Building A Career On Her Terms: Meet Nigeria's Shalom Russel

The Essential Journey of Self-Discovery - Part 2

At what point in a person’s life do what should count in life really matter?  This is not even a question to which there can be a universal answer, since no standards exist by which the right answer can even be determined.  How can there be when no agreement exists on the things that matter in life?  What matters to one doesn’t necessarily matter to another. One could, for example, assume that everyone agrees that all people have a right to live and breathe free air; or that everyone should be able to worship without being harassed, forcibly converted or killed by people who hate them; or that everyone deserves to love and be loved.  To my mind, none of these is so far fetched as to invite the disagreements that they do in our world.  Yet, the reality is that all around us are people who not only believe the contrary but actively deny others the right to live, worship freely and love who they love.  Among the tragedies of this reality is not only that such people exist but that they, mostly adults, teach younger members of their families and communities the same values of hate and destructiveness that define their own existence.  This fact makes it difficult to hope for a world in which peace, genuine love and mutual understanding reign over malice, bigotry and killings of the other.  Why?  The reason is because children who are taught to hate cannot become loving adults unless a very rare supernatural experience occurs at some point in their lives.  Generally, hateful children grow into bigoted adults who bear false witness against those who they hate, deny them opportunities and/or kill them.

Perhaps the question to ask is: To what extent can one continue to hope as one lives with a sense of history and embraces the blessings of aging?  Aging confers on one the ability to celebrate life’s continuity in the face of challenges and realities over which every human is powerless.  However, aging also represents an accumulation of history that constitutes the main building blocks of a person’s life.  Thanks to the image and memories that are formed by those blocks, aging positions the older person in a place where he/she does not only look back at the history of the life lived but can also, if he or she chooses to engage his/her abilities, get a glimpse into a future yet to come.  This is possible because, not only does history not exist in a vacuum, it also informs the future.  It is in this context that the aphorism of the old philosopher, George Santayana can be examined and understood - that "Those Who Do Not Learn From History Are Doomed To Repeat It”.

The process of self-discovery is a walk in which every individual should probably engage at some point in his or her life.  It requires a certain degree of  self-consciousness and a realization that one does not have everything, does not know everything and has not produced everything that one is capable of.  Once engaged, the process of self-discovery is a very personal journey whose end the human mind cannot possibly determine from the beginning.  For this reason, a very high degree of open-mindedness and questioning is required for a successful walk. The hope is that among the eventual outcomes of this journey would be increased understanding and acceptance of self and others, higher levels of knowledge, an ability to understand and listen to an expressed challenge of orthodoxy and a deeper ability to genuinely and passionately love self and others - even those that one might ordinarily consider impossible to love.  At this point in one’s life, the ability to embrace and promote good is palpable and the willingness to challenge and shun bad is not only sincere but is effortless and consistent in its display. We cannot be as selfless, open and loving toward others as we ought to be unless we know and embrace who we are at a much deeper level.

If we can each become the same person in private that people see in public, if we can understand and accept that we are neither in fact superior or inferior to others, if we can love genuinely and embrace our own infallibility and work to make ourselves better humans, then we may actually be on our journey to self discovery. So let it be said of us!

The Essential Journey of Self-Discovery - Part 1

In my subconscious quest for self-discovery, I have learned how little I know about my own life. While I know the history of my life, as I would assume that most people do, and the memorable circumstances that define that history, I now understand that I only know pockets of what my subconscious has registered as the significant events of my life. Therefore, I ponder a little about questions that some might argue would be relevant only if the potential value could be of great significance.  But how do I know what the potential value might be if I paid no attention to the questions that my mind ponders? 

What about those events in my life that I do not know or do not recall?  Are they insignificant or do other people who know and can recall some of those aspects of my life use those aspects to define me?  Doesn’t that therefore mean that there is something actually normal in what we tend to complain about, that people judge us unfairly based on little or no information that they have about us?  In other words, people will never know all about us, but they will always base their assessments of us on partial information - and that is okay, since we do not truly know all about ourselves either.  If I asked someone who knows me well for their impressions of me (what sort of person he/she thinks I am), chances are that what I would hear the person say about me would be things that I was not thinking or had never even thought of about myself.  Does that mean that the person is wrong in his/her assessment of me?  Perhaps not; nor does it mean that the person is accurate because who I truly am is much more than the product of a simple reflective exercise.

What we think we know about ourselves and others may be no more than just a glance, which we then amplify into an image that never truly tells the complete story of our existence and/or who we are.  We are able to market ourselves and others as good, bad, superior or inferior based on the images that we have created that may or may not be wholly true about ourselves and others.  What is really true is that our life stations are often determined by circumstances over which we have no control. We are not always successful just because we work harder than others but often because some circumstances align in our favor to help make us so. For example, we have no power to stop time or to determine what people would cross our paths in life.  Yet, the impact of time and connections and inter-connectedness (or lack thereof) in the life of every living creature cannot be overemphasized.  A year goes and another comes as one day folds and gives way to the next, then one week followed by another, and a month after the one before it.  We live, not because we are special and do great things, but because we are beneficiaries of grace bigger than us.  I know this because I am a product of that grace, a fact that makes me feel no greater or less than anyone else and, yet a fact that I feel confers on me responsibilities beyond what would otherwise be my own human and natural desires for self-aggrandizement.

