Living at a distance.
I took a second peek at the hurriedly straightened but still rough 5 pieces of one thousand Naira notes in the envelope the secretary handed to me on my final day at the firm.
I had worked at the firm as a lawyer for about one year and six months and gotten tired of showing up each day to repeat the same routines.
Every day was almost the same; get in, send emails, reply to emails, gist with colleagues, and go home.
I left my first 9 to 5 for almost the same reason. It had become apparent that I do not do well with routines and it matters less what the remuneration attached to these routines is. It just wasn’t working for me.
I am not exactly one to openly display my emotions when shit hits the fan or when an emotional situation plays out before me; at least not on the outside because I too, like many other men, am yet to escape society’s toxic expectation to be seen as tough to be accepted as a worthy member of the gender that I represent. But this one got to me.
This carefully put together 5 pieces of one thousand Naira notes reeked of love, affection, and thoughtfulness so much so, that it made me re-think the heavy and meaningless boundaries I have woven around myself to ‘save’ myself from disrespect or be seen as someone not to be messed with among my colleagues and co-workers. Only thing is, I did not become this person by my own accord.
I love my neighbor as myself, no doubt, but I have learned to establish firm boundaries with the people that exist around the same space as me for obvious reasons.
People break people as much as people make people. My heart is pure (if I do say so myself) and there are no limits to the things I can do or have done to be seen as friendly. To make the people around me feel more comfortable, I’d stretch myself like a rubber band around a heavy stack of cash. But the truth is, as humans, it is indeed wired in our DNAs to abuse access or proximity. This, I am also guilty of.
So, when one of the office secretaries handed me five thousand Naira in an envelope because I had told her earlier that I wasn’t necessarily leaving for another job but for an internship training and would be paid almost next to nothing - she decided to give me this gift that completely melted my heart.
The spaces we have built around ourselves
‘Icarus’, a track from Tolulope Sonuga’s anthology of spoken poetry called ‘Mother Tongue’ stopped me dead in my tracks at my first listen.
Tolulope painted a picture of how we speedily turn our gaze from the man that had been set on fire.
I imagined a scenario of jungle justice where an angry mob probably based on an allegation of stealing would follow the sound of the first ‘Ole’ (a Yoruba word which directly translates to ‘thief’) while picking up the next object capable of causing harm on whoever the chant is directed at. The first person would give a hot chase, joined by another and then another. By the time the fourth person joins, no one remembers the crime, much less cares if it happened or even if the man in question was the actual person who committed the crime. A thief had been declared and must be brought to book (the joke is on you if you translated the book here to mean a court system’). They would catch him (because how far can you go when the world is literally on your tail waiting to bring you down) and make an example of him by putting rubber tires around his neck and then set him on fire. He would burn, smoke reaching up to the high heavens as he screamed and tugged at his skin as if his skin were pieces of garment he could rip out to bring the pain he felt to a screeching halt.
As he burns, the economist would pass by, oblivious to the tragedy happening in his path, makes his way around, and continue his journey.
The medical doctor would pass by as he rushes to the hospital for his shift, of course, patients await and the fate of their health hangs in the balance of the doctor’s presence, so, he too, oblivious to the tragedy happening in his path would take the next path shielding himself from the stench of the skin engulfed in flames.
Same for the sociologist, the psychologist, the engineer, the musician, and even the politician.
“It is not exactly my business what happens in the life of the next person and I have more urgent things to do anyways. Only the things happening in my personal space are of concern to me right now”
We have been taught by our personal needs and society to live within ourselves.
In the bid to be seen as civil, we have closed our doors, eyes, and ears to the happenings within our immediate environments, and only if our peace is threatened, do we leave the comfort of our personal spaces.
This was why when the secretary at my then job cared enough to think about me after asking what prompted my leaving 9 to 5, what the next steps were, how I would survive for the coming days, weeks, or months, and then went a step further to gift in cash towards my course, my eyes welled up.
Sometimes it takes an event to jolt us back to the reality of how we have chosen to live our lives and this event has been significant to how I live now.
In the bid to ‘close yourself from further pain’, as Oriah, the Mountain Dreamer put it, how far have you closed the world out from reaching you?
Like my account of the Icarus, how swiftly did you take the next route when the world turned on your neighbor and burned him to ashes?
