FRESH PAIR OF EYES

by ene ijato - February 06, 2017

On perspectives and the absurdity of the human theory of moral absolutism

In spite of myself, I have fallen ill with a cold that seems to have it in for me so pardon my late post I am only human.

Amidst several engagements and the futility of gathering together one’s excessives and unloading them into the hypothetical abyss, I have realised that from different vantage points I see things differently and relate to them in varying ways. This is no new discovery but as common culture will have it, the grown-ups {our older generation}, impose on us a life they have led. A life they believe from their own perspective is better for us, because they have walked the same path. What in the hell happened to evolution, change; the uncontrollable constant force that governs existence. Human beings although repetitive creatures to an extent are still never immune to change so why do they neglect this one fact and build around us the fences of repetition.

Go to school, practice familial religions, graduate, get a job/amass wealth, get married, raise children, introduce them into the same circle, grow old and die.

Alas when we deviate from this clean-cut path we become the black sheep, rebels and the waywards

. There is no chance to find ourselves when as blossoming teenagers we are all expected to make the life defining decision of what we want to do with our lives. A time when I’m just transitioning preferences from my favourite colour to favourite musical genre to favourite food, I’m supposed to know if I want to be an accountant until I’m old and withering and return to a little house in the suburbs and reminisce of my life. Of what I would have done with those so many years, of what I didn’t do –I need to do this because this is what the grown-ups did.

The ever-present chaotic bridge of the present and the past intertwining, of freedom to make mistakes and discover different paths, of relative fulfilment, of self-defined success is what in an enormous sum is being ignored in our society today. The past must become the present they say to us. Technology might improve, knowledge more ubiquitous but the path in which the human life drives through will always be the familiar.

Don’t get me wrong I do believe in an education, in beliefs, in family and a career but how I go about these things should be my choice and nobody else’s. Our parents are amazing lovely people and I am sure they want the best for us but they should also take into consideration that we are human beings, we feel and we reason and we have desires and no human being can feel and want and think for another.

Of course we should be thoroughly enlightened about bad decisions but not making these decisions should still be our choice, we are not robots or cords that can be bent to will, we are people. Young but not necessarily naïve, I mean some of us are already bloody geniuses.

We all need to embrace the power of varying perspectives and work with them. As someone who has experienced the sting of being disciplined with a whupping as a child, I can for a fact say that it didn’t stop me from repeating the same thing again, only perhaps more discretely. One method cannot work for every child, it is quite simply impossible.

As cliché as it sounds, love is what we desire. The world is already challenging to us and bears a conditional interest in us, we need assurance that no matter how tough it gets and how chaotic our lives pan out, you (Parents) will love us unconditionally.

We all need to see things differently from how they are now, to see with our minds and not just our eyes the endless possibilities if only we see the world with fresh pairs of eyes.

As pertaining to the monstrosity in our heads that makes of us through conditioning the same persons we had not wanted our parents to be to us, I say consciousness to a flaw in more ways than one reduces the risk of it occurring. For risk of not doing anything it is what we must do.

I precisely am drained between being sick and continuously living like I weren’t because I cannot afford to. Nigerian politics continues to plunge downhill by the day and I sit here eating my over-priced lunch not because I’ve become sold to the bourgeois stereotype but because the value of the money in my pocket apparently makes the notes leave my pocket double the amount they used to.

Oh, the good old days * sighs *

Wearing Vintage jacket, floral dress by Ejato, boots by Fabio Morelli, wristwatch by Rado.