Thoughts-&-Musings

I suspect it might be the vestigial memories of night bus journeys from Lagos to Abuja back in the day, but my favourite journeys over the last couple of years have been on trains - spotting a rainbow just outside Edinburgh on the way to a job interview in 2009, returning to the North East of England for a weekend of introspection in 2010 and being surprised by the breath taking beauty of a sun bathed Forth Road Bridge, in November no less! Something about watching the grey granite of built up areas segue into lush greenery, and blue clouds, usually leaves me a little awed. ...

If there is one thing I have learned from returning to work after a year and a half off studying, it is that there is a very tangible credibility deficit that us early-mid-career professionals have to make up when they switch jobs. I define the early-mid-career phase as that stage of the working life between the five year mark and the ten year mark generally corresponding to the period within which the professional exceeds 10,000 working hours. ...

I finally drag myself out of bed at the third time of asking. It is shaping up to be one of those days; one when an ultra short to-do list will manage to get the better of me. Something about the lack of urgency spawned by a short to-do list has always been my besetting ‘sin’. Today, there is one thing that must needs be done - I’m off to the GP’s to have a 24 hour blood pressure monitoring device fitted. ...

Having passed several chronological milestones, one increasingly has had to field questions that assume that all the basic competencies required to function as an independent contributor to life in various spheres have been achieved. Invariably these often centre on the achievement of academic, financial, material and career milestones. Amidst the focus on these admittedly essential categories is a lack of focus on the attainment of certain critical thinking skills. I subscribe to the belief that a child is born with a blank worldview - the so called tabula rasa. Over time he/she acquires knowledge about life; typically by experience. The child thus builds up a worldview- religious, social, cultural, sexual even. At it’s most basic, this worldview is a set of answers for what constitute good, bad, the why of life, meaning, etc. Of necessity, these answers have to be gleaned from others in the early days - parents and relatives, peers, civic and religious leaders and teachers. ...

I never celebrated turning thirty. The significance of achieving that chronological milestone was lost in the hustle of every life - a barely discernible peak in the flat line that had become a monotonous existence. I had just lost a cast iron guarantee to return to my old job in Nigeria followed quickly by the petering out of what I thought was a nice, strong girl connection. One day I fell asleep, the next I awoke to being thirty plus. ...

The number 16 bus into the city centre is packed - brim full with people heading into town. The atrocious weather of the last few days let up briefly today, and with the imminence of Christmas, everyone seems to be up and about to get the last bits of shopping done. The bus stop where I clamber aboard the number 16 is mid way between the starting terminus and the ending terminus, as such I can only find standing space, ironically next to a sign that ostensibly marks the limits of standing room. Next to me are a mother and her daughter. The daughter cannot be more than six years old and still possesses the unbridled energy and uninhibited curiosity being young and carefree brings. The atmosphere is tense - of the kind where a word out of place potentially could let loose a fire storm. There are people plugged into iPods, people huddled together in groups chatting away and people like me who are alone, with lowered eyes looking into the distance. The little girl becomes the side show though - firing off question after question to her mother, peering into people’s faces, and at some stage leaning in towards her mother and planting a kiss on her cheek whilst whispering “I love you Mum”. When she gives the wizened old lady behind me a fixed stare. I wonder how the bus scene would look like in a different country, south of the Sahara. For the first time in a few months, I remember my mother.

Dear Santa, I have been a good bloke this year.. Kindly review and revert… Images do not belong to me…… unfortunately…

To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish - - Yiddish saying via Malcolm Gladwell Second chances - clean sheets wiped clear from all the smudges, memories obliterated, people lost in the maelstrom of life - are great… If only they were as easy as Ctrl+Alt+Del…. Sigh.

Long before I segued into the way of all flesh, I had always had a sense of connection with the Prodigal Son. In these dark days when my faith vacillates between the highs of unquestioning belief and the depths of blatant scepticism with the increasingly longer spells of being mired in the drudgery of self deprecating musing, I find myself drawn to the text again and again. Something about the lost son finally coming to himself, realizing there is a better life, a better way of doing stuff resonates with me. I fear I am lost, that somehow I have eaten so long of the hors d’œuvres of the beguiling tempter that his full feast of bitter gall is an ineluctable consequence. Trust me I have tried; but the overwhelming sense of guilt at the bloke I have become weighs me down. Like the proverbial swine given pearls, I appear to have taken world class opportunities and contrived to lose them amidst the quotidian pursuits of the good life. ...

Despite what the preponderance of mid-life crises and suicides around the 30 year age bracket would suggest, 30’s the new cool - and that for a variety of reasons. For starters, people take you serious by default. In your teens they know you’ll faff around, in your twenties they’ll assume you’re growing and the occasional gaffe can be excused. In your 30’s they actually believe you know what you are about until you goof. Ain’t that uber-cool? You get pimped for free. Depending on how far gone you are on the continuum, every one want to match make you. The best friend from University wants to hook you up with a niece, your cousins want to hitch you with friends and all that ish. Downside is it generally tends to rub you the wrong way - but hey who cares? They’re concerned.. That’s why! All the unmarried chics from earlier on for whom you had crushes suddenly see you as a serious option especially if you have made good on the success your geekery promised as a precocious teenager. Chances are you’re so clueless around women that you do not have a baby mama in the background, which seems to be a huge plus these days.. Chances are you have a strand of gray hair here and there - and true to type if you wear glasses, you actually look cool (gasp). You, the sore-thumb-sticking-out-almost-worwor-bloke, suddenly has the desirable features of respectability. Last but not the least, you actually have ten more years to play the fool - after all a fool at forty is a fool forever, but not before :)