GOODBYE 2024

I started going to therapy.

It happened by chance. At some point in the year, I had a Nigerian roommate. Interesting guy, living with him gave me a sort of introduction into the Nigerian psyche. While they are beautiful souls, their politicians have fucked up their country too much to the extent that everybody has lost morality. For Nigerians, there’s a very thin line btw what’s right and what’s wrong. I too have lived on the grey area of morality, so I could relate to him and the Nigerian experience. He was a nice dude by all measure, generous, kind and we had inane conversations deep into the night. Two men, seated and just talking. He told me he was going to therapy and I thought to myself, “I could try therapy too. It won’t hurt, I won’t die.”

Thus, I have been seeing a therapist. She’s been a wonderful, and talking to her has helped me align my thoughts. In our first session, she told me that she felt like her job was halfway done. That I’d worked through most of my traumas. I didn’t know how to respond to that.

I can’t say for sure that I have figured it out. Just that I am in a good place in this moment. I don’t know about tomorrow. I maybe here. Or I might not be here at all. I like to keep my tomorrow open. I don’t make plans at all. This moment is all.

Actually, if you think about it, there’s only one proven method on how to stop time. It’s living in the moment. Being in the absolute moment, stops time. But also, those who’ve lived in the moment will tell you that time moves so fast when you’re living in the moment, like hours turn into seconds just like that, weeks turn into hours and years turn into weeks. Everything becomes so compressed, its perhaps why people keep living in the past and the future, it allows them to feel that time is longer. And time isn’t linear by any measure, how you experience a day isn’t how I experience a day. Your day is long, my day is short, I wonder why?

 

From around the fall of 2017, holidays really lost colour for me, I didn’t care about them. I don’t still. But right now, I am back in the celebratory, childlike attitude. I’ll enjoy the moments with people whose company I enjoy.

When I was writing religiously a few years back, I had a GOODBYE (insert the year) article, every end of year. It was a segment I really enjoyed doing because it gave me a sense of nostalgia while doing it. Nostalgia is one interesting feeling, while I try not to get caught of in the past, I enjoy telling stories of days gone. The real story is happening in the present, but you really can’t tell a story as it happens, you’re literally living it.

 

At the dawn of the year, I was in a really dark place. Pure, solid blackness, like my life had been for the past four years. It’s like when covid hit, it came with a storm that utterly wrecked whatever absurd life I was living. I had to find a new approach; the old method wasn’t working. Finding the new perspective has been pretty hard, it’s taken four years of intense burning to burn away the old self. The ashes have fallen away, and the new is taking root.

I thought I had it figured out in 2020, then a shit storm followed and I was like, “I know nothing at all”

The past four years have been an intense period of silence and learning. I had nothing to say, that’s why I didn’t talk much. In a way I lost my faculty for language, I couldn’t speak clearly, I couldn’t write clearly. My drives were fried. 

So, I turned inward and let whatever wanted to happen to happen. I went past Dostoyevsky’s underground to hell’s basement. And when I thought all light was lost, the darkness transformed into a beautiful starry night, morning came and there was a nuclear explosion of a thousand splendid suns.

At the moment I am trying to communicate these splendid suns that I experience everyday. That maybe I can help someone else fighting in darkness, to find the thousand splendid suns. The suns are there, but there are a lot of clouds in your soul, perhaps that’s why you can’t see the suns. I will help though, having reached the other shore, I might help others cross.

Communication is hard though, because few people have ability to understand what I  am saying. Knowing to read isn’t enough. I am trying to reach the core of your soul, a place of no language. Via words I can’t reach it, only via your heart. Thus, writing is a really limited medium, we try anyway.

And what I am trying to describe to you, is indescribable. You have to experience it, feel it, see it with your inner eyes, hear it with your inner soul, to understand it. Your outer eyes can’t see it, your outer ears can’t hear it, you can’t touch it.

It’s the essence of existence itself. The greatest secret that can’t be told. As much as mystics try to talk about it, it’s an exercise in futility. There’s nothing to say about it really. We go on speaking though, because we know you can reach it too. I can’t give it to you because there’s nothing to give. You can reach it and enjoy it for yourself though.

Much of this might appear contradictory, but this is the only way to describe it. Any other way would kill it. It’s the dance without movement. It’s the sound of silence. It’s the soundless music. It’s the unheard call. It’s the touch that can’t be felt. It is and it is not. It is the way of no way.

 

Anyway, these were my moments of 2024.

Favourite Youtuber

There’s this kid on YouTube, SadisticTushi. He does videos on chess. He’s not an authority on chess, but his presentation is the best. I am laughing all the time I watch them. It’s the words he uses also, “Your tiny brain, the kid got fat, give him some candy, the fatty queen.” I find his phrases funny.

Book of the year

I don’t read much these days. I listen to lectures and discourses more than I read. There’s no enough time and few books are worth the trouble. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT by Marie Enrich was an interesting read. The sentences leaped out of the page and grabbed you by the collar. It’s up there with THINGS THEY CARRIED. These are books in which you can tell the writer was being honest. They ripped open their hearts and told the story as truthfully as they could.

A small detour-

There’s this girl I went on a couple of dates with. I liked her immensely, but I realised that we had a totally different world view. In the long run, we wouldn’t probably work out. She had visons of me as a father, I don’t want kids. She enjoyed long walks, I don’t see the point of walking, I don’t enjoy it.

One evening we went on this long walk, and that’s when it hit me that we couldn’t really be together. I really hope she finds someone who enjoys walking. She was perfect in every aspect, at least for me she was, but those long walks were a deal breaker for me. She deserves someone she can enjoy walking with. I’d rather chew sand than go for walks.

I wish her all the best, hopefully, she’ll find love, a man who enjoys walking too. I really liked her, but I hated walking more than I liked her.

And no, we couldn’t be friends. I don’t believe in friendship.

TV SHOW

WESTWORLD was good television. The idea of AI and consciousness is something I have been thinking about for a minute. Thus, when I discovered Westworld, it had my attention for a few episodes.

There’s a lot to say. Words are endless. Time is limited.  These were my most striking moments of 2024. What were your moments of 2024? The comment section is open.

Photographs done by @kinasisi on Instagram. All pictures posted here are subject to copyright and fair use.