Sunday, 5th April, 2026, Easter Sunday. I woke up rather early for someone who slet late into the night, and I remember how days like these go in my father’s house, and I vividly remember one Easter weekend, my mum woke us all very early with the sound of the bell. Oh how I miss spending the days of my life with that woman. People who know my mum think she is that quiet woman, but man, you’ll be shocked at how truly dramatic she is ( I am actually smiling as I type this).

That Saturday, mum woke us up, and brought out her CAC hymn book (she is actually a pastor’s kid), and she started singing Easter songs. I remember her singing Jesu ye titi aye, (Jesus lives), and young me was wondering why I shouldn’t be scared of death, when in the real sense, I am still scared to pick something in a dark room. I remember how sometimes, she would reminisce her days, playing the drum (ilu agbamole) in church, and she would dramatise how she used to beat the drum, with vigor and fervour. After this flashback, I told myself that I’ll pen all of these down for her on her birthday (coincidentally in some days time); but then, I opened my YouTube Music and started playing Easter hymns, and even searched and specifically played CAC hymn. I miss her so much.

Then, off to church, and then choir hits us all with Easter hymns (In Christ alone and Old rugged cross). Tell me why my mind fixated on my dad, my man (hehehehe). Old rugged Cross. My dad used to love Country Music, and would rave about his Kenwood turntable, and how he used to play Jim Reeves records, and would whistle and hum along. I used to hate listening to Jim Reeves, and in the early days of Symbian and Android phones, he made us download the songs on his memory card. Now, I’m in church and I’m listening to my parents’ favourite songs and apart from being moved by the sacrifices of God, I am here missing home so much.

But back to Easter, I remember reading about Easter eggs, and it felt weird cos this season isn’t about eggs, just like Christmas isn’t about chicken and turkey. In fact, communities especially Western ones, have this interesting habit of wrapping the sacred in the familiar until you can barely tell them apart. Somewhere along the line, chocolate eggs and Easter bunnies got stitched onto the resurrection story, and nobody really questioned it.

We do it too, in our own way. The jolof rice and the new clothes and the family visit, all perfectly valid, all slightly beside the point. But I think that’s okay, actually. Humans have always needed something physical to hold while processing something spiritual. The eggs, the agbamole drum, the Jim Reeves record — they’re all just containers. The thing inside them is what matters.

And what’s inside Easter, when you strip it all back, is the audacious idea that death is not the final word. That the worst thing that can happen is not actually the worst thing. I sat in church this morning thinking about my parents, about how much I’ve stored from them without knowing I was storing it, and I realised that’s its own kind of resurrection. The things they planted in me when I was too young to appreciate them, the hymns, the dramatised drum performances, the country music I pretended to hate, none of that died. It just went quiet for a while, waiting for “the resurrection morning”.

Happy Easter.

In Idoma, the language of the people from Benue State, it means “I have been vindicated.”

Ina-le-gwu.

It is not just a name. It is a verdict. A declaration that the wait is over. That the accusations have been silenced. That the one who was doubted, dismissed, or diminished has finally been proven right.

To be vindicated, you must first be accused. To be proven right, you must first be doubted. The name itself carries the memory of the struggle, the long nights, the whispered campaigns, the moments when everyone had an opinion about you except the one that mattered: the truth.

I think about the people who carry this name. What must it feel like to walk through the world with that constant reminder? That no matter how long the odds, how persistent the whispers, how heavy the fog of falsehood, clarity will come.

In Idoma culture, like in most traditional societies in Nigeria, names are not casual. They are contracts between generations. When a child is named Inalegwu, the parents are not just describing a hope. They are making a prophecy. They are looking at the universe and saying: We have been through something. We were counted out. But here is the proof that we were right all along.

There is something profoundly human in this need for vindication. We all carry invisible court cases in our hearts, judgments we await, verdicts we hope for. The colleague who doubted your ability. The aunty who wrote you off. The friend who chose sides against you. The systems that told you that you don’t belong.

We spend years gathering evidence. Building our case. Staying silent when silence is the only dignified response. And then, one day, unexpectedly, the universe delivers its judgment.

The Idoma people understand something that the modern world, with its instant judgments and hot takes, has forgotten: vindication is a process, not an event. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes the kind of faith that keeps showing up even when no one is clapping.

But there is an ache beneath the celebration. For every person who lives to hear “Inalegwu” spoken over them, there are countless others who never do.

The ones who died misunderstood. The ones whose names were dragged through mud they didn’t deserve, and who left this earth before the clearing came. The ones who spent their lives building, only to have others live in the houses they built.

