CAN YOU CROSS THAT LANE?

In the present cosmopolitan world, everyone is grappling with one issue or another and we all keep learning to carry our own crosses. Many times, out of sheer self-preservation, we go the extra mile to avoid becoming encumbered with another person’s problems. In Nigeria, we say ‘dey your lane’ which is to mind your own business and keep your nose totally out of another person’s. Some of us have honed this into an art that screams “don’t bother me!” So, it is perfectly acceptable to work with people, even live in the same block or flat with them and not know more than the barest details about their lives. If they have problems they are dealing with, well, the ‘dey your lane’ billboard immediately comes up.

A close relative was telling me of his female colleague, Vera, who was friendly and well-liked in the office. He said she did her job efficiently and never minded pitching in to help any other colleague swamped with work. She was a middle level officer and according to the narrative, she had worked in that organisation for two years and never seemed perturbed or anxious about anything. She would chat lightly with her contemporaries but she always maintained a certain air of calmness and aloofness. Very little was known of her private life except that she lived in the Gbagada axis of Lagos. My relative said that some mornings, he picked Vera up in his car at an agreed point just before he joined the express road and in the evenings that she rode home with him, he always dropped her off at about the same place. In the they would chat lightly about office matters, never anything personal.

He said that after a while, he noticed that Vera was not as cheerful as she used to be and most times she would just sit silently in the car. He asked once if she was alright and she said she was and he ‘stayed on his lane.’

One morning, Vera was not at the usual spot. It was nothing strange because some days, she would find her way to the office but it became an issue when no one saw her in the office for two days running. Her phone number was switched off. After two weeks of absence, an administrative officer was mandated to trace her to an address which was in her file; they learnt that Vera had committed suicide. He said everyone was shocked. It was then that her colleagues learnt that she was married and had a child who suffered from the sickle cell anaemia. The child died due to mismanagement just three months earlier and after the burial, Vera’s husband left her because he said he didn’t want to run the risk of having another child with the sickle cell disease. Vera was coping with all those and no one had any inkling in the office.

Her neighbours could not tell what tipped the scale but they started perceiving a foul odour coming from her apartment and realised that no one had seen her for days. They opened her door and found her body and a suicide note.

Could anyone have helped Vera? Did she want to be helped?

A few years ago, in Lagos, a medical doctor identified as Dr. Orji, was said to have parked his decent Nissan SUV by the Lagos Third Mainland Bridge and jumped into the lagoon … to his death. A medical doctor!! Two years later in 2019, the world was shocked to hear of the 23 years old Olympic cyclist, Kelly Catlin’s suicide. With a multiple world championship title, an ongoing degree programme in Computational and Mathematical Engineering, proficiency in several languages and being one of triplets in a family that seemed very close, Kelly cut a picture of someone who had so much to live for. Unfortunately, she was in such a state of despair that she took her own life.

So, it’s obvious that suicide which has been medically pronounced as an outcome of mental degeneration starts silently, unobtrusively and perhaps staltingly.

A man said he always knew that his wife was prone to forgetfulness; she could get so lost in a movie or a book that nothing short of an earthquake would break her absorption. He didn’t even get worried when she was sacked from her job due to “avoidable errors and lapses.” He said the problem became glaring to him when she would sleep and forget to pick the kids from school or turn up at an event shabbily dressed and then burst into tears for no good reason. Fortunately, they sought medical help and were just in time to prevent a total mental health collapse.

The month of May was designated as a month for mental health awareness and I find it necessary to lend my voice to this campaign because I believe that it is essential both for individual wellbeing and societal sanity for everyone to take action about his/her mental health. There are too many mishaps; inexplicable acts of violence and loss of lives happening around the world. Let every man take care of his own mental health first and if you can burst the ‘dey your lane’ mentality, help another person. Show concern, be kind and please be quick to seek help where you notice any abnormal behaviour.

According to the awareness materials available, there are certain things each individual can do to reduce anxiety-induced stress which is a major cause of mental imbalance and a host of other ailments.

Draw up a to-do list ahead of your day or week, depending on what suits you. Make sure most of the tasks can be completed. If the events of the day/week interrupt the tasks, don’t just drift on but take time out to rearrange your priorities and shift what you can. The idea is to finish up tasks because the satisfaction that comes from concluded tasks is good for mental wellbeing.

