Noticing Vs.Knowing. - by Albarka.

I remember that day I was packing my bags, arranging my clothes and other belongings. Before you ask, “Packing bags for where?” Na university, I dey talk about! I received tons of advice from dignitaries in church, elders in the neighbourhood, and family members. But most especially, my mommy. She gave me tons of advice, including to be wary of people. She told me that some people would change when they got to school. And that reminds me of a girl in my faculty. She is beautiful. Not that beautiful, beautiful, ehn! But she is kind of wayward, always jumping from one guy to another. Let's call her Sarah. Sarah has almost everything. She can't be considered a NEPO, nor a LAPO; she's just somewhere in between. But she has just one bad habit: "Guys". She moves with guys a lot, acting all huggy and touchy, which irritates me every time I witness these shenanigans. Before you ask, “Am I stalking her?” No, I'm not! But she does it so frequently that it has become so hard for someone not to notice. I remember watching her one afternoon, laughing and playing with a guy as though he were the only person in the world. The next day, it was someone else. Another week, another face. And somehow, she always seemed to have a new person to give her attention to. Sometimes, I wondered if she ever got tired of it.Didn't she worry about what people would say? Didn't she think about the impression she was creating? Then I would remember my mother's words. Be careful of people. Some people will change when they get to school. And I would shake my head, convinced that Sarah was living proof of everything my mother had warned me about. But the more I watched her, the more questions I had. Was she really that way, or was there something I didn't know? Was she genuinely happy, or was she simply enjoying the attention? Was I right to judge her, or had I allowed my mother's warnings to influence how I saw her? I couldn't answer any of these questions. All I knew was that her behaviour irritated me, and I couldn't understand how someone could be so comfortable being that close to different guys. One day, I found myself sitting near her. She was unusually quiet, staring at her phone with a look I couldn't quite explain. There was no laughter, no playful conversation, and no guy beside her. For once, Sarah was just Sarah. I wanted to ask her a question, but I held back. After all, what right did I have to question someone else's life when we had never even had a proper conversation? That was when it occurred to me that I knew so little about her. I knew the guys she walked with, the way she laughed, the way she touched them, and the way she seemed to move from one person to another. But I didn't know her story. I had built an entire picture of Sarah from what I saw, and I had convinced myself that the picture was complete. Perhaps my mother was right to warn me about people. Perhaps some people really did change when they got to school. But maybe I had misunderstood one important thing: being careful with people didn't mean I had to judge everyone I encountered. Sarah's choices were hers to make. I didn't have to agree with them, and I certainly didn't have to imitate them. But I also didn't have to turn her into a bad person simply because her way of living irritated me. After all, I had come to university to learn, to grow, and to discover the world beyond everything I had known before. Surely, that included learning that people were more complicated than they appeared. So, whenever I see Sarah with another guy, I still notice. I am only human, after all. But these days, I try to remind myself that noticing someone isn't the same as knowing them. And maybe, just maybe, the real lesson my mother wanted me to learn wasn't simply to be wary of people. It was to be wise enough to observe without being deceived, to be careful without becoming bitter, and to know the difference between protecting my values and judging someone else's. I'm just learning that sometimes, the things we notice about other people reveal as much about our own assumptions as they do about the people we are watching.

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