I think about them too. About the unfinished business of vindication. About the possibility that sometimes, the verdict comes after we are gone, in the memories of those we loved, in the lives we touched, in the slow, unstoppable ripple of a life lived with integrity.

Perhaps that is the deepest meaning of Inalegwu. Not just “I have been vindicated,” but “The truth I carried did not die with me.”

You, my dear reader carry this name. To live in such a way that vindication is not a destination you arrive at, but a reality you embody. To be the kind of person whose life, even in the waiting, even in the doubt, is already whispering: The verdict is coming. And it will be beautiful.

To the Idoma people who understand the weight of this word: thank you for teaching the rest of us that names can be prayers, that identity can be prophecy, and that the longest nights eventually break into dawn.

And to anyone reading this who is still waiting, still misunderstood, still doubted, still carrying the weight of accusations that don’t fit; hold on.

The vindication is coming.

And when it arrives, it will sound like music you’ve been waiting your whole life to hear.

How much can a person take before they break?

Not physically, that one has obvious answers. The body keeps score, and eventually, it calls in its debts. I mean the other kind of breaking. The quiet kind. The one that happens inside, invisible to everyone except the person experiencing it, and sometimes even hidden from them until it’s too late.

I once watched a man at the bus stop in Jakande, Isolo. It was 7:00 AM, and the queue stretched longer than patience should reasonably allow. He kept checking his phone, with the desperate flicker of a man watching minutes dissolve. His shirt was pressed. His shoes were polished. He had done everything right.

But the bus didn’t come. When it finally did, twenty minutes later, the crowd surged. He was pushed, elbowed, almost knocked over. He didn’t complain. He didn’t shout. He just found a space, wedged himself in, and stared out the window with the hollow eyes of someone who has learned that resistance is just exhaustion in disguise.

I wondered: Is this the moment? Is this where something inside him bends permanently? Or is this just another Wednesday?

We talk about breaking points as if they are fixed. As if there is a line drawn in the sand of every human spirit, and once crossed, the damage is irreversible.

But I’m not sure anymore.

I think about the women who sit in the market for twelve hours under corrugated iron roofs, selling the same goods day after day, year after year. The profits are thin. The stress is thick. Yet they return each morning, spread their wares, and smile at customers who will haggle them down to nothing.

I think about the young graduate, four years out of university, still living at home, still sending applications that disappear into the void. He laughs with his friends. He posts memes. He seems fine.

I think about the father of three in Sango Ota, who now spends 4 hours commuting because he had to move farther from work to afford rent. He leaves before his children wake and returns after they sleep. On Sundays, he tries to make up for it by being present, but that presence after absence feels like a bandage on a wound that needed stitches.

Are they breaking? Have they broken? Or have they simply discovered that the human spirit has depths they never knew existed?

The Philosophy of Not Breaking

The ancient Stoics believed that we cannot control what happens to us, only how we respond. Epictetus, born a slave, wrote that it’s not events that disturb people, but their judgments about those events.

I wonder what Epictetus would make of present-day Nigeria. Probably something wise. Something about the inner citadel. Something about building a fortress in the soul that circumstance cannot breach.

But here’s the thing about fortresses: they require maintenance. They require rest. They require moments when the siege lifts and you can breathe without fear of the next attack.

When the siege never lifts, the fortress becomes a prison.

I have seen people break. Not dramatically, the light behind the eyes flickering, then fading. The laughter becoming a reflex instead of a release. The dreams quietly packed away, replaced by survival. I have also seen people who should have broken, who had every right to break, who would have been justified in breaking, and yet, somehow, they didn’t.

What makes the difference? I don’t know. Luck? Temperament? Faith? Or just the stubborn, inexplicable refusal to let the world win?

This period in Nigeria is hot. Not the regular hot. Humid. Heavy. The kind of air that makes you wonder if the atmosphere has personally declared war on you. According to NiMET’s March 6, 2026 weather prediction, the tempperature is predicted to be high increasing the chances of thermal discomfort. The air is thick, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

And coincidentally, because in Nigeria, the universe loves a good coincidence; power supply has become erratic. The same grid that was already unreliable has decided to take a holiday. Remote workers, freelancers, the entire ecosystem of people who need electricity to survive, endured it. What else could we do?

Then, boom.

On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a joint military offensive against Iran. Over 1,500 targets were struck. Senior Iranian leadership was killed. Iran retaliated with missiles toward Israel and US bases across the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz was closed. The world held its breath.

That’s the shortened version. The version that matters to this conversation is simple: a war started. And somehow, like all things in a globalised world, it found its way to our pockets.

Petrol price increased.