A Tie That Binds

I had lived my entire life without any major health concern but I never considered myself invincible.  I considered myself fortunate because I was, and remain, very conscious of my humanity, with all of the attendant frailties. Also, I have been around long enough to know that being human is a tie that binds. That tie binds me with so many that have died, including those who died young during the period since I have been alive.  One of those is my mother who died at age 36.  I consider every breath that I take and every wakeful moment in my life to be a significant blessing, since none of that happens because of me. Even that has taken on new (and perhaps urgent) significance for me as I have aged.  I do my best to approach each day knowing that every one of those days takes me closer to the end of my journey in this beautiful world.  More than ever, I find myself more comfortable now with knowing that the the day will come when I will no longer be counted among the living.  I must confess that I do not like that reality but it is one (possibly the only) area of life in which the embrace of helplessness is healthy.

Despite the careful manner in which I have generally attempted to live my life, I am not longer immune from the kinds of health challenges that most of us will confront at some point during our lives.  It was exactly a year ago that fate brought me in contact with the major health experience that I had never imagined and did not expect.  I did not dread the diagnosis, nor did I dread the treatment options that I was offered.  In retrospect, that was only due to multiple reasons, among which were the following:  First, I had a fair amount of time to prepare for the treatment because, for several months during which medical tests were performed for determination purposes, my doctors carried me along by sharing with me every piece of information about their findings and listening to my questions and treatment preferences.  Second, I am blessed to live in a country with superb medical facilities and physician acumen.  Third, I had very significant support from the areas of my life where it really mattered. 

Then came exactly a year ago and I had to walk alone in and out of a major surgical procedure for this medical condition with which, just like many men around the world, I had become afflicted.  For someone who had never spent a day on admission in any hospital and had never had a surgical procedure performed on him, this was a very significant challenge but not for reasons that I or anyone could have anticipated. The seriousness of the surgery notwithstanding, such procedures are now routine; thanks to the incredible medical advances from which we benefit in the United States.  However, the initial post-surgery period produced experiences that were uncertain, confusing, fearful at times, humbling and fraught with powerlessness and gratitude as I realized how potentially close I got to that life-state that had previously been unthinkable and for which I could not truly say I was prepared.

Most people who know me well will find out about this experience for the first time, as they read this or hear this episode of my podcast.  That is because it was never in my plans to discuss this experience. It is also the case that, until now, I have discussed this health experience with only very few people for obvious reasons.  Many other people will consider it shocking that I would be so open in this forum because I am generally a very private person.  Well, there are reasons why I had not spoken or written about this previously and why I am doing so now.  One, I did not want anyone to feel sorry for me rather than focusing on the miracle of my recovery and the lessons to be learned from the experience.  Second, I wanted to spend time in the mental and spiritual zones to which this experience had transported me without losing sight of the significance of silence and the potential distractions of noise.

Now, I have chosen to write and speak about this publicly for the following reasons: First, having been blessed with the opportunity of communication platforms such as I have, I realize that I have a responsibility to encourage all men to pay strict attention to all issues relating to men’s health.  This means having a primary physician, recognizing those health challenges to which men are prone, undergoing all medical evaluations when due, and complying with all medical recommendations when prescribed.  Second, it is time for men and women to clear out of their minds the traditional myths about what causes specific illnesses and learn the true causes and treatment of whatever symptoms they may be experiencing at any given time.  Third, people are dying in large numbers in developing countries because of poor access to good medical care.  All of us who have the means and influence to effect some improvement in healthcare in such societies, even at the most basic levels, should actively do so.  Fourth, all men who have experienced any form of illness that strikes men should speak and teach about their experiences.  Women should also learn and be ready to speak and teach openly about their own health experiences.  By so doing, we can save one another’s lives. Finally, men who think that they cannot suffer from major illness are inadvertently digging their own graves because we are all susceptible to illness.  Being in denial of any symptoms only speeds up the process of dying. 

It has not been my desire to present this health challenge that I experienced as more serious than it actually was because I know that it could have been much worse.  Yet, I am conscious of the fact that one never really knows how another experiences periods of loneliness, helplessness and pain.  Everyday, I think about the very supportive people in my life who carried me through that period which, thanks to great medical care and support, was very brief but also very significant.  Often, I wish there were stronger words of appreciation than “thank you” but I also know that some ways that I can show my gratitude are to always remember to live in daily recognition that I was not responsible for my own recovery and to do my part in lightening humanity’s burden until the bell tolls for me.

The Triumph of Darkness

We can no longer deny the overwhelming presence and power of darkness in a world that needs light now more than ever.  I do not dispute the claim that the triumph of darkness, if that ever occurs, can only be temporary and that light does eventually win.  However, I dispute the idea that darkness can never triumph over light because it does. Those who have not yet seen, or have not been cognizant of the state of our current world, are still allowed to downplay the presence and power of darkness, but only until they can sincerely reclaim and exercise their God-given ability to be self-conscious.  Then they can also embrace the responsibility that we all have to affirm and deal sincerely with the awful state of the world in which we now live.

There is light; but then there is darkness.  To the extent that we believe that darkness represents something bad and light represents only good, it seems to me that humanity’s entire existence has largely been a battle to suppress darkness in myriad forms - darkness in our physical lives, our spiritual lives, our personal and/or professional lives, our family and community lives...our national lives. Every time it appears that light and its purveyors have won, darkness comes sweeping egregiously to the fore, aided by people and circumstances that give it roots and nurture. So, it becomes very hard for mere humans to understand and make sense of the dizzying realities of a life and world that they hardly understand.   

We are all subject to the vagaries of life and none is free from them; nor does any know what afflicts the other better than he/she who is afflicted. However, even for the afflicted, a presence of self is often required to be able to see clearly through the haze of darkness that tends to accompany many human experiences.  

The 19th Century philosopher, Jacques Rousseau summed this up perfectly when, in the opening statement of The Social Contract, he wrote that “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains”.  If anyone has ever considered those words quaint, time-constrained or anachronistic, the world in which we have lived over the last century has proven that what is indeed anachronistic and shortsighted is the very idea that anyone may have that Rousseau may have looked in the wrong crystal ball. 

