And that’s the most admirable quality about people who know their stuff. Their self-effacing cum can-do trait. Their restrained disposition means they do not go out of their way to prove their mastery of their craft, it’s just there.
I have never been impressed by garrulous or talkative people. The foremost reason is that they do not have a filter; in the process of baring their minds all the time, they tend to say the words that should remain within. Words that are bound to hurt others and ruffle feathers when it’s unnecessary. There’s also the challenge of not giving adequate thought to one’s verbal expression when one speaks before one thinks thereby circumventing the natural course of things.
One rejection and fortuitous conversation later and I was on a journey to what I had always wanted and sought.
Over the years, however, I have come to appreciate the boundless energy that extroverts exude, the ease with which they make friends, and their never waning life-of-the-party persona.
There are a plethora of issues that plague adult life: endless bills, the dilemma of decision making, transversing the delicate world of social interaction, and the subtle but no less consequential distraction. Distractions are a real challenge we rarely talk about even as we struggle to stave them off in our daily lives. For the average adult, family and work-life are only the most basic of the forms of distractions they have to contend with. Add unforeseen occurrences and the seemingly external but equally challenging incidents that have become staples of our existence then you’ll agree we have a real plight.
The permutations and projections regarding the 2023 general elections may not be in full swing yet, but there’s no doubt that they have kicked off. And as new presidential candidates emerge, the dynamics will change gears and reach a crescendo. It will be an encore—we have seen it happen every time an election season approaches—especially one where a sitting president will be ineligible to contest. A common denominator we can expect as a response from these presidential hopefuls on why they aspire to the apex post in the land is love for the country. They will swear they love and are passionate about the Nigerian project and their hearts bleed for the giant that is content with living as a dwarf.
As we trudge through life sometimes and bound through it at other times, we are inclined to forget how far we have come on the journey of life. How the very things that almost drowned us now appear trivial.
My individualistic leaning also meant I was hardly swayed by friends. Peer pressure was a myth to me even though I saw others struggle with it, and often, I would joke that if there was anyone who would do the pressuring, it would be me.
One of the interesting things in life is how two people can be so close, share interests and have great conversations, yet view issues from divergent prisms. A person’s thought pattern influences their outlook on life. It’s what makes them kowtow to popular opinion or hold a different view from the majority. I find that irrespective of the situation a person finds themselves in, their perception dictates their disposition to it.
“You need to find balance”: these words can come in form of an admonition, advice or appeal. The most common instance where we hear this is in respect of work and family. We are told to find work-life balance and when folks say this, they mean we should not be found to be tilting towards one spectrum of our existence at the expense of the other. The gender that hears this the most is female. Women are admonished to ensure they never neglect the home because of a career, and so, all her life, she is in a constant state of contouring herself in many different ways to see that she “finds that balance”.