My Wierd Story: Loving The Mundane, Sacrosanct and Natural Life.



So, many times we sit back to watch our lives unfold, maybe after we've tried too hard to score points, minding the rationale that only if we had even dug deeper or if we have done even more. The imperatives of our ravaged society can be ostensibly viewed as the harbinger of the woes and tribulations.  But, how much of this can we swallow at a time lest we keep swallowing until the end of time?  


There are two very important days in a humans' life, some have argued that these days are those of birth and death, some say it's the day one graduates from an institution of higher learning and the day one gets married, but I absolutely think otherwise.  Why? Because not everyone really has these experiences stated above except if it's expressed with personified intent rather than using collective adjectives like "human". 


I don't even know anything about how I was born and definitely don't have a clue about ones' last day on earth. So, how are these days important to me? Likewise, not every human would walk through the walls of a higher institution and not all would ever get married. So, I'm of the school of thought that "every day is important"


Conversely, I have come to realize that we all just have a lifestyle of generalizing the issues of life. Pre-university years and while being an undergrad I read a lot, I read about vague and mundane things, I read about great philosophers and at some dire point I began to proclaim to be a philosopher, I remember I went as far as practicing hallucinating tricks on people, all I learned online,  I could put you on a soul travel with your eyes closed and a story well-rehearsed, then I started to write about life.  Damn, I've been crazy from way back.


Having read Peter McMillan's "Life 101” I was buoyed to even attempt to write a pidgin version of the Bible,  I was simply just a curious introverted teenager. But as I grew up into this wholesome life with its facets of challenges, bending for every rule and twisting for every stereotypical encumbrance I was sure I had no immunity to what stood ahead.  


The first and only time I visited the small sprawling and beautiful town of Koko in Delta State I new I loved the ephemeral. I confirmed I wasn't a city boy. Behold, everything from the palm plantation to those who communed at the edge of River Ethiope, the small hamlets and the ambivalent aura of Koko's Africaness and its subtle ambience turned me into an ice mole in awe.

  
I've only experienced this feeling twice in my life and the second was my life at the chilling town of Igogo in ekiti where I served. I have accepted my fate about these two towns that I'll forever in my heart and my lifetime remember them for the way they made me feel.  So, I sat someday to ask myself why do I feel so crazy about places people don't want to live in? Why am I always nursing the desire to go back to these towns at least once again? 


Then a thought told me "EHIMEN, you must be an outlier" but far from that was the case. Then I thought, i must be a recluse. 


One day while in the lonely and remote town of Igogo-Ekiti, I took a long walk to the neighboring community of Ikun-Ekiti which is a 5-Kilometer-long journey. On this walk, I had just one thing on my mind…. LIFE. And every darn thing on this stretch of community road preached it to me. As I walked my dreams deflated, those dreams of having it all and being successful we all share. Nature and its altruistic splendor smothered me. The reality of the locals tortured my imaginations into some sort of obfuscation. 


Then it flashed, I remembered me gazing deeply in utter admiration as six old men sang local Itsekiri songs on the pavement of an old rickety thatch-roofed house in that beasty town of Koko. They sang so melodiously well in one accord with cherubic vibrancy and spiritism that could wrench any soul. I wept.


I wept because this is the release I have always craved for, the soul travel that I have desired since I was a boy. Long when I read about how Friedrich Nietzsche preferred life in the country-side, far from where he could meditate, write and reflect on what his life and your life is all about. Far from the drama of hate, supremacy and callous meandering of the city natives. Life that is pristine, pure and natural. 


The fact is… Sometimes, I don’t even know what I really want. But one thing I'm very sure of is that I love life mundane, sacrosanct and natural.


Thanks for reading my rant! 

Igogo-Ekiti, 2011




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