These days, I find myself thinking more than usual. It is the only thing I can do now, really. I think of my Late Father, his gap-toothed smile, and the way he used to call me Uche Girl. I think of my late Aunt Florence, how she always called me ‘Yhucee’ in that sing-songy voice, and how her presence was so fortifying for my Dad. But most importantly, I think of the stories my parents have told me.
These stories are pieces of my parents that I will forever hold dear. My Dad always told us stories of his childhood at Coal Camp and realities during the war, his experiences as the first child, his relationship with his siblings, and how he had to grow up early and his life as a seminarian. But I always look forward to my Mum’s stories with the overwhelming eagerness of the starved as they come so far in between. One such story revolves around her father, my grandfather, Dennis Amaluegbelu Nwasokwa.
You see my Great Grand Father (Dennis’ father), Nwasokwa, was a very wealthy man. He had a lot of wives, many daughters, but no son. As inheritance in Igbo land is patrilineal, he was worried about this. A few years later, he had a son and his joy knew no bounds. For Nwasokwa, the sun rose and set with his son. Tragedy struck, and the boy died from a palm tree fall. The world came to an untimely end for Nwasokwa when his beloved son died. But just like the Igbo saying, the evenings of your life are the best years, fate blessed him with another son in his old age; a son called Dennis.
As life can sometimes be a series of unending tragedies, Nwasokwa died when Dennis was still a child. Nwasokwa’s extended family swooped down, shared his lands, and devoured his riches like vultures. They believed Dennis would never survive and made efforts to make that reality. One such effort forms the crux of this story.
The slave traders, my grandfather said, always came on rainy nights. With the rain drowning out their footsteps and the cries of their victims, they stole into houses and took away children and young adults. My grandfather, Dennis, at the time, was just a boy of eight or so.
The rains, it is believed, brings sicknesses with it and that night, he was down with a fever. Dennis’ mother went to answer a call by some relatives; a call she later realized was part of the plot. Dennis’ sister, Nwidemili was the one tending to him in their little hut. She lay him close to a corner of the wall, pulled a mat over him, and propped a huge mortar on the wall and over his form to give him additional protection from the cold. That done, she went about her tasks oblivious of what the night held for them. When the sounds of the rain became deafening, the slave traders came. They grabbed my grandfather’s sister. My people have a saying:
Ó óké nó n’úló gwālú óké nó n’ézí nā ázú dī nā ngígá
Translation: It is the house rat that told the bush rat there is fish in the basket.
This saying came in play perfectly when one of the slave traders kept saying, “They said they were two. Where is the second one? Where is the boy?” My grandfather lay petrified behind the wooden mortar, careful not to make a sound or breathe too heavily. That was the last night my grandfather ever saw his sister. This was in the early years of the 20th century. Later (futile) efforts to trace Nwidemili lead to modern-day Rivers State in the South-Southern part of Nigeria. She got married there; nothing is known of her beyond that. My grandfather’s stepsister, Mgbogose was also sold.
The reality is, if they had gotten him, I wouldn’t be here writing this. He would either have been killed (which would perfectly fit the plans of the aforementioned relatives) or been too sick to make the journey and died on the way.
It is stories like this and that of my father almost drowning as a seven-year-old while swimming in a lonely lake that remind me of the validity of my presence. It is things like me almost being killed in a stampede at church at nine years old a few months after my surgery that reminds me of the rightness of my existence. The experiences of my ancestors and my parents and my experiences prove I am meant to be here. That I have a purpose I have to discover; a purpose I can create and recreate.
Our brains are comparison machines that work in terms of reference points. Comparison is a survival instinct we developed as cavemen and, beneath all the degrees, technology, and ritzy stuff, we are still operating on caveman hardware. Back then, it helped us know how far that lion was compared to where it is now. Today, it helps us compare prices when shopping on Amazon. The downside is it also makes you notice @suzahn8008 has taut abs while your belly is like akamu. Our brains don’t think in absolutes but in relative terms. Thus, making our comparisons flawed. This can be proved by experiments like the Ebbinghaus illusion below:
If I asked you which orange circle you think is bigger, you’d most likely say the one on the right (surrounded by little circles).
And that’s wrong.
They’re both the same size. You probably looked at those two images and your brain (thinking in relatives as it always does) processed the sizes of the orange circles relative to the surrounding gray circles.
Comparison walks hand in hand with hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation is the process of becoming accustomed to a positive or negative stimulus such that the emotional effects of that stimulus are attenuated over time. The novelty wanes, you become used to it and stop valuing it.
This is why that new dress becomes “that old thing” after a while and your partner’s smile stops making your heart do backflips five years into the relationship. I’ve read somewhere that the effect of an experience, no matter how pleasurable or painful, wanes anywhere between one hour to eighteen months. This reinforces a quote from Daniel Gilbert in the bestseller, “Stumbling on Happiness”. It goes thus:
“Wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition…”
Negative visualization is an activity that helps you appreciate what you have by comparing or imagining what it’d be like not to have it. Loss, real, imagined, or hypothesized, makes us value what we have. Knowing that this thing we hold now can be taken from us the next minute makes us value it more.
“Count your blessings, every doubt will fly
And you will be singing as the day goes by….”
1897 hymn by Rev. Johnson Oatman
In a 2008 research by Koo et al., couples were made to write a 15-minute piece about how they would be or feel if they never had met their partner. Couples in the control group wrote about the experience of meeting their partner. The results showed that for the first group, imagining what life would be without their partners fostered a deeper appreciation and love for them while no significant increase was recorded with the control.
The practice of negative visualization reminds me of the 1946 movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life”. George Bailey has had a personal relationship with setbacks and frustration, but he continues to elbow through life with a smile on his rugged face and unhappiness in his heart. Things take a turn for the worst when his loan company loses $8, 000 because of his uncle’s carelessness.
George throws in the towel and is ready to end it all. The Big Guy upstairs sees this and sends Angel Clarence (not really the brightest of angels) to help him through it. (Yes, people. The angel’s name is Clarence). George can’t stand Clarence, his happy-go-lucky disposition to things, and his constant talk about earning his wings. Frustrated, George declares painfully, “I wish I hadn’t been born…” On a stroke of genius, Clarence grants him this wish.
For the first time in his life, George has nothing to worry about…
….but he also has no friends, no family, no wife, and no kids.
He runs through Bedford, the town he lives in and everything is different. That singular action of him not existing changed the town…for the worse.
His brother died at nine because George wasn’t there to save him from drowning in the lake that cold winter.
Mary, his wife, was unmarried because he was not there to marry her- and his beautiful kids were never born
Uncle Billy was in an insane asylum because George wasn’t there to support him emotionally
George was looking at his life through the glass and he couldn’t touch the aspects he loved and cherished about it and it nearly drove him mad.
Clarence leaves him with this message before returning his old life to him:
“Each man’s life touches so many other lives and when he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole…”
The truth is, we all have stories like my grandfather’s and George Bailey’s; times when you survived what no one thought you would survive and periods when all you could think of was the peaceful nonexistence (of death). In times when you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel or feel the future holds nothing for you, I want you to remember those times, the importance of your being here, and how empty life would be without you.
Originally published on Medium.
Like what you read? Check out Is My Black Really Beautiful and 10 Things Depression is Not.
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