Before this period, Nigerians could fall back on fuel that retailed for about ₦850 per litre . It was painful, but survivable. As of today, the same litre of petrol sells for as high as ₦1,500 per litre in Magodo. Let that sit with you. In a country where transport is not a luxury but a lifeline, the cost of moving has nearly doubled.

And while we’re at it, let’s give an honourable mention to the internet. The crappy, unreliable, mysteriously-depleting internet that remote workers depend on to eat. ISPs have perfected the art of unjustifiable extortion. Data disappears like magic, the bad kind of magic, where you’re the audience and you never consented to the trick. Subscribers pay through their noses and get little to no value in return. The system is broken, and the regulators seem comfortably asleep at the wheel .

I’ve been having conversations.

With people who are just trying to preserve themselves in the middle of a looming crisis. Not thrive, just preserve. Keep body and soul together, make it to the end of the month. Even the 9-5 workers, the ones we assume have it figured out are not spared. Many of them now pay more than double to get home from work. Their salaries didn’t double. Their problems did.

And I find myself wondering: what does a functional system actually look like?

Because when I look at the average Western youth, I see someone with the mental space to worry about self-actualisation, about purpose. They have the luxury of perspective. Their Nigerian counterpart? He’s struggling to finish university. Not because he’s not smart. Not because he’s not capable. But because the ground keeps shifting beneath his feet. Because the air is heavy, and the light is erratic, and getting to school costs triple what it did last year, and by the time he graduates, the economy he prepared for no longer exists.

This is not a complaint about Western privilege. This is an observation about stolen bandwidth. About how much mental energy is consumed by survival when it should be available for growth.

I don’t have a neat ending for this.

This is a rant. It’s supposed to end abruptly, because rants don’t conclude, they just stop when the writer runs out of steam or decides the reader has suffered enough.

So here it is: the abrupt stop.

We’re still here. That’s the only victory. For now.

Over a decade ago, I asked my friends to write tributes for me. Pretend I’m gone, I told them. Write what you’d say. In retrospect, it doesn’t even feel weird, it feels like a signal I was too young to read. I was going through a lot. I was exhausted in ways my youthful vocabulary couldn’t name.

I remember writing a piece about suicide. The strange thing is, it wasn’t a cry for help in the way you’d expect. It was written to encourage anyone standing on that ledge to step back. There’s a reason to live, I argued on paper, even if I was still searching for it myself.

Writing this now is chilling. Not because I’m back in that place, but because memory has a texture, and this one feels like running my fingers over an old scar. I debated whether to publish this at all. I know how it will read to people who love me. The phone calls, the worried messages. So let me say it plainly, early, so there is no confusion:

I am totally fine.

The thought that finally pushed me to write came from an unlikely place, TikTok; a travel and history channel (I have a weakness for documented history) was walking me through the fall of the Roman Empire. The schism of 395. The division of East and West. After watching and scrolling past other videos, I saw a video showing the place where tradition holds that Apostle Paul was beheaded under Nero.

I paused. Rewound. Watched again.

The Bible never describes Paul’s death. We have his letters, especially 2 Timothy, which reads like a man preparing to sign off: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” But the method? The moment? Silence.

And I found myself wondering: What did he feel?

Not at the end; we all imagine that part. But in the interval, in the cell. When he knew, not suspected, that this was the direction things were heading. What did the hours feel like? Did his faith ever waiver?

My mind wandered further. To Thomas More, climbing the scaffold in England, joking with his executioner. To the aristocrats of France, placing their necks beneath the guillotine’s blade, some brave, some broken, all facing the same mechanical fall. To Anne Boleyn, practicing her final words for days before the sword swung.

What gives a person that? Not fearlessness, cos I don’t believe they were without fear. But defiance. The ability to look death in its eyeless face and refuse to blink.

Minutes later, my mind was somewhere else entirely. First year, University of Ibadan. A lecturer, a text, a line that stopped me cold:

“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.”

I remember sitting in that hall, reading those words in the anthology, feeling something shift. Here was a man, a priest, writing not to God but to Death itself. Addressing it like an equal. Mocking it, even. “Poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.” The audacity, and the refusal to let death have the last word.

Donne wasn’t pretending death wasn’t real. He wasn’t denying the pain, the separation, the sorrow. He was courageously insisting that death’s power is borrowed. That what we call “the end” is really just a transition. That the thing we flee from all our lives is, in the end, nothing to boast about.

I don’t know what Paul felt in that Roman cell. I don’t know what the thousands who met the guillotine’s blade whispered in their final seconds.

But I know what John Donne wrote. I know what people, across centuries and cultures, have discovered: that the fear of death is often worse than death itself. That when the moment actually comes, something else rises to meet it. Faith. Defiance. Love. Or just the quiet dignity of a life that was fully lived.