Hunger, poverty, strife, disease, fraud, deceit and bigotry are ravaging societies around the world. We are destroying our environment, oppressing the less privileged, stealing from others and selling them the false idea that they can only experience light if they give the little that they have to increase the already-saturated bank accounts of their oppressors.  Elected officials are taking earned privileges away from ordinary citizens that they are supposed to protect and some of us maintain cheerleading roles for those officials despite knowing in our hearts that they are wrong. Therefore, we side with dishonesty at the expense of honesty; with theft instead of recompense; and with hate instead of love. These are all representations of darkness and the fact that they are spreading like wildfire concerns me greatly - and I am not alone. 

It seems to me there is a pall of darkness hovering over our world.  How else does one explain the ascent to power of so many dictators who have no regard for human life? Why is our world currently experiencing the rise of bigoted and xenophobic people in so many corridors of power?  Why do we keep quiet when so many women and children in our world are in constant danger of injury at the hands of people who ought to protect them? Why are houses of worship serving as auction houses for the clerics who lead them?  Why are wicked, unconscionable and lying bigots taking over the reins of power in countries where that was previously unimaginable? Why is violence being increasingly perpetrated in immeasurable proportions while the powerful watch from their glass houses and do nothing to remedy the situation?  Why is it that people who once told us that some behaviors were wrong now tell us that the same behaviors are right? Why do people who once preached love now practice hate? Why is lying now celebrated above truth telling in high places, even by people who put themselves out as arbiters of morality?  Why are humans so increasingly judgmental even at a time when one would imagine that we know much more about each other and should understand the value and power of acceptance? Why is “otherism” a growing phenomenon when mutual understanding and tolerance should predominate? I do not know the answer to any of these questions but it seems to me that across and within this disheartening trend lies a common denominator that can be summed up in one word: darkness

Despite my lack of answers, however, I think about these things because I want to understand them even as my mind tells me that I cannot because I am only human.  Yet, although I am conscious of my fallibility and frailties, I am also concerned about the world in which my grandchildren will live. I am concerned that our world is getting darker as hope increasingly fades in the minds and projections of those of us who want very much to think that the world about which we dreamed may not have been utopian but was at least possible.  As we destroy our environment, hate one another, kill the idea of selflessness, embrace religion while we abandon even the spiritual foundations of the religions that we profess, turn our backs on our mirrors and close the windows into our hearts, I am bothered about the future of this otherwise beautiful world.

Even now, I am bothered by the fact that I live in a world in which darkness in so many forms has increasingly taken residence but I am more bothered by the fact that too many people are silent at best, while many others that one once considered to be advocates of goodness have become complicit trumpeters of hate as our world marches toward doom.  Hate, dishonesty and oppression are not virtues by any standards and nobody is a paragon of virtue whose character can be described by any of these characteristics, regardless of the status of that individual in any society. Those who are complicit in the expressions of these characteristics are just as guilty in darkening our world.

For God’s sake, let us take a breath and re-evaluate what we are doing.  We need to be messengers of good, carriers of love and agents of light to halt the powerful force of darkness and assure the triumph of light in a world that so desperately needs it.

 

Chasing hope

My father had it all laid out. He hoped that at least one of his children would become a medical doctor, one would become an engineer and one would become an attorney. At some point in my life, he hoped that I would be the attorney. I hoped that I would become a biochemist, though I didn’t quite know what a biochemist did. So, I spent years planning to become something that I knew very little about, in the hope that I could develop all necessary skills and will myself to a dream that I now know was neither necessary nor possible.  For those years, I chased hope, and on many occasions in my life, I have chased hope, thinking that I could turn an obvious impossibility into a possibility, listening to my heart even at times when I should have been listening to my head, and listening to my head when I should have been listening to my heart. The reality that I struggle to accept is the totality of my humanity which, by its very nature, makes me as imperfect as I truly am; my existence in an imperfect human body that struggles with the realization that some things may never be possible, however much I desire them.  Yes, the realization that I am not half-man but all-man, and my hopes, therefore, may not always land on a bull’s eye.

Hmmm...I know. How dare I, an American, say that something is (or was) impossible when that would be contrary to the American ethic and belief that anything is possible if one sets his/her mind to it? Or, how could I, a Christian of African descent, be  expressing something that is contrary to the Christian belief that all things are possible? Well, I am not delusional. I have a very good understanding of the specific context in which the Christian idea that all things are possible was first used. I am not Abraham and this is not that context. I also clearly understand the whole idea of self-motivation to propel oneself to success. However, I am not inclined toward senselessly casting myself as a superhero or as one with powers that reside only in the domain of the Almighty.  Why is it that I can never stay up for several nights in a row without sleep when I feel a need to do so to complete projects that I am working on? Well, some things are possible and other things aren’t. That’s exactly a fact of life. It would be great if I could be a soccer player now and dazzle the world with skills never seen on the World Cup stage. But that will never happen because, at my age coupled with my history of never having before been a skilled soccer player, it is impossible. Only a delusional mind or a baselessly hopeful individual would say otherwise.

So, we grow up hoping to be something that we are unlikely to ever become either because we do not have the skills, the resources or the opportunity, or we just don’t work hard enough to translate hope into the kind of action that produces desired results.  Even when these elements are present in our lives, we sometimes do not accomplish some of the most life-fulfilling things we hope for because realizing certain hopes depends on the cooperation of someone else. So, even when we hope alone, our hope can falter on its way to realization because it was a hope that needed someone else to play a role in the aspect of our lives covered by that hope. What do we say then when this is the case?  Do we fold and give up on our hopes, modify those hopes or keep hoping? Of course, it depends on the circumstances and the players in that space. Those who genuinely love us, and who we truly love, will always be the dependable collaborators and support that we need in our travels down the lanes of hope, even when we feel that they no longer earn the quality relationship that we had with them.

