Life is a journey, and all I do is look for.
I have always been a candidate. Life, for me, is not a destination but a consistent, agitated quest. The globe has never felt like a location where I truly belong; it is a short-term station, a stopover. This sensation was sealed in youth by a tune we sang every Sunday: “This world is not my home, I am simply passing by.” I hold on to that pledge of paradise, not out of deep confidence, however out of a fear instilled by a grainy VHS tape illustrating the torments of hell. I required to believe there was a far better area waiting.
I still locate the lyrics echoing in my mind, a persistent refrain. Memory is a curse like that. It clings to things that have shaped us, for far better or worse. Now, I no more believe in that holy heaven, but the core sentiment continues to be, truer than ever: this world is not my home. The sensation has simply developed from a doctrinal certainty into an extensive, personal alienation.
There are two truths about me that anyone that recognizes me would verify. I am an overthinker, prone to the tiring gymnastics of people-pleasing. And I am a sucker for journey.
Last year, I left Nigeria for the very first time. I went with my ex-lover. What remains of that journey, and the factor he lingers in my memory, are not grand monoliths or tourist attractions, however the fragile, human moments in between. I remember the deliberateness of selecting a tro-tro over an Uber in Ghana, the way we sat in separate rows yet stubbornly grabbed each other’s hands. An unfamiliar person, observing our battle, shifted seats to accommodate our requirement to touch. The affection of that little, unspoken kindness still undoes me.
I remember our failing to make it to Chris Attoh’s extravagant Christmas dinner, a strategy handicapped by logistics. Instead, we purchased cheap treats, pulled away to our area, shed ourselves in movies and giggling and the simple comfort of each various other’s bodies. I bear in mind a picnic with brand-new close friends, the basic communion of common food and beverage. It existed an unfamiliar person asked, “Are you a pair?” and for the very first time, we responded to together, “Yes.” I basked in the strength of that answer, in the story of “us,” in the sensation of being enjoyed in a manner I assumed I deserved. It was a fleeting peek of belonging.
This is how I want to move via the world– not as a traveler, but as somebody genuinely present, because our time here is extremely, terrifyingly finite. Someday, I will shut my eyes for the last time, and “sooner or later” can be this really 2nd, or the next. Do you comprehend the seriousness of what I am saying?
My hunger for experience is toughened up by a useful fact: I am not rich. I have learned to choose the journeys that do not call for a ton of money. Lately, nonetheless, I discover myself seduced by a new, agitated hunger for money. I am toiling away for the machinery of capitalism, trading my days for a semblance of protection. And in the process, I really feel the significance of who I am being sanded down. I do not simply desire an income; I intend to take lengthy walks with people who matter. I wish to go through a park breathless, to discuss nothing of consequence over bad coffee. I intend to create art with individuals, to make marvelous errors, to love and be liked carelessly. I want to really feel the sand of a beach in between my toes till it aggravates me, a welcome testimony to a moment fully lived.
I desire a life so complete it is messy and unmanageable. I want the range of human experience– the laughter that stitches my sides and the tears that cleanse. I want to feel a buddy’s happiness so deeply it becomes my own. And indeed, I desire my body to feel enjoyment, an extreme act in a globe that so commonly asks ladies to be moderate and had. I hate the arrest of bras. I recently got a vibe after almost a year without one, a calculated choice to recover a part of myself, to advise my body that it is capable of exquisite sensation. Does any of this make good sense? This determined, contradictory desire for every little thing to be both remarkable and straightforward at the exact same time?
This wanting is not a lack of discipline or a failing to mature. It is a disobedience. It is a rejection to accept that adulthood must be a slow-moving narrowing, a curtailing of wish until all that continues to be is the peaceful hum of duty. We are instructed to be grateful for security, and I am, in my way. Yet I am additionally cautious of a system that relates a well-funded pension with a life well-lived. I am beginning to understand that the true cost of this slavish commitment to capital is the really vitality it assures to protect. We are postponing living for a future that is not assured, and at the same time, we are giving up today, the only minute we ever genuinely have.
So, I am trying to make a different computation. I am learning to determine riches not in money, however in the weight of a hand in mine, the sound of a shared laugh in a jampacked room, the memory of a spontaneous decision that led to a story I will inform for several years. Probably this world was never implied to be a long-term home. Perhaps that is the point. Our time here is a short, brilliant funding, and the only sane feedback is to spend it on the experiences that make us feel most to life. The experience isn’t around in some distant land. It is below, in the day-to-day, bold option to feel whatever, to want extra, to refuse to let the globe inform you that you are asking for too much when what you are really asking for is simply to live.