If you are reading this and you are in the place I was in over a decade ago, let me say what that poem tried to say, only more directly now:

Stay.

The feeling passes. The night ends. The scaffold, when it comes, is not here yet. And until it does, there is living to do. There are people to love. There are sonnets to write. There is a candle to light that might, if you let it, never be put out.

Death, be not proud.

We’re still here.

We were talking about the people we’ve worked with. The clients. The collaborators. The businesses that need us desperately but treat us like an afterthought. It wasn’t a venting session (well, it was), but it was also an excavation of patterns. Six of them, to be precise. Six truths about being a creative in Nigeria that we don’t say out loud enough.

So here they are. Unfiltered.

1. The Diaspora Discount

There is a special category of client I have come to dread: the Nigerian in diaspora. These group of people are usually and mostly an interesting bunch, who naturally tend to e full fo praises when you start the introductory call, particularly heavy on the fact that they saw your profile somewhere, or that you came highly recommended.

Your head naturally swells, as your shoulders lift of their own accord; then the budget arrives.

It is, invariably, embarrassingly low. Not just low, insultingly low. Lower than what local clients offer. And you sit there, staring at the figures, wondering how someone earning in pounds, dollars, or euros can, with a straight face, offer you peanuts. They know what you’re worth. They follow the same global creatives you follow. They see the rates. But somehow, when it comes to paying a Nigerian creative, the currency exchange becomes a weapon, not a conversion.

We are not your charity case. We are not your “good deal” because of favourable exchange rates. Pay us what we deserve, or admire our work from a distance.

2. The Fellow Nigerian Tax

Then there are our own.

Fellow Nigerian business owners, especially the MSME founders, who will look you in the eye and explain why they can’t pay you fairly. “We’re just starting,” they say. “The business needs to make money first.” As if your rent, your data subscription, your feeding, and your sanity are luxuries that can wait for their profitability.

I honestly understand that businesses need to manage costs. But here’s what I don’t think you understand: marketing is not an expense. It is a lifeline. You will spend millions on inventory, on shop fittings, on branded polo shirts for your three staff. But when it comes to the creative who will actually bring customers through your door; the copywriter, the videographer, the designer, the strategist, suddenly, the budget is “tight.”

Pay fair wages. Watch growth happen. It’s not complicated.

3. The Rise of Oga-Led Marketing

There’s a new model thriving in Nigeria, and I don’t know if I should be impressed or worried.

Call it oga-led marketing. The business that succeeds not because of a system, but because of a personality. One man. One woman. One face that carries the entire brand. They are the founder, the spokesperson, the mascot, the customer service, and the face of the brand.

It works. In a country like Nigeria, where trust is scarce and connections are currency, personality-led organisations often thrive faster than faceless corporations. But here’s the catch: it has to have a special flavour. You cannot just be a founder with a camera. You need presence. Authenticity. That unexplainable spice that makes people stop scrolling and feel something.

If you’re building an oga-led brand, invest in that spice. It’s not enough to show up. You have to be worth watching.

4. The Contract You Forgot

This one is for the creatives, myself included.

We are terrible with contracts. Not because we don’t value our work, but because we are often too eager, too desperate, or too afraid of offending. A client sends a brief, we say “Sure, no problem,” and suddenly scope creep becomes a lifestyle.

That “small revision” becomes three rounds of redesign. That “quick favour” becomes a weekend lost. And because it wasn’t in the agreement, you can’t charge for it. You can’t even complain without sounding difficult.

Creatives: remember your contract. If it’s not in writing, it doesn’t exist. That pity task you’re about to pick up, the one you’re doing because you feel bad or because you think it will lead to bigger opportunities, will not earn you extra pay. It will not earn you extra consideration. It will only teach the client that your time is negotiable.

Learn to say no. Learn to say “That’s outside our scope.” Learn to say “Let me send an addendum.”

Your future self will thank you.

5. The Low Bar of Excellence

I need to be honest: the desire for excellence among many MSME founders right now is frighteningly low.

We have entered an era of “this will do.” Good enough is the new standard. Nobody wants to stand out; they just want to exist. They see creativity as a checkbox—logo? Done. Flyer? Posted. Instagram page? Active. Never mind that the logo is generic, the flyer is crowded, and the Instagram page has no strategy.

This is not the time to join the “let’s just do it” bandwagon. If you are a founder, stand out. The market is saturated, yes. But saturation only makes distinctiveness more valuable, not less.

And if you are a creative, be excellent. Not because the client demands it, but because your name is on the work. Because excellence is its own currency. Because when the opportunity for something bigger comes, you want to be the person they remember.