In our youth, we think we have the world all figured out and we know what our elders don’t know, even though the elders know everything that we know, and more.  The cockiness that is associated with, and attends to hope is more evident in youth, but also in states of ignorance. In our youth, we hope to grow into careers, earn enough money to have very comfortable or, in some cases, lavish living.  We hope to be richer, more successful overall, and worldlier than the older people that we know, including our parents.  As ignorant adults, we hope that everything we choose to do will result in the outcome that we desire, either forgetting or not realizing that hope is only one step in the pursuit of attainment.

Hope is not reality. It is a wish to accomplish a higher level in whatever life situation we desire to change. We wish because we are human and we hope because, again as humans, we are conscious of the possibilities that exist in the environments and spaces in which we live and act. That consciousness creates in us aspirational tendencies, which we can have.  However, we are not granted the ability, nor are we subject to the wishful circumstances in which hope automatically converts itself to gain. The world in which that is possible does not exist because, although we may hope alone, we do not live alone in our world. Instead, we live in a world where we see and know other people who have attained the kinds of quality of life that we admire and desire for ourselves.  Ours is a big world in which we love and maintain connections with others at whom we may sometimes get angry and disappointed but are nonetheless important to us and are in our lives for a purpose. Yes, we live in a world in which our ability to succeed often requires our understanding of, and our willingness to embrace our interconnectedness.

We spend much of our lives chasing hope and less of it evaluating and/or re-evaluating the substance of our hopes.  Yet, some hopes are baseless because the ingredients to support them are either completely absent or insufficient in our lives or around us.  For hope to be realistic and realizable, it must have a basis. Baseless hope may have the same emotional effects that hope of any kind naturally generates but, ultimately, it is of no greater value and of no more significance than shifting sands.  To that extent, hope that is not, or cannot be framed on or within a structure is only a wish; a baseless one.

The same principle is true for individuals as it is for communities and nations.  It is not an accident that most ultra-religious nations in today’s world are failed states. They are filled with clerics and political operatives who push hope while filling their pockets with money from the hopeful.  While they are doing that, less-religious countries are developing their societies on well-constructed and realistic hope. Such is the hope that is attended by selflessness, a sense of responsibility, a desire to create a better world for posterity and now, and an understanding that those who push hope without providing the support needed for its realization are fraudulent cultivators of wishful thinking.

We must desist from spending so much of our lives chasing hope and spend more of our time planning realistically because an unstructured chase makes elusive even the otherwise possible. While we hope, we must also build the infrastructure for the realization of those hopes. Since hope is not static, the chasing of it ought to be strategic. Otherwise, we hope in vain.

 

When All We Do Is Sit, We Fall

Dietrich Boenhoeffer was a German pastor who lived from February 4, 1906 until April 9, 1945. As a young boy, he witnessed World War I from 1914 to 1918.  He also saw the beginning of World War II but not its  end.  He had been arrested in 1943 because he stood for something and he was executed by the Nazis on April 9, 1945 - five months before the end of the War.  By standing and fighting against the Hitler’s Nazi regime’s euthanasia program and genocidal acts against the Jews, Boenhoeffer stood for humanity and for the best potential values of mankind.  He actively stood for life, love, freedom, peace and justice..  In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, published in 1937, Dietrich Boenhoeffer foresaw and lamented the cheapening and selling of grace, which is now what we see in today’s world.  He also stood for the idea that Christians and the church ought to see themselves as the moral conscience of a society in which injustice was rampant.  Certainly, the Church has lost its way.  But that is not what this piece is about.  It is about the value of standing.

I have been thinking of Dietrich Boenhoeffer lately.  If I was asked to weigh in with an opinion about this life and the value of his body of work before now, I would most likely have described him simply a visionary who may have lived before his time.  But for that to be the conclusive commentary on his life would not be doing justice to the memory of such a remarkable man.  Boenhoeffer stood for something and was murdered for what he stood for, which was the right of all humans to live without being persecuted and/or killed because of their race, ethnicity or religion.

How far have we really come from the time of Boenhoeffer?  We live in the same world into which he was born and raised; the same world where he was murdered for standing up against the persecution and killings of fellow humans.  Against all odds, he spoke truth to power because he could not bear to be a cheerleader for injustice.  So, how far have we really come from the time of Boenhoeffer? I don’t know because, as I think of the times that we are in, it seems to me that ours is a topsy-turvy world in which the idea of progress is really a mirage.  It appears to me that the more it appears that we have made progress in our ability to achieve and show practical demonstrations of love and compassion in our world, the more it seems that things are actually regressing, or remaining the same at best.     

We have mastered the art of beating down people that we dislike, some for no reason that makes sense.  Yet, no human should have the authority to be judge, jury and executioner over a fellow man.  Religious texts are used to support oppression, stealing from the poor, and casting others as inferior and beneath human.  We condemn others, not because there is a divine instruction to condemn them but because they do not fit into our prescribed rules of conduct.  So we fish out the Holy Book of whatever religion we practice and twist the words to support our hunger for judgement.  When any of us uses the Holy Book of our religion, any religion, as a cudgel to whip others that we disagree with because we have determined that they are sinners, we become present-day persecutors and deny both the humanity of our brothers and sisters and the existence and power of grace.  When we do that, we actually suggest by our deeds that others are unworthy of love, liberty or even life because we are perfect and they are not. 

