Unlearning how I’ve chosen to view life, through rose-tinted glasses
Unlearning the mechanics of my middle finger; I checked how many fucks I have left to give and quite frankly, it’s not that much
Unlearning how I take care of my heart and the type of people I entrust it with; Broken pieces need gentle hands
Unlearning colours; the way I separate Black and White from Grey
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Last week was January 15, meaning that Martin Luther King Jr. and I were each a year older! Whoop whoop!
Now before you pop open the champagne bottle and start a belated rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’, you need to know that I’m not one given to all the fanfare and pomp that comes with moving ever so closer to the grave.
Also, I have had more alcohol over the past month than I have had the rest of 2019 (curse you Detty December). So therefore, plix! Cork thy bottle! I’m not trying to die just yet.
Being a few years shy of the big 30 means that you’re now at an age where you need to start taking stock. The foundational years of your life are steady coming to a close and soon enough, you’ll no longer be able to tell yourself that you’ll finally learn Spanish, backpack through Europe, take up the guitar and pull off a La Casa de Papel so that you finally have enough money to cuff Scarlett Johansson Jorja Smith and retire to the Caribbean to make beautiful babies.
It’s funny how time flies; one decade you’re this 200L fresh-faced naive kid who believed in unicorns that shit rainbow, the next decade, you find yourself trapped in this impenetrable Alcatraz called adulthood, trying desperately to channel your inner Michael Scofield but to no avail
You begin to understand that all the things you think you know may not be sufficient to build the dreams you harbor and God forbid that those village people have their way, all that will be left at the end of the journey would be a bunch of could-have-beens written into your epitaph and a few had-I-knowns scribbled into your tombstone.
Not unless you shift the paradigm…
As kids, we were taught that learning is a life-long endeavor that holds the key to all the finer things we desire. We were told to keep piling up the knowledge lest you get left behind faster than Nigerians did with the Blackberry, but nobody said a damn thing about unlearning all the watery opinions and ideologies we picked up along the journey and convinced ourselves to be true.
Learning in life is slave to the law of diminishing marginal returns. At some point, acquiring more of it just stops having any effect on your process especially if the ideologies and opinions that have housed themselves in the central nervous system of your character are flawed to start with. They will need to be substituted for better ones, not be glossed over with new beliefs
That’s where unlearning comes in…
I’ve come to a realization that the people who struggle the most are those who find it hard to let go of their own opinions and assumption of how life should be lived, but here’s the funny thing – if the things you’re doing are actually working, you will already be getting the results you desire, wouldn’t you?
Growing up, mother tried to teach me good manners; be respectful to your elders, brush your teeth every morning (and evening LOL), don’t steal ponmo from the pot, get your homework done immediately after school, etc. She even sent me to good ol’ Salt & Light Camp that taught me the importance of etiquette.
However, somewhere along the way, life dealt me a bad hand – I saw assholes climb the success ladder faster than the good guys so I threw reason and empathy behind bars. I changed personalities to one that relegated my core values to the background and in the wise words of the Canadian philosopher, Aubrey Graham, “Nothing was the same after that”.
Maybe comprehension finally dawned on me or maybe the wisdom that comes with old age finally prevailed but I’ve come to understand that nobody is perfect; I never said I wouldn’t lie, I never said that I wouldn’t make my mum cry neither did I say this halo of mine wouldn’t fluctuate every now and then. The worst thing, however, would be to walk away from the process without learning or in this case, unlearning anything.
So, at the risk of sounding cliche, I have decided to drink from the already polluted water that is New Years’/New Age resolution and carve out for myself, a new direction.
Just one word…
Unlearn.
the overgraduate 