Morning, wake up.
Wake up to a new fairy tale.
Again, it’s the first day of the eight month of the year, and you woke up a little too late. Actually, three minutes, nine seconds later than your usual timing. A hundred and twenty nine seconds behind time gravely contravenes Greene’s 35th Law, remember?
Of course! We’re learning to Master the Art of Timing.
Cometh the hour…?
…Cometh the man.
The conversations I have with myself though, I think I’m my own best taskmaster, friend, partner, planner, stan, competitor, lover (of course) and teacher – teaching myself the hard way, and learning to lean on my own instinctive analysis. – few things more, nothing less. Anyway, they are usually as thorough as they come. I remain the devil in the detail.
The past one year, for me, has been one of very few paths, and to this moment I’ve been proud of two things. One, keeping to my pledge to read at least 3 books monthly and two, never missing my ‘me moment.’ If you’ve ever been with me at (any) 4’O Clock you certainly would have heard or seen me mutter to myself. No matter how much I get busy, daily, I dedicate a whole 120 seconds to say something good for myself. To this date, everyday, 25,440 seconds of “Oluwarantimi, may your…” and thus far, the results have been magical. Phenomenal. And that’s me putting it modestly.
I can recall I’ve often been ‘dragged’ to live a reclusive life, with career being the centrifugal force everything else revolves around. It is only fair enough to focus all of your energy on what gives you more than it demands from you, ryy?
In the same space, I have been a beneficiary of everything good it’s got to give. Apparently, I give it all it’s got. On that front, I can almost say I’ve got all I’d need, but of course, comfort is the enemy of achievement. I’ve got the best team, the best coach and of course, the league just became more competitive. If you know, you certainly know. And if you don’t, well, happy children’s day.
This quickly reminds me of my Children’s Day creative design purely borne out of the need to emphasize how the internet subliminally adjusts our moral compass. Nothing more birthed that idea, I promise you. But then, for obvious reasons, I have received more flaks for it than Bubu has in his entire retirement plan period. Most of my sharpest critics were apologists from my far right group, as it’s not ‘edifying’. Should I brag about it being award winning or nah? I’ll pass.
A friend particularly lectured me on how much, by my creative expression, I have ‘helped’ promote exactly what I intended to fight against.
So I ask, do you deny the obvious existence of a problem because (you think) mentioning it at all is a form of promoting it? Judge ye.
But it’s the world we live in – where one folk seated in a corner re-defined what a ‘small girl, big God’ should mean, and every one adjusted accordingly. I watched half-petrified, how a good friend balked under pressure, her moral compass was bent to misinterpret an otherwise fine line. because she decided she doesn’t want to come off as having a big God.
Decided.
I tell everyone that cares to listen, that decisions are values, not reactions. More often than not, ill-fated decisions are plagued with all forms of cognitive bias – a mistake in reasoning and evaluating, ultimately influencing decisions.
I think I have read enough books to proffer a solution to avoiding cognitive biases from simple to complex decisions. The bad thing about your cognitive biases is just one – they ruin your decision making process, and that very horribly. Worse still, some of the repercussions live with you for the rest of your life.
Overtime, I have taught myself how to reach decisions qualitatively, purely certain on the output. Imagine approaching a decision with perfect clarity and surety, no doubts, no ifs, no buts, no maybes? Bliss, yeah? Wait, until you live out the decision, you’d be stunned.
“Please don’t be doing things that aren’t consistent with your awesomely meticulous nature…” – a friend scolded me for wishing God granted someone else clairvoyance. Doubling down in her defense, she supposed clairvoyance is limited to psychic abilities. I did my bit on connotative and denotative meanings to words, but she stuck on. And then I rolled my sleeves and dug deep into researching everything on clairvoyance.
Beyond the surface meaning it gives, its simply clarity of purpose, influencing decisions, and ultimately doubling back on consequences.
Truth is, we all can achieve clairvoyance, regardless. From personal experience, I realized you can teach your thought process to achieve clairvoyance long before making decisions, for me, simply put, it’s been a life hack. From a simple ‘which type of white shirt do I wear today?’ to existential decisions like ‘would we be happily married if we ended up together?’ are what defines how high an altitude it is that we climb to or how low it is a depth we sink into.
I’m half sure you know what separates people who go through life on the upper rungs from those who get beaten to a pulp by it, are decisions – however basic or complex they come.
The major advantage of achieving clairvoyance is to be emboldened to make qualitative life decisions purely certain of the outcomes. Life is already uncertain enough for all the uncertainty you’d ever have.
If you’re a soldier on the front line, one day, it will be your turn to shoot. You must have resolved your moral conflicts about killing before you get to that point. It’s the same with life.
Values are decisions not reactions. You don’t decide not to steal at the very point you have access to other people’s money. The earlier you get a grip on your decision processes, the better your output, and consequentially, your life.
To God, whose eternal guidance on this road less taken keeps me purposeful in pursuit.
To SuperAkerele, the man who built the hospital he was born in.
Who digs through the sands of time,
Whose grandiose illusions keeps me hanging on.
To Oluwarantimi – my emotional scale.
May the love you have to give meet the love waiting in your dreams.
To my family, who have to put up with my dawn to dusk lifestyle.
To my 3 friends, who…
Do their bit to help me know I’m not alone, we get stronger as the bonds of blood.
To my friends, who challenge and inspire me overtly and covertly.
To you reading this, adjusting your sails to sail smoothly.
May you achieve clairvoyance.
Akerele Oluranti; 3:18am
August 1st, 2018.
paulakerele@gmail.com
Twitter: @Super_Akerele
IG: superakerele
I’m certain going to have to read this like 5times over. MIP keeps getting better. The man himself is a work to be adored. Weldone bro.
Amen brother.
Values are decisions not reactions – I couldn’t agree more.
I’m inspired by the “me moment”; a daily dose of assurance and power-packed confession/meditation in a chaotic world – nothing motivates better!
As always, this is a wonderful piece.
I had almost forgotten that you are such an amazing writer. This reminded me. And I think I have one or two things to learn from your life hacks.
On the issue of your Children’s Day creative, my first reaction was to side with your friend that opined that your promoting what you’re trying to fight against. But I think you did what you had to do.
Nina Simone said “an artist’s duty is to reflect the times.” As a creative person, you owe it to your society and posterity to express the realities of the times.
So, with your creative, you mirrored to us who we had become. We looked at ourselves in the mirror, and we were ashamed. Someone must suffer the consequences of this shame, so we ask, “How dare he remind us of how far from innocence we have come?” That explains the flak you received.
Here’s to you holding on to what you believe. Here’s to more years of clairvoyance.