Declare an end to each day. When you turn off your work station, let it be the end of work for the day. Be deliberate about switching off and switching on. Some of us never stop working; while this may deliver great impact on the balance sheets, we are told that it is not good for mental health balance.

Sufficient sleep, healthy eating and regular physical activity are very important. Also as a gift to yourself, let go of old grudges and deliberately replace bitter memories with pleasant thoughts.

Be kind to yourself and from time to time, let’s cross that lane and lend a brotherly hand to someone else.

So long!!

FATHERHOOD  WITH  IBE

WRONG ASSUMPTIONS

“Grandpa, is it good for parents to tell lies to their children?” My granddaughter, Nere asked me recently as soon as she saw that I was alone.

We had talked about barging in to interrupt my meetings. I could be in the middle of a very important discussion and she’d just push in through the door and start talking excitedly to me about something that in her opinion I just “needed to hear.” Most people are generally tolerant of kids and would laugh at the interruption but I felt it was necessary to reinforce her lesson on boundaries. I reminded her that there were things she could get away with as a baby because babies were too young to reason out every action but, at seven years old, she was becoming a big girl and needed to stop behaving like a baby. That seemed to sink in properly; so recently, I would see her come several times to peep  through the transparent door in the mini-conference room I use at home, to know if I was alone or engaged in discussion with anyone.

That day, the people I was with had hardly passed the front door before she swooped down on me.

“No Nere, it is not good for anyone to tell lies.” I said quickly without pausing from the document that I was looking through.

“So Grandpa, what do you do to parents when they tell lies?”

“You assume that it was a mistake and you suggest the truth to them.” I knew that one would fly right over her head and I smiled internally as I saw her frown in concentration while trying to work out what I had said.

“Grandpa what is sussume?” She asked me.

“I did not say sussume, I said assume….”

“What is assume?” She cut in.

“Assume is to think of something because of what you are seeing or hearing. For example, if I see you crying and holding your tummy, I can assume that you are hungry.”

“No Grandpa, if I am hungry I will just tell the cook to give me food. I will not hold my tummy and cry.” She remonstrated, looking at me as if I was a stranger in the house. She had my full attention.

“Okay dear, what should I assume if you are holding your tummy and crying?” I asked.

“You will sussume….”

“Assume.” I corrected.

“Okay, thank you. You will assume….” She made a production out of that one word. “Grandpa, if I am in school, then you will assume that that naughty boy David in my class hit me on my tummy with his rough play but if I am at home, you will ‘summe that my tummy is paining me and I don’t want to tell Mummy because I don’t want to go to the hospital.” She finished almost in a whisper.

I didn’t know when I let out a spurt of laughter.  Nere looked completely nonplussed.

‘Okay, so now you know what assume means. Sometimes you can assume wrongly like when I assumed that if you are holding your tummy and crying, then you are hungry.”

“That means that Smart’s parents assumed wrongly that he will be smart when they gave him that name Smart?”

This time, I had a good laugh.

“Who is Smart? Is he a boy in your class?” I asked.

“No, Grandpa! He is my friend’s e…eh cousin.  She said that his name is Smart but he is not smart at all, he’s olodo.”

“Olodo?” I repeated wondering how she had picked up that word.

“Yes now, olodo is when someone does not know anything; he has plenty zero in his homework and tests. My friend said her cousin is not smart at all; he is olodo.” She repeated for emphasis.

“That’s very unkind, Nere.”

“But I did not beat him?” She protested self-righteously. We had told her that it was unkind to beat someone smaller or weaker than herself no matter the provocation.

“It’s not only when you beat someone that you are unkind. If someone is having difficulties and you laugh at the person or mock him, you are also being unkind. Instead of laughing at him, you should help him.”

She thought about that for a moment.

“But Grandpa, I don’t even know him.”

“Then you should not talk about him. Tell your friend that she should be kind and help her cousin instead of laughing at him.”

“So if she helps him to do his homework, she will be kind?” She reasoned, adjusting herself more comfortably on the chair.

I quickly replied in the affirmative, eager to end our discussion and get back to my paperwork. For good measure, before she’d think of something else to barrage me with, I sent her on a meaningless errand to her grandmother.

These young ones!!