ones with the mindset of gifting. They left phrases like ‘it’s the thoughts that count’ to the other group that swings it as a statement of solace, an acceptance that gives pertinence to intent, rather than actions. As they walk through hallways, free-spirited, without a bother, the thoughts come at you, money matters can make a person correct their posture and dive headfirst out of a window. But today is not for monetary concerns; it’s for forgotten opinions that hold attraction and their debilitating effect on the human soul. As you hug your colleague and watch her use the elevator, you wonder what exactly makes this gender characterized by all things beautiful, great, and small, think that you’re worthy of being loved and attended to. The comments come like an insult, especially on your bad days. Some have said it’s because you don’t stand your ground, and you get lost in the conversation because you didn’t even know there was a discussion or a debate that required being rooted to a spot. Others have said it’s being too available for everybody, and then you look to your triangle to confirm that an extra line hasn’t changed it into a polygon. Half of the time, it is intact, and the rest of the time, someone is cleaning off your boundary lines with an eraser you didn’t see in the first place. Here lies a note against the accusation of being called a city boy. You wish divine punishment on the poor boy at the office, who, for lack of words, decided that was a tag to direct your way. It was fun at first, but having to apologize for not replying or returning a call already makes you feel like you bought a ring without knowing. And the knots on your inside tighten. It’s common courtesy. They said. But there lies the paradox. Is it availability, or are you just maintaining best practices? Everyone stays silent. Damn right! The easiest thing to achieve with words is the criticism it gives meaning to, and because talk is cheap, everyone becomes a relevant person. Doing nothing. The irony is the finger pointed at you, with the claim that all actions from your end of the rope are deliberate, consciously vile, and extremely evil. These conversations make you fold, and rehearse writing a will, and the effect is the same, akin to the ones on money matters. No one should have the guts to air their thoughts so freely on matters so complicated and not dimensioned. You consider being left alone. But there is an impossibility to it. You need time, and the trees around you show you that growth takes time. You need to be softened, not because you’re hard but because in a world so harsh to people who should be providers and protectors of family, existence deserves to fall back on an anchor that softens your pain. Eventually, you consider nothing. To bridge financial gaps, you can only do what’s within your control and hope. To handle the complexity of expectations charged towards your existence, you decide that numbness is the key to keeping yourself sane in a world that sometimes demands too much. Author’s Note This piece isn’t trying to prove anything. It’s just sitting with the shifts between friends, money, expectations, and how you start to see yourself because of them. What feels like humor on the surface is really something softer underneath: the weight of comparison, the confusion of being misunderstood, and the effort it takes to stay grounded when everything around you keeps moving. There are no answers here. Just an honest moment, caught in between who you were and who you’re still trying to become.

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