The Easy Way Out

I really haven’t blogged in a very long time. I apologize. I am an overly cerebral person. Well that sounds a little obnoxious, what I mean is, I think a lot. But I really needed the liberty of not thinking for a little bit.

Making a conscious effort not to over think everything brought me to the realisation that in life we really make a big deal about everything, we turn the smallest things into larger than life issues, read too much into things, use 30 words in the place of the necessary five. The yorubas say “Address po ju ile lo” … i.e. The address of the house is far bigger than the house itself. We clothe simplicity in pageant, because somehow we have been trained to think that traffic will make the parade look bigger, and somehow that is far easier than facing the reality that it isn’t.

“I didn’t have the time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead” Blaise Pascal.

As Blaise Pascal implied, it is far easier to write a long letter than to write a short one, its far easier to dress reality in beautiful aesthetically pleasing distractions than it is to deal with that reality, its far easier to turn to a vice than to process an emotion. It’s far easier to take the easy way out as long as we make it look grand.

A friend sent out quite an interesting article earlier, It was about how your twenty-something’s are the years where you are meant to find yourself, experience everything you need till you get to the place you are meant to be, step out of your comfort zone, and how the most life shaping decision is “walking away from good-enough, in search of can’t-live-without”. It’s very easy to stick to the good-enough especially in Nigeria, than to step out into the unknown. To stay in an unfulfilling relationship because you don’t see any better options, to stay in a job that you hate and that doesn’t call on any of your skills because what you really want o to do won’t pay you as much, its easier to keep unhealthy friendships because you don’t want to attend events alone, all the while wrapping your discontent in vocabulary, fake smiles, and outlandish vices. But your happiness and fulfilment is in the unknown, however daunting that may seem.

Remain in search of your “can’t-live-without” and never settle for the “good-enough”, because easy as “good-enough” is, it will never be fulfilling, however much you rationalise it, make it look pretty, decorate it with the most complex of words.

Xoxo.