If I sound pessimistic or concerned, it is only because I choose reality over baseless optimism While I perceive of the former as honest, the latter, to my mind, represents nothing more than the acceptance of crumbs thrown down by oppressors who know and expect that the rest of society would be happy to pick up and perceive those crumbs as brownies.  Now, we have mostly become carnival barkers for people who use their power and authority as guillotines for dehumanizing and destroying others.  Therefore, we allow a few powerful people to pick winners and losers among us and, in that role, determine who should live and who should die; who should have the opportunities for gainful participation in a prosperous social and political economy and who shouldn’t; who should have a right to good medical care, affordable housing and food security, and who shouldn’t; which immigrants from what parts of the world should have a right to keep their children and which immigrants should have their children forcibly taken from them and put in cages where powerful people would not even put their dogs.  The same powers determine what countries should sit at the table when major decisions are made even on matters that affect the entire world, and what countries should be excluded from the opportunity to determine their future. 

But it is not at the macro level where we ought to always focus and either complain or act.  It is also, and in fact mostly, at the micro level of society where individuals oppress their neighbors or even people that they do not know.  The world needs communities of active change agents who understand that we each have a responsibility to be loving and compassionate to one another.  Silence in the face of cruelty is not the best antidote for a world that is increasingly riddled with acts of wickedness that are occurring in the homes that we know, in our neighborhoods, our communities and our nations.  We cannot change our world unless we are ready, willing and able to change ourselves. 

The problem isn’t always that we vocalize support for cruel acts perpetrated by our neighbors but that we stay silent when we should speak up; defend oppressors when we should be advocating for the oppressed and, in some cases, rationalize wicked acts by the powerful either because we are afraid to defend what is right or because we truly believe that those wicked acts are necessary to maintain the illusions that we hold about our own relevance.  Sometimes, we remain silent because we believe that our own status and security are best guaranteed when we do not protest the injustice that happens to others.  Of course, times also abound when we stay quiet because we consider the oppressed as the “other”.  Well, I happen to believe that Thomas Paine was right when he said that “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself”. History is replete with accounts of oppressors against whom the tides turned even in their own lifetimes.  That isn’t ancient history; I know because I have seen that repeated several times even in my own lifetime. 

Certainly, our world would greatly benefit from individuals and communities that carry with them lights of compassion and courage. While we can sit with bowels full of thoughts and compassion, it takes more than thoughts and compassion to stand from our seats of comfort to accomplish the kinds of changes that positively impacted our world in the past - and still do in small doses.  It also takes standing up; standing for something.  Society stands still at best, or regresses at the worst when all we do is sit.  Nobody’s freedom or national independence has ever been attained because people sat.  We must all decide to do more than sit because the conveyance of hope demands that we take a stand, and then stand up.  Robert Kennedy was right when he said that “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance”.  We fall, and our world falls, when all we do is sit.

In Defence of Brilliance

From one end of the world to another, nations, communities and organizations are now ruled by individuals who know very little about the world or even about the people who occupy the spaces that they lord over.  No continent is spared the ignominy of this disheartening development. This has become a world of brilliant people ruled by dunces. This is now the story of our world, and it is bad.

 

In much of the world, brute force and the ability to deceive, rather than intellectual skills and decency, have taken over as the characteristics that define (or should define) who emerge as leaders and how societies should be structured and run.  Therefore, people are embraced as leaders, not because they have any leadership skills but because they are either masters of deceit who have learned how to lie their way into people’s hearts, or they have the brute power to attain submission to themselves.

Time was when brilliance was celebrated and rewarded.  That was when, because of his brilliance, Albert Einstein was accepted, heard, and is still celebrated with incredible references to his accomplishments in academic and healthcare institutions - some named after him in the United States and other countries.  Mahatma Gandhi used his brilliance to lead India to independence and to generate movements for civil rights around the world; Dr. Martin Luther King and many other leaders before and after him used their brilliance to advance the course of history, their occupations and/or professions notwithstanding. Most of us can identify at least one such person in the distant and recent history of our countries of origin and/or the ones in which we live, or in the communities that we call home - individuals who responded to the silent call of responsibility and used their brilliance to positively impact the course of human events.

Although many, like me, would argue that we no longer embrace and celebrate brilliance as much as we used to, it is true that every now and again, we experience sparks of brilliance that remind us of what our engaged brains are capable of.  We still have brilliant people making incredible discoveries in their daily lives - such as Dr. Bennett Omalu, the Nigerian-born US-based neuropathologist, who discovered what is now widely known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the brains of dead American football players.  That discovery has forever changed the perception and administration of American football

Despite the sparks of brilliance about which I speak, however, it is my contention that our world has regressed intellectually because, in most aspects of life, it now appears that we are engaged in a shameless race to the bottom.  It has become very difficult to recall that time when children were not embarrassed to be called nerds because they were brilliant; or that time when teenagers were desperate to be friends with their very brilliant peers; or the time when parents wanted their children to date and marry only brilliant boys - and girls. Now, schools are filled with children who do not wish to be identified as brilliant for fear that they would not be accepted into the hip social groups, and society is replete with parents who want their children to only marry wealthy people, notwithstanding how the wealth was acquired and/or the credibility of the suitor.

So, look at the world in which we now live.  Dunces are celebrated, even as their ascendancy to power and their display of authority either dumb down the intellectual abilities of others around them or make it difficult and/or dangerous for those others to speak truth to power.  In some cases, otherwise brilliant people succumb to the lure of material because the exercise of brilliance has been relegated to the glow and acknowledgment of prestige based on wealth. No wonder our world is in so much trouble. It takes more than power and authority to create and maintain a just society.  It also takes the ability to understand both the consequences of injustice and the advantages of having a socially just society. In other words, it takes brilliance as well. It takes brilliance to recognize, support and promote the values of a just society. It takes more than determination to develop an original idea in a world saturated by information that can be used effectively for good or bad.  It takes brilliance to conceive of, and act on an idea that benefits others beyond the confines of one’s nepotistic system.