6. The Two Worlds I Inhabit

I am, and will always be, a creative. It is not what I do; it is what I am. The impulse to make something from nothing, to arrange words until they sing, to solve problems with imagery and language, this is not a career choice. It’s a condition.

But lately, I have found myself in another world: the world of product.

It is a world of meetings, stakeholder management, roadmaps, and sprint planning. It is, admittedly, less romantic than the creative industry. But it also pays better. Significantly better. And I have had to sit with the discomfort of that reality.

Why should the business of making things pay less than the business of managing them? Why is the person who crafts the message often paid less than the person who schedules the meeting?

I don’t have an answer. Only a commitment: I will continue to clamour for fair wages—for myself, and for every creative who has ever been told “we don’t have budget” while watching the client upgrade their iPhone.

P.S: This rant began as a conversation with a friend. It became a list. It became this piece. And now, it becomes your burden too.

1. Elasticity

Growing up, I was taught that rubber was elastic. It could stretch and return to its original shape, a neat, predictable property. But in my journey, I’ve learned that humans are the true masters of elasticity. We can be pulled in directions we never imagined, held in tension for years, and yet, somehow, we don’t always snap. We adapt.

Look at Nigeria. Look at us. We are stretched daily, by prices that defy gravity, by systems that demand patience as a superpower, by dreams that seem to recede with the horizon. We are pulled taut by survival. And yet, here we are. Not just returning to a shape, but often reforming into a new one entirely. Our breaking point is not a line, but a vast, unexplored territory. We are living proof that elasticity isn’t just about bouncing back; it’s about expanding to contain the pressure.

2. Profiling & The Quiet Bench in Our Minds

We are all judges, holding court in the noisy court room of our minds. I caught myself doing it just last week: seeing a person, unkempt and murmuring to themselves on the roadside, and my mind, without permission, whispered a label: mad. A clean, instant judgement. I was ashamed immediately.

What makes us different from, say, the Nigerian police officer who sees a young man in nice clothes and a flashy car and instantly thinks fraudster? Very little, in principle. The profiling mechanism is the same. The only distinction is that our judgement often lacks the power to inflict direct, physical harm. But harm is still done, in our hearts, we exile a fellow human to a category, stripping them of complexity. We build prisons of perception, and we are both the warden and the inmate.

3. Interesting Jobs in the New Economy

I’ve been fascinated lately by the economy of atmosphere. The Hypeman, for instance, has become a mainstream career. The art of whipping a crowd into a frenzy with well-timed ad-libs and infectious energy is now a certified hustle. Yet, I feel a subtle disgust at how it’s been democratised into dilution. Now, anyone who can shout “Make some noiiise!” over a beat thinks they’ve got the gift. The craft has been confused with volume.

Then there are the Bouncers. I watched a team arrive for an event recently, a wall of stern-faced men in black, radiating a quiet, formidable purpose. They took their posts at the perimeter, a human barrier between the celebration inside and the world outside. I realized the profound loneliness of their role: they are essential to the event’s existence, yet they can never be of the event. They guard the joy they cannot join. They are paid to be apart.

4. Aging: The Son is the Father of the Man

I remember first grappling with that line in Literature class in secondary school: The child is father of the man. It felt like a riddle. Now, it feels like a prophecy unfolding in slow motion. Time flies on silent wings. You’re laughing at a memory from 2010, and then you catch your reflection and see the subtle etchings around your eyes that weren’t there when the memory was made. You bend over and notice a small, stubborn pouch on your belly that has taken up residence without your consent. The realisation doesn’t come with a bang, but with a series of these quiet, mundane surrenders. We are no longer as young as we think we are; we are the fathers and mothers of our own future selves, building them day by day, choice by choice.

5. The Need for Companionship

We are not cheetahs. We are not leopards, solitary hunters designed for a life of splendid isolation. We are, by our very design, social animals. This need goes far beyond romance. It’s in the shared, pointless laughter that dissolves a day’s stress. It’s in the phone call where you don’t have to explain the context because they already know your story. We are not meant to do life alone. Community isn’t just company; it’s the soil in which we are rejuvenated. So, value your friends. Nurture your brotherhoods and sisterhoods. They are not a distraction from life; they are the very mechanism of its survival.

Socrates claimed that an unexamined life is not worth living. Perhaps this is the purpose of weeks like this one, to force a pause, to stretch our minds, to examine the contours of our existence.

We are few weeks into the year. I encourage you, as I encourage myself, to take a break. Not just to rest, but to reflect. Examine the year so far. Look at where you’ve stretched, where you’ve judged, where you’ve stood guard, where you’ve aged, and who has been there through it all.

Then, gently, prepare to stretch again.

