THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A FUCK.

 2021 gone so fast??? Can someone pinch me back to reality??? Does it seem like we're close to our appointment in Samara?? There you go giving a fuck about what's not important. you're all welcome to yet another year,a whole new circle,a rebirth of nature. But what's so different? It's 2020 too. If you don't gerrit, forget abourrit😂😂😂.

Let's meet unoka,Okonkwo's father in the debut novel by Nigerian author,Chinua Achebe. Drumrolls!!!

 Unoka has passion for music and playing his flute at festivals. His happiest moments were the two or three moons after harvest when the village musicians brought down their instruments hung above the fireplace. He would play with them his face beaming with blessedness and peace. Of course,he loved the swaying buttocks of the women who danced to his melodious tunes whenever he and his band got invitations from other villages. Their huge asses fuelling his surge and nudge for excellence. He would love to untie the loose ends of their wrappers and be catapulted to an entirely new world, something close to an Eldorado city ,if he had enough money. But that was the thing,he seldom did. He was infact always in debt. He owed every neighbour some few cowries to quite substantial amounts. He would buy gourds of palm wine and drink with his neighbours. He always said that whenever he saw a dead man's mouth,he saw the folly of not eating what one has in one's lifetime. His drinking sprees wouldn't have been considered much of a big deal but for the fact that he was a pipe-and-slipper. Yes!!! Unoka loved domestic comfort and was always inclined to remaining peacefully at home. He loved the harmattan seasons. When the rain had stopped and the sun rose early every morning with dazzling beauty and it was never too hot or cold. Perhaps he reeled a harmattan poem whilst chewing chunks of dried meat and freshly tapered wine. 

Unoka was also good at weaving the nicest folktales. Stories of the tortoise who went to the sky for a marriage ceremony but later was thrown down to sharp , harmful objects because of greed. Or that of the choosy beautiful maiden who ended up with a skeleton. He was no doubt a friend to the village kids. They would sing merrily, clapping their tiny hands as hard as they could with round tight bellies protruding and seeming in danger of an ernest burst. Bellies filled with yam richly dipped in fresh palm oil and rewarded with a fillet of fish from an elder who has had a tiny portion in his or her own mouth first.

Unoka was a man who subtly didn't give a fuck!!!

YOU Over The World: A Panacea rather than peril.

But what really made Unoka look a loser and failure as is perceived?? Was it the thought he had of himself or that which people had about him??  Let's delve deeper!!

There's a saying that the smallest dog barks the loudest. A rich man doesn't feel the need to prove to anyone that he's rich. An intelligent man doesn't feel the need to prove he is intelligent. Right?? And why's that so?? Because he simply is and what others think of him doesn't in any way change the fact that he's intelligent. Same goes for a terrible medical doctor. He's terrible at medical practitioning. What others think of him doesn't change that, not in the minutest of ways.

The problem today is that expectations have been built up like mountain Kilimanjaro and we let them define us.  Who gave the conventional retinues to being successful and made them so sturdy that they can't be broken,battered and rebranded??The boys have to go to school, graduate with the best grades,secure a job,get a posh car,a magnificent house and get married to the most social media fit spouse. The girls just have to be in a serious relationship after school and get married one or two years later. Definitely not to just any kind of man:he must stink of material success!! Really?? I'm glad the "school na scam "backdrops are giving a huge fallout on this. 

And somewhere, someone is still tearing himself apart and feeling like a dicky- bird because of a thought process that has been overtly and excessively influenced by the his-life -is -doper -than-mine ideology. You still want to give a fuck about the number of your friends who got married the previous year and even those who soon will?? You still want to plague yourself over material possessions you haven't acquired that your friends have?? You think it's the best to pressure that young boy whose family background you aren't even familiar with because you want to get that bone straight replica?? You see a flashy car drive past and it's oppression. You want to get yours too and chill with the big boys. And you can't help but think your life sucks because your pace at life is slower? Can't you see it's all about what you think?Bruh!!! This is a total mind fuck!!!

Here's a minute to cleanse your brain and maybe have this on the tablet of your heart. The only effing thing you should give a fuck of is YOU. Whatever anyone else thinks shouldn't be paramount to measuring your success. Because you're precious and worth more than a million rubbies. This shouldn't be accentuated by your crossover declarations and resolutions. Those declarations and affirmations only go to prove a single point; you feel as though you're not successful enough already and by the aid of some supernatural underworkings you did  be.

Now, making yourself the central theme can by no  lens be seen as self-centered. It isn't mediocrity too to be comfortable with your own PACE. You're moving but maybe not a a breakneck speed as Onoriode which might be too dangerous for you,or at a snail's pace which did be too slow to achieve your purpose. 

Let's catch our breath.

 When did you even transcend to such level of spirituality to understand that you're backward?? The last time I checked,I was writing for a purely human audience. The warm feeling of your fingers supporting your phone and a physical eye fixated on the screen doesn't in any way prove contradictory.

 You're a loser and all other worse things only when you think yourself that you are!!! 

Be like unoka, don't give a fuck about what's not important and immediate. It's not what people think about you that defines you, it's what you think about yourself.