In political and religious circles in our world today, people are ridiculed for their brilliance.  In the United States, it is now the norm for members of a certain political party to refer to their opponents as “elitists”, implying that the brilliance of their opponents makes them “different” - that is, different from the people that they aspire to lead.  But ...really...shouldn’t the electorate aspire and be proud to be led by brilliant people? One would expect so, except that the politicians who pride themselves in being dunces actually do win a lot of votes and, in many cases, the election. In too many of today’s churches, pastors condemn the brilliant as “worldly humanists” that their followers must shun, as if there is something wrong with the very essence of humanism - which advocates human action and critical thinking over dogma and superstition. But why?

 

Why should any people adopt a line that casts them as having more in common with a dullard? Why don’t communities of thinking human beings rise against people who want to dumb them down?  To what extent can (or should) people expect a dunce to lead them to glory? One does not even need to go far back in history to see what can happen when a person is placed in position who is not brilliant and does not seek knowledge to gain intellectual strength.  We know even from contemporary experience that intellectually weak people can only bring down the nations, communities, organizations or departments that they lead. In the absence of high intellectual skills and an unwillingness to learn, they resort to tactics intended to legitimize and empower them as bosses rather than as leaders.  Lying, bullying and arrogance at the top of any organization or nation can only hold the respect of the led for so long before the incompetence of the leadership is exposed, along with cracks in the system that they were supposed to be guarding.

Brilliance is a good thing.  The alternative is dangerous for any society.  Brilliance should neither be punished nor discouraged.  Nor should it be contained or ignored. We should all strive to be brilliant and we must recognize that ideas that come out of a brilliant mind do not sink ships but build edifices that stand the test of time.  On the contrary, the loose talk and uncultured actions of an unintelligent person, especially one in a position of authority, may do even more than sink ships. Our world needs nerds to stand up and be counted because the proven ability of brilliance to shine strong, bright, guiding lights in all corners of a fading, sleepy world is needed now more than ever.  It is time once again to embrace and celebrate brilliance if we intend for our current societies and we to make a strong march into history.

 

 

The Tangled Webs That We Weave

I have made many mistakes in my life and, I think some could have been potentially life-altering. In spite of my current station in life, I remember some of the mistakes that I have made but not even on the best days would I ever claim that I remember all.  It is possible (no, it is definitely the case) that I made some mistakes that I may never even know I made. Of the ones that I know, the mistakes do not define me, and that is only by God’s grace and not a consequence of my human ingenuity.

But how is it possible that I would make mistakes that I did not know of? Well, there are many ways that that could have happened but much of it comes down to the Machiavellian complex that is inherent in all human beings; the feeling that the end justifies the means.  Therefore, we do not always focus on our mistakes when our actions yield what others and we perceive as success. Instead, we tend to embrace and dwell on our successes and much less on the mistakes that we made along the way. Soon, those mistakes become very dim or inexistent in our memories, unless they were damaging to us in some way.

As I have thought about some mistaken or ill-advised actions in my life, I have wondered with humility and gratitude about the harmless outcomes because the story of my life could very well have been different. What if, for example, something bad happened to me as I walked home from wherever I had gone on numerous late nights in a small Nigerian town ... at times too late for me to have been out alone on dark backstreets....walking home… alone… and vowing never to do that again, but repeating the same action the next day…and vowing again that I would never do that…all the while weaving for myself a web in which I had so quickly become tangled?

What, really, was the wisdom in me riding motorcycles at high speed as a teenager, without a helmet, even if at the time there was no law requiring the use of a helmet while riding a motorcycle?  In neither of these instances did I violate any law. Yet, in each instance, I knew what was right but chose a course of action that, on the face of it, was fun-packed but, in reality, could have been potentially deadly.  

Does the fact that these were deliberate actions change the reference to them as mistakes? No, because a mistake is by its very nature and definition a misguided or wrong action or judgment.  Does the fact that I suffered no physical harm in any of those cases negate the fact that I unnecessarily placed myself in dangerous situations? I suppose not.

I think that, except for anyone who wishes to claim perfection, most of us have had times in our lives when we did things that, with the benefit of hindsight, we are not proud that we did.  But what is the difference between those who escape mistaken acts unharmed and those who do not? How is it that some of us can get in and out of potentially dangerous situations while others remain in such situations in perpetuity; stuck in repetitive cycles of misery from which they look at a world that stays dark to them?  Why do we make decisions and take actions that imprison us in our own minds? Why do we choose to make friends that are bad for us while we reject people that could potentially add value to our lives? Of what value is a friendship in which there is no exchange of happiness and contentment? Really...of what use is a romantic relationship whose only reward is pain?  I do not expect to find much disagreement in stating that such relationships are worthless, that they are webs in which we get entangled and from which it can be immensely hard to break away unless one sets his/her mind to that goal. We know this; yet, we are constantly creating webs that we get trapped in.