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Context: it’s afternoon in Lagos. Our dear Ikeja Electric has struck again. My workflow isn’t entirely impeded, the battery still ticks. Yet, you might know this feeling: sometimes your creativity is umbilically tied to the presence of power supply. The certainty of it. The freedom it allows your mind to wander without one eye on a draining percentage bar.

I work for hours in that quiet, self-powered mode. I join meetings. I tick items off the to-do list. And then, I take a well-deserved break, thinking about an assignment I still have to complete. My inner John, the drill sergeant of productivity, starts chiding me. Get up. Don’t spend thirty minutes on this break. My body John sighs back, reminding me of promises to stand more, to move more.

Then, another voice joins the internal debate. Quieter, but persistent. It doesn’t argue about time or posture. It just chants monotonously, “Light. Light. Light”. And it strikes me. I don’t just need light from Ikeja Electric. I need Light. Motivation. That internal spark to write this piece, to start that assignment, to create something from nothing.

light

(/lʌɪt/)

the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible.

But what about the natural agent that stimulates insight? The one that makes ideas visible?

Hours pass. The external light doesn’t come. I spend the time tweaking, adjusting, sending mails, orbiting the real work but not landing on it. Then, finally, the alarm rings, Ikeja Electric has delivered its constituency, even under the dubious circumstance of a heavy downpour. (I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels a tinge of anxiety when power is restored in a heavy downpour.) But it’s here. Light.

I resume work in my trusty space. I open my laptop, check Slack, scan my inbox. And there it is, sitting in my own mind, the phrase that had been waiting for the illumination to arrive:

Put on your light.

Whoever first harnessed fire knew light was essential for warmth, for protection, for survival against the tangible night. But they might not have known how essential it would become for our psychological survival, for the nights inside our own minds.

This internal light is creativity. It’s the natural agent that sparks from within, illuminating not just our path, but casting enough glow for others to see by, too. Think of the people whose single spark of brilliance became a beacon: Marie Curie in her dim shed, isolating radiance from pitchblende. Shakespeare, by candlelight, conjuring entire worlds with a quill. Steve Jobs, imagining a screen in every pocket. Their light didn’t just make things visible; it made new things possible.

This light, this inspiration, is a deciding factor in our continuous survival, not just physically, but spiritually and culturally. It’s how we push back against the darkness of stagnation, of despair, of the mundane.

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And it can come from the unlikeliest of places. From a frustration in a Lagos power cut. From a sigh in a mirror. From an ironing board masquerading as a desk. From the monotonous chant of your own weary mind. It is light, regardless of its source. Dim at first, perhaps. A flicker. A pilot light in the furnace of your spirit.

Our great crime is not that we lack ideas, but that we so often kill that spark before it has a chance to become a flaming inferno. We drown it in doubt, smother it with “later,” dismiss it as impractical in a world that demands immediate, tangible output.

Don’t do that.

Today, the light is back on in my space. But more importantly, I’m learning to switch on the one within. To listen to the quiet chant. To stop orbiting and land. To honour the spark, however small.

Because that spark can warm a room. It can grow into a blaze that lights a way forward. It can become an inferno that changes everything.

So, wherever you are, whatever your Ikeja Electric is withholding from you today, put on your light. Let it blaze.

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Recently, I made a purchase that required setup. It wasn’t an impulsive decision; in fact, it was an earned milestone for me, earned through years of deprivation, years of saying constant no. No to upgrades, no to fleeting wants, no to the simple pleasure of something new and complete, just a steady, pragmatic hold on the old and functional until its final breath (flicker). When the day finally came to unbox it, to hold this polished result of my patience, I expected to feel a surge of ownership, a fizzy victory. Instead, I felt a quiet void, not the bad one, but a void that screamed no enthusiasm or joy for the ‘unboxing’, for the ‘unravelling’. I left the subject unoperated for a while, just there, existing and being.

The whole ritual felt eerily still. Where was the childlike urgency?

Then I remembered something. As a younger man, I had a rule: whenever I bought a new piece of clothing, I would wear it almost immediately. The logic was darkly comical but earnest: I’d rather wear it and enjoy it now than die with it folded, unworn. Life felt too short and too uncertain to postpone joy. I wanted to own the experience, to inhabit the newness while it was still fresh.

That memory gave me pause. This lack of excitement, this muted, procedural response was not normal, at least not for me. My first instinct was to label it maturity. Yes, that must be it. Adulthood had sanded down my edges. Responsibility had replaced wonder. I’d evolved past the need for superficial thrill. A tidy, self-congratulatory explanation.

