Gifts!

We do not know the massive gifts that surround us. In the long run, we see that without these we would have never blossomed fully. With everyday comes a gift, willingly unwrap them.
The gift of Work
The gift of Money
The gift of Friends
The gift of Learning
The gift of Problems
The gift of Family
The gift of Laughter
The gift of Dreams
The gift of Giving
The gift of Gratitude
The gift of a Day
The gift of Love

I DON’T REGRET SHARING A BLUNT

It felt so different. I had never felt anything like it before. The energy that rushed through my body was excitingly  electrifying. I could barely contain myself. It was as though my little brain cells were illuminated with some positive electric charge surging through my entire brain in a manner of motility likened to the Brownian motion. It felt so damn good. It was as though my already living self had come further alive. I wanted to talk more, laugh more, dance more, play more, eat more, and occasionally…fuck more. It’s amazing the amount of boldness available  at that level of highness. Nothing scares you. You just want to act on impulse and not waste anytime or thought due to the high level sync your mind and body share with the difference of barely a fraction of a second. The expression; fire, aim, ready finally made sense to me. This experience along with other life experiences are better felt when shared. So around me, my crazy ass friends looked even crazier. We laughed at every little thing, talked loudly about what we felt true, and played around like little kids who finally got the opportunity to. Prior to this moment, I thought I could understand any situation if only described well. This was true, but only to an extent. Little did I know that there was more to life than listening and trying so hard to understand when you could save yourself the trouble by allowing yourself go and just feel, which I was always scared to do. I remember looking at my friends as plain stupid as they struggled and searched so hard in finding words and expression to make me understand even to a little extent what they had felt and enjoyed! It was only after I let myself go and truly feel that I truly understood. I could liken that their experience to trying to preach Jesus to an atheist. I learned a great deal from this; never judge, be a little more than open minded, and life is too short to live it through with your passed down philosophy about it, hence, experience more. I feel sorry now for judging my friends whenever they fell far short from perfect, or judging the girl on the road that I knew nothing about who hopped into a strangers car anyway, or a certain CFO for embezzling. Unfortunately, cannabis had suffered this same injustice. I let my understanding about it instead of my understanding of it limit me just like I let it do with the stories about my friends, the girl, and the CFO. Moral lesson; you never truly live until you let yourself feel!

LET LOVE DRIVE YOU!

Spaghetti  and gizzard was my choice of breakfast that morning. I mean, if I did not allow myself eat it in my dream for fear of a certain type of initiation, the least I could do was have it for breakfast. I reached for my wallet praying that nothing less than one thousand naira (#1,000) should be in it, else I would have to force myself to replay my dream and make a different choice. After I was done with my morning rituals, I boarded a ‘keke’ (a tricycle) down to this particular restaurant that was the best in town, in my opinion. I got there, placed my order, and sat down. I particularly enjoy sitting by the window whether it’s a vehicle, plane, or restaurant cause of this feeling of an inside and outside experience it gives me. This restaurant was by the highway, making the view mostly of cars speeding by and grazing cows. My food finally came at the nick of time just before my stomach rumbled. I smiled in relief. While enjoying my breakfast, watching the cows graze seemed far more interesting to me than the decade old movie showing on African Magic. As I ate, something interesting happened. Two of the cows literally escaped from their herdsmen’s control and started running on the road. Cars had to instantly slow down so as to avoid any accident with these cows that seemed so serious with their “prison break” mission. It was a bit hilarious and scary at the same time as the Aboki kept chasing his cows without progress.
As I kept watching till they were out of sight, a question popped into my head and I’d ask it directly; What drives you, fear or love? In the case of the Aboki, I wondered which it was, love for the human lives at risk on the road or fear of loss of his cows and subsequently, money if those cows really got missing. I can’t really say but one thing I got to understand was that we humans tend to be driven predominantly by one of these two forces; love or fear. Through my twenty-three years so far, I have come to understand that the world or better yet, life, exists in a balance. We see this everywhere with varieties such as good and bad, male and female, up and down, love and fear, etc. We are inclined to see this even in our personal lives when things are out of balance and we spiral out of control. Balance in life is good and necessary as without it we may cease to exist in this world. It is there so that we can exercise our freewill to choose. In life, we always have a choice to make and why is that? Because there are always options, which in actuality makes up our lives. Anthony Robbins put it so beautifully when he said
 “It is in your moment of decision that your destiny is shaped.”
Now, as an individual, how do you make your choices? Do you go with the first choice that jumps in your head or do you properly analyse the situation even if it could take at least three seconds? If it was you in the Aboki’s shoes, would you think, and in turn act differently? Would your default reasoning lean more on towards the positive or the negative? The interesting thing is love and fear tend to both be good motivators, yes but tell me, how would you rather move to a better apartment, motivation from seeing your friends moving to better apartments or motivation from threats from your landlord for delayed rent? Yeah, I thought so too. We would all love to go with the positive, think positively, and also act positively but most of us don’t. Our lives will be a whole lot better if we make our choices based on love…positivity! Let love, which is the most powerful force in the world drive you…and when you do, you would grow beyond your imagination

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

Can you sincerely answer that question? If you were being honest in your answer, you would see that it’s beyond what your brain might come up with. What are you afraid of or more commonly put, what is your deepest fear? Take a few seconds to actually think about this. If you eventually come up with something, we would see that it isn’t at all what most of us might think. The conditioned mind could so readily come up with things like “not making it in life, not being a good enough spouse or parent, not being successful, not being good enough, not making heaven, being a failure in life…” so on and so forth. Like little kids back in school, having an idea of the answer the teacher is seeking, yet keeping it to ourselves instead, looking around and waiting for someone else to say something. Only then would we feel comfortable enough to say something, eventually possibly copying what the other has said, hence, making us less original.

The world has given us an example of what our fears should be, and we have accepted it, nurtured it, and even propagated it. What else can we expect when the majority is scared of what still the majority might think of us? Now we have grown with those “fears” conditioned in our minds and this shouldn’t be. Why do you fear in the first place? Why have you chosen to believe the lie that you are not good enough, or not intelligent enough, or not beautiful or handsome enough as the case may be, or that you simply aren’t enough? For some of us, the sad truth is that other people’s lives, opinions, and acts have become our S.I unit for living. The irony is that in trying so hard not to make our lives turn out according to those fears, we sadly unconsciously steer our ship on that course.

By my own understanding and opinion, we are created by God and from God, meaning we are beautiful, perfect, and enough. What are you afraid of? We are more than meets the eye. We are more than our hair, lips, legs, skin colour, tribe, or race…for those are just genetic manifestations. We are beautiful souls with abundant life capable of anything we can imagine. We are creators. We are of God, from God, and Gods. Why then do we limit ourselves to just one aspect of us, being our bodies? Why then have we conditioned our greater selves to be contained by the world and its “must-have” limitations? Our cores are of God, creation, perfection, and love. Why then do we live from without inwards, when it should be within outwards? Why do we fear our own unlimited capacity?

You are beautiful, intelligent, smart, blessed, creative, highly lovable and so much more. All you have to do to begin to harness this is to look within and stop looking at ourselves in the world’s broken mirror. Majority of us still have our lives shaped by the opinions of others. Wake up already and be your own person! Do not be afraid to live to your full capacity which is unlimited!

Marianne Williamson put it so beautifully when she said…

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

So I’d like to remind you to stop being afraid of who you really are, stop being afraid of truly living your dreams. Stop being afraid of letting yourself feel totally beautiful and alive cause there is no enlightenment or fulfillment in being otherwise. Embrace the light within and quit being afraid to shine!