This is true for individuals, for groups, families and nations. As individuals or as nations, we often get ourselves into financially tight corners because we choose to spend more than our means, forgetting the age-old belief of our elders that rainy days aren’t always so far removed from sunny days.  We forget, after all, that it is the same bright blue sky that also holds the clouds that are the precursors of thunderstorms and sometimes cause severe damage. Therefore, countries become debtor-nations, unable to care for the needs of their citizens; and individuals become unable to afford even their most basic needs because hard times can be overwhelming in their tendency to be merciless.  Debtor-nations continue to weave webs that take the form of more international borrowing, more corruption in the ranks of the political so-called elites and people close to them. It is always just a matter of time before the entire nation, including the innocent citizens, get caught up in the tangled webs woven by their leaders. Also, some individuals already traveling down the path of financial ruin, who are unable to pay their bills, continue to buy expensive items or find enough money to give to their pastors who sell unproven and tainted messages of hope rather than pay their bills with the money.  In some cases, individuals already in financial trouble still find ways to finance expensive clothing to attend the next big party. By so doing, a web is woven and the cycles of the web continue to multiply. Then, in due course, their family members, including innocent children, get encumbered and swallowed up in the web that was woven.

We spend valuable money, energy and time on unproductive endeavors without seeming to have any plans to assess our performance, redirect our focus if necessary, or engage in activities that would place our lives on a clearer, more result-oriented and positive trajectory.

Often, those of us who attain measures of success become trapped by, and in our consciousness of our accomplishments and forget how fleeting life really is. So, the web gets woven, not by anyone else but by us; not because we don’t love ourselves but sometimes because we love ourselves so much that our pride gets in our way of seeing the most important things of life. Therefore, we weave webs made up of material and other things that satisfy our bodies but diminish the value of our souls, not thinking that there could be an unpleasant price to pay when the satisfaction wears out. Even when we realize where we are and know that we need to step out of the webs that we have woven, our pride stops us because we wonder what others might think or say about us.  So we remain entangled. Sometimes we weave and remain entangled in our webs because we do not think hard enough. Instead, we suspend our thinking abilities or hand them over to other people who have convinced us that they know better than we know or have the power to save us from our imperfections because they are connected to a supernatural source.

Here is what I think: we often cannot get out of the webs that we create, largely because we were not supposed to create them in the first place.  I also think that, for as long as we are human, for so long will the tendency and opportunities exist to weave new webs. Getting entangled in those webs is the challenge to avoid.

Nigeria: Bent, Broken, And Still Home

I have just recently returned from a trip to Nigeria, the country of my birth….my homeland. Certainly, the famous Nigerian poet, John Pepper Clark, might well have been writing about the entire country when, in his poem about Africa’s third largest city, he described Ibadan as a “running splash of rust and gold flung and scattered among seven hills like broken China in the sun”. 

You see, I took a trip with my son to Nigeria a few years ago and we spent a few days in Ghana on our way to Nigeria where I was scheduled to present an academic paper at a conference occurring at the University of Port Harcourt.  The year prior, my daughter had visited Nigeria and Ghana and had returned home with incredible experiences from her time both in Nigeria where she spent 2 weeks staying and volunteering in an orphanage and in an elementary school in Ghana where she also volunteered as a teacher for 2 weeks. She again joined her mother and me for a few days on this recent trip to Nigeria.  My children have a love for Nigeria…indeed for Africa.

That was my son’s first trip to Africa as an adult and there are not sufficient words to describe the time that we had, nor are there enough words to describe the time that my wife, my daughter and I had during my most recent trip to Nigeria.

Back to my trip with my son a few years ago: He requested that we travel by road in Nigeria because, although it was a business trip for me, it was a heritage trip for him.  Therefore, for 2 days, starting from Lagos, we travelled just over 17 hours down the southeastern coast of Nigeria, stopping in multiple towns along the way.  In the process, we acquired experiences that I would not trade for a substitute. 

I did not bargain for what the trip would do for me, nor will I ever forget what it did.  Finding myself in a position to see Nigeria through the very objective eyes of my son, I realized for the first time in my life that my views about the country had always been based on a subjective premise...  But why not? After all, I was born and raised there.  That trip, however, put me in a position to see the blessings and contrasts of the country in full view. Just watching the women dart across the hectic, traffic-laden streets of Lagos carrying heavy items on their heads and children in tow that they would walk to school before going to sell their wares, seeing women selling food items on the roadside as we traveled -begging us to buy what they were selling to enable them feed their families... seeing school age children begging for alms in the streets of oil-rich Port Harcourt on a school day; seeing lazy police officers asking for and collecting bribes from travelers; and…from seeing the dark streets and homes across the country to seeing the bright lights of skyscrapers whenever there was electricity; from seeing the muddy rugged streets and highways unbefitting a giant nation like Nigeria to seeing the beautiful corn fields and greenery of the countryside landscapes....the beauty and ruggedness of Nigeria was on display. Flying back to Lagos from Port Harcourt, it was impossible not to behold in amazement the beautiful, clear skies that God placed over the parts of Nigeria that the plane flew over. 

That trip provided me a once in a lifetime opportunity not just to be alone with my adult son for an extended period, by which I actually mean a week, (a rarity in this “modern” world where we are both high-flying professionals), but also because it allowed me to see Nigeria through objective lens.  Of course, the signs of corruption and government inefficiency were everywhere, but there was much to admire in the spirits of the Nigerian people and the country’s blessings in the form of natural resources - all unfortunately taken for granted. The green leaves and grassland reminded me of the existence of life even in the face of trials and hardships such as now face millions of Nigerians.  The smiles and polite attitudes of so many were a good reminder of the goodness inherent in a Nigerian people who may well be described as a people as warm as the weather to which they are accustomed.  Although, by any sincere standards, the quality of some of the conference presentations was a stunning revelation of how far south the educational system had traveled from the high quality standards that I remembered…..well...that is another story for another time. 