But something about that conclusion felt like a surrender. Who cares about maturity, really? In a place like Nigeria, where adulthood is often a daunting equation of survival, rising prices, traffic, persistent uncertainty; maturity can become a cage we build for ourselves. We confuse endurance with wisdom, and austerity with growth. We learn to defer joy, to postpone celebration, to treat pleasure as a luxury we must earn through suffering. And in that deferral, something vital withers.

No. I refuse to chalk this numbness up to growth.

I believe true adulthood isn’t the death of the child within; it’s the courage to own that child. To protect its sense of wonder from the crushing weight of “should” and “later.”

So I pushed back. I marvelled at the weight of the thing, the feel and texture. I began the setup not as a chore, but as a ceremony. And in that deliberate, almost silly act of attention, the joy arrived, unmistakable.

Nigeria may teach you to brace yourself, to expect the worst, to find dignity in denial. But it is also a place that understands celebration in the rawest forms. The joy is there, woven into the chaos. It’s in the first cold sip of a Fanta after a long, hot day. It’s in turning your drive home into a private concert, singing loudly to that one song that still feels like it was made just for you. It’s in buying puff-puff on the roadside and eating it while it’s still too hot, simply because you can. It’s in wearing the new shirt on a random Tuesday for no reason at all.

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These are not little things. They are acts of resistance. They are how we remind ourselves that we are not just survivors, but beings capable of delight.

So, own your child. Let yourself be excited by the new setup. Wear the new clothes immediately. Dance in your living room. Find the fun. The world is daunting enough without you helping it to stifle your own joy.

The maturity worth having is the kind that makes room for wonder, not the kind that kills it.

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This feeling evokes a greater feeling of restlessness. You want to tear yourself out of the meagre cloth you’re wearing. Your body feels like it’s being slowly cooked by none other than mother nature. You look up and wonder why the air isn’t dry yet, why your lips aren’t cracking yet; and then you sigh as you distractedly say climate change, cos why is it still raining in January, why is there no fog in the morning.

Despite the rain, the heat settles with a vengeful intent day in day out. And then your mind wanders, as it is in recent times, about how it feels like you’re doing nothing, seems like you’ve fallen into a routine where nothing happens.

What makes it worse is that even though you’ve sworn to stop saying new-year-new-me, that ancient practice still gnaws at your subconscious, and you’ve caught yourself writing stuff you want to achieve this year. While at it, you remember the diary you kept last year, and a bitter, mirthless laughter escapes your lips, because not only did you achieve less than half, you basically struggled throughout the year.

Now, you’re not alone. While typing this draft, I felt like that for a brief period, even though for me, I had a couple of great periods at the end of last year.

Stillness. This is the moment we often misdiagnose. We call it laziness. We call it failure. We call it the suffocating heat of our own stagnation. But this stillness; this stifling, heavy, almost oppressive stillness, is something else entirely. It is not an end. It can be a springboard.

For what?

For two things that arrive tangled together: clarity, and the restless desire to be better.

We chase the desire first. It feels more active, more honourable. We sign up for the course, we buy the new planner, we announce our upskilling intentions. But desire without clarity is just momentum with no map. It’s why we end up in December, looking at a diary filled with goals that felt like someone else’s, laughing that hollow laugh.

So let’s talk about clarity.

Clarity (n): the quality of being coherent and intelligible.

It is not a loud, sudden epiphany. It is the slow settling of sediment in the murky water of our minds, until we can finally see the bottom. It is what happens in the stillness, if we dare to sit in it instead of frantically fanning ourselves to escape it.

Quite a number of us believe the turn of the year is a chance to be new, a very valid feeling that should be adopted by many more, if you ask me. However, our desire for newness should come from a place of clarity, and clarity does not happen by chance. It happens by interrogation.

You should ask yourself the real questions. Not “What should I achieve?” but “What is worth achieving?” Not “How can I be new?” but “What, in the old me, is essential and what is merely residue?” The answers don’t come typed and bolded. They come as whispers, as subtle shifts in weight, as a quiet knowing about which direction to face.

The struggle of last year wasn’t a failure. It was the friction required to sand down the vague, splintered wish of “I want to be better” into the polished, specific intention of “This is the work that matters to me.” Your laughter at the old diary isn’t just bitterness; it’s the first sign of that new coherence. You now know what those goals lacked. You now sense what they needed.

So, as this vengeful heat settles upon us, do not just rush to turn on the generator or curse the clouds. Sit. Sweat. Let the restless feeling rise. And then, instead of tearing off your clothes, ask your skin what it is feeling. Instead of listing new skills, ask your mind what it is truly hungry to understand.

The stillness is the springboard.

Growth. This struck me in church while we were singing “Joy to the world”, and in milliseconds, I travelled back to Sango Ota. I was in class as a Primary 5 pupil, where Uncle Tayo, our music teacher, was in front of the class, teaching us that hymn in preparation for our Christmas/ End-of-the-year party.

Uncle Tayo that day probably did not realise that he was sowing seeds in me. We were taught the song and knew it to the point that none of us had to read or sing it from a book on the party day.

Well over a decade later, I’m in church and I remember that hymn. I even tried closing my eyes while the choir sang that rendition, and I remembered every word.

Now growth. Many years down the line, a series of good, sad, and tragic moments, Joy to the world stuck, not because it was intentional, but it was ingrained.

And that is the subtle truth of growth; it often happens in the unseen. It works in the dark, in the quiet, in the places we cannot watch.

Consider the bamboo. For years, sometimes up to five, it shows no visible sign above ground. All its energy is spent building a vast, interlocking root system deep in the earth. To the impatient eye, nothing is happening. Then, when its foundation is unshakeable, it explodes upward, astonishing everyone with its sudden, towering presence.

Ever thought about your own height as a child? You never felt the bones lengthen. You never saw the daily millimetre of stretch. You simply woke up one day, stood against the old mark on the wall, and your mother gasped. The growth was silent, but the evidence was undeniable.

How about the pain of teething; a primal, distressing ache for a baby. They cannot understand the purpose. They only know the sore gums, the fever, the misery. Yet this pain is the necessary herald of a new tool, a new capability. It is growth manifesting as pure, undiluted discomfort before it becomes strength.

We are not so different.

The years between that Primary 5 classroom and this church epiphany have been my underground season. My rooting. My silent elongation. There has been the sharp, teething pain of becoming, moments that felt like pure distress without a visible purpose. I didn’t always feel myself growing. I only felt the ache.

But the melody remained. “Joy to the World” was the mark on the wall. A constant measure I could return to, to see how far I’d come. The song didn’t change, but the person singing it did. The understanding deepened from a party hymn to a testament. The joy is no longer just in the celebration, but in the survival. In the rootedness. In the having-grown-through.

Here I am today, having experienced growth in all its shades, still experiencing growth—the unseen, the painful, the sudden, still singing. The world within me has changed, weathered, and expanded. And so the joy is no longer just to the world, but to my world. A world that has been prepared, room by room, in the quiet and in the storm, to finally understand the words.

At 10:25 AM, perched on my swivel chair, dutifully ergonomic, faithfully supportive; I had glanced down and laughed. My “desk” was not a polished mahogany workstation, but a humble, folding contraption meant for smoothing out wrinkles in fabric. Yet, I declared, this was where ideas were pressed into being. On that unsteady surface, tangled thoughts were straightened, crumpled concepts smoothed out, and knotty problems pressed flat until clarity emerged.

The piece was an ode to unlikely cradles. To Einstein in his patent office, the Wright brothers in their bicycle shop, and Christ in a manger. The thesis was simple, and I believed it: The magic is not in the place, but in the doing.

I ended with a rallying cry: “Just begin. The world is waiting, and it doesn’t care where you start, only that you do.”

Then, I fell silent.

I took more than a couple of weeks off. The road of life developed sharp turns, the kind that demand both hands on the wheel and a quiet heart. And strangely, almost poetically, I no longer write on that ironing board. I now have a proper office table, a decent, dignified setup with a flat surface that doesn’t make my laptop wobble and space for my elbows.

And yet, here I am in October, wondering where the year has gone. The journey has, indeed, been a journey. There have been detours I didn’t plot and traffic jams that tested my patience, but the engine is still running. We still move.

But I must confess something: movement is not always forward. There are times when fear and uncertainty act like a hidden hand-brake, locking the wheels. You press the accelerator—you schedule the writing time, you outline the project, you set the goals—but you remain rooted to the same spot, the engine whirring uselessly. The destination feels miles away, and the map seems written in a language you’ve forgotten.

It is almost the end of the year. In retrospect, there has been a quantum leap. But I am realizing that the most significant leaps often happen in deafening silence, not with a loud ovation.

There is no crowd cheering for the seed that dies in the dark soil. There is no spotlight on the acorn as it cracks its own shell, its struggle invisible, its eventual might as an oak tree a distant, unguaranteed dream. The bamboo shoot spends years building a root system underground before it ever explodes upward into the light. Its most important work is done where no one can see.

Maybe I want the ovation to be loud. Maybe I just want to be in the spotlight, to have some external fanfare to confirm that the leap was real, that the growth is valid. Just maybe.

But one thing is non-negotiable. I look into the mirror now, not with the brief sigh of the construction worker I once wrote about, but with a steady gaze. I tell