The River Remembers What We Threw In

--- And when I put my mind to books, I see myself exposed without judgment. Truly, the world can only be known by reading and observing moments with so much wonder. It's why I think travel bloggers must really enjoy what they do, because they don't think any moment is worth less than the other, not after such travel expense has been spent. Imagine we all behaved like those travel bloggers. Eager to talk about the rude Uber driver who refused to turn on his AC, or the argument teenagers had in your presence about the unhealthy consequences of eating Bokku Bread, or how stupid it was for anyone to support some football clubs in this day and age. Perhaps, the world's worth can only be seen through the eye of a tourist. My friend went to Zanzibar last year, and even though I've never stepped out of Nigeria, the photos and videos she shared with me were so fascinating to the extent that I felt I experienced everything vicariously through her. Of course, all my reasonings would pale in comparison with her boarding those flights. I won't deceive myself into thinking I've been there, even though I got a shirt from that trip. When I sit with her experience, I see it again. The acceptance of everything we call literature, to see the world, and choose to be moved by it. To stand without a mask in the face of a world that you don't know, and a people that know nothing about the life you live in your own country. To be within the mercy of other people's culture and not be judged as a foreigner. To live with the hope that they'd love their neighbor as themselves. Tourism is a faith in itself. To trust in books is to give yourself the expansive vocabulary to describe even the most unexplainable things. Not just because what has been written runs parallel lines through experiences, giving us a sense of solidarity, but also that we'd never be alone even in extreme solitude.I think that the prosperity of the soul feeds on educational material. Even within religious circles, the healthiest people are the knowledgeable ones. I don't know how my generation got to the favelas of brain-rotting. Ours is the gulag of men who think the world revolves around a bunch of people, or a group. It's hard to convince us. I observe the reactions of people to gory events. The shock is in the unbelievability of the scene or the actions. The sight exposes the thinking behind the words that proceed forth. To think that actions can be constrained within a particular circumference is not just hope but wishful thinking. When they spit out the bile, you hear the hypocritical sounds, and in some moments after, individuals continue in the malady of existence. Bad things are happening. Bus drivers driving off, as a body is thrown off the bus, allowing the basics of physics to take its toll on bones and flesh that would tear due to impact with tar. We point at the government, but forget that the real problem might just be the individual choices we make daily. The thing with ignorance towards immorality of any kind is that, whether we accept its existence or not, it scales. And because we're all full of blind spots and do not take dissent from others, the river flows into generations, and eventually all that it carries gets to the place of authority and power. Whoever is responsible for a country reflects us accurately. The leader is the mirror of the people. It gets clearer by the day. To rule at all is to rule yourself first. The boy child longs for a period where there is so much autonomy, to live a life without restrictions. He is told to wait till he is an adult, and when he reaches there, he is told that he needs power to be truly free. The concept of cultism then makes sense, and when anyone bites the meat of corruption, all of a sudden, they all understand why people kill, steal, and destroy. It then makes sense that the anger of a nation towards its leaders is not so much tied to oppression, but that the oppressed people just need a chance at being the oppressors, even if just for some time. --- Years ago, I met the most conservative person ever. He was a colleague at work. I battled heartbreak during my first year of working in the corporate space. Much to my naivety, it became clear that you cannot convince a person who wants to leave, just like you can't wake a person who is faking their sleep. Within my awestruck mind, my colleague gave me the book The God of Small Things by Roy Arundhati and Paul Coehlo's The Fifth Mountain. The stories there felt normal, but again, they revealed a world I had never seen before. A caste system akin to the racism we experience today. The shouting, protesting, and painful deaths of people who were just trying to live normal lives. It also made me see that careless words can make people love you a little less. And the tragedy thickens. A failed government will keep creating numb people in society. I think I reached that stage too late. I always thought I could throw optimism at everything. Now, nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. For me, things changed in one day; a couple of hours affected who I'd become for a whole lifetime. I stand grateful to books, that it gives me the opportunity to undo what the leaders indirectly do to me. The last time I saw my friend, the tourist, I told her that her writing style had changed. The last couple of months had been disappointing and stressful, and the effect shows in the way she reveals her most profound thoughts. Is the world still worth observing? Are we at the end of an awestruck era? Will optimism pay off someday? I cannot tell. --- Author's NoteI wrote this in the middle of something I couldn't name yet. Not grief exactly. Not rage. Something in between. The kind that sits with you on a long commute and refuses to make small talk. I have been trying, for some time now, to stay curious about the world. Some days it works. Other days, the bus driver runs someone over, and I remember that optimism is also a choice that requires energy I do not always have. This is not a conclusion. It is me, thinking out loud, hoping the thinking means something. Hoping that is still enough.

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