Back to my recent trip. I am unable to recall any time when Lagos was as beautiful as I found it to be during this visit.  Driving through parts of Lagos at night felt sometimes as though one was driving through the streets of a Western country.  To be sure, I am not one who believes that Western countries are the gold standard for all things good.  However, I am also aware and sincere enough to acknowledge that, except for a few exceptions, African countries and cities are generally not good examples of organized systems – and that is putting it mildly…..and generously.  So, if the discussion is about aesthetics, structure and system efficiency, it would be delusional to suggest that African countries generally measure up.  They do not.

Having said that, I am aware that the beauty of Lagos should not be considered by me or anyone else as a reflection of the entire country.  I know of homes, schools, healthcare facilities, roads and other structures that exist in overwhelming states of disrepair across the country.  The consequences of such states of existence are often unquantifiable because suffering has no representation on any scale of measurement. 

So, I am not one who believes that the physical beauty of inanimate structures is an accurate measure of the quality of life of animate beings.  To that extent, the beauty of Lagos is by no means representative of the quality of life of most of the over 100 million people who live in Nigeria.  Lagos is very wealthy, beautiful and full of people – an educated class – blessed with the ability, courage and presence of mind to consistently elect dedicated leaders, each with a knack for service and commitment to the people and state that they govern.  While Lagos is developing impressively and shining as Nigeria’s “golden state”, much (though, perhaps those who know better than I would say all) of the rest of Nigeria wallow in rust created and maintained by their political leadership; leadership that is created, emboldened and sustained by weak, dishonest and short-sighted voters who only care about their own stomachs at the outset but then complain ceaselessly after getting ditched by the governments that they installed with their votes.

Nigeria may not be impeccable, but no country is.  Nigerians have a tendency to emphasize the country’s rust while ignoring the potential gold that also lies within the country.  Nigeria may be comparable to a wreck but in that wreck live many people with beautiful souls, children too innocent to deserve to be victims of the cruel machinations of the adult leaders who caused the wreckage in which those children must live and grow up.  

We need a better Nigeria.  Africa needs that; the world needs that.  However, for Nigeria to move to a better place among the world’s best nations to live in, Nigerians must do the work of transforming rust into mostly gold.  That process would have to start with the transformation of Nigerian hearts and minds. For that to occur, more Nigerians than not must accept that most of Nigeria’s problems were created by Nigerians and must be solved by Nigerians who are willing and able to look inward for potential solutions.  Also, Nigerians must shun the tribalistic urge that often sends them into defensive postures on behalf of the thieves that suck their country dry.  Nigerians must be willing to report the thieves among them for prosecution by legal authorities.  Unfortunately, legal authorities in Nigeria, as in much or all of Africa, require extensive sanitization due to their role in fostering corruption and other crimes.  Yet, those authorities are needed to do the work that is expected of them if Nigeria is to be truly transformed. Nigeria’s problems can only be solved by Nigerians. The fields are green, the tools are all around us ready to be picked up and it is time for all Nigerians to begin to perceive of themselves as the laborers who must pick up those tools and embrace the call to refine themselves and transform their country.  The power to change our native land is in our hands, and so is the responsibility to use that power.  To the extent that that responsibility is ours, it is we who must change.  Nigeria cannot change without her sons and daughters.  We are the ones who must change ourselves and recognize that a country does not exist without its people.  To that extent, a country cannot change itself, let alone one with systems as damaged as Nigeria has; one with so many unwilling, unpatriotic and negatively enabling citizens.  For Nigeria to change, its citizens must change. This is how I see it.

Today, I Live ...And I Am Grateful

I have just marked a birthday!  At no time in my adulthood have I considered my birthday as party time. For many years in my adulthood, it was just a time of gratitude and reflection.  Now, it is more than that.  It is also now a time of recommitment to the responsibilities that the incredible circumstances of my life confer on me. It is a time of rededication to my spiritual journey, realizing that not everything will be palatable to me but everything is uniquely placed to make my life’s journey exactly as it was predestined. 

I am currently in a place that I always thought would be scary and somewhat unnerving to be at: that place from which one can look back and see how far one has traveled...a place from which one can look forward and realize that the better part of the journey has been completed. 

At my current age, I cannot get back the time that has passed - those times when I didn’t do what I should have done; times when I should have made those phone calls that I didn’t make; times when I didn’t make the choices that I should have made; times when I did not move to do something because I either thought I had plenty of time left or believed that I wasn’t yet in the prefect position to act...times when I kept silent when I should have spoken up. 

What about those times when someone that I saw frequently just faded away and I did not try to find him/her because I wasn’t paying attention - or because he/she wasn’t someone that I had any interaction with?  Or times when a peer stopped coming to class and I didn’t try to reach out to the peer? Or times when someone just stopped coming to church and I didn’t know why and didn’t ask what happened?

Could it just be that these are trivial things? Am I giving life and oversized shoulders to insignificant imaginations or am I just reminiscing because the final destination of my life is now closer than when and where my journey began?

I don’t know but...should it matter that these are the things I am thinking about instead of being the guest of honor at my own birthday bash?  Maybe not...but to me it matters because I feel a strong sense of responsibility to leave my imprint in this beautiful world that I have been blessed to inhabit for as long as I have. 

With wars, famine, corruption, ill-health, racism, religious persecution, heterosexism, gender discrimination, poverty, inequality and social injustice all around us, it would be easy for me to close my eyes or bury my head in the sand but my sense of humanity and spirituality lays on my shoulders a responsibility to love my neighbors as myself, to rise, to write, to speak and, even more, to act in the hope that, perhaps, just perhaps, I can through my actions create a ripple such as Julia Abigail Fletcher Carning meant when she wrote the words of her 19th Century famed hymnal:

Little drops of water 

Little grains of sand

Make the mighty ocean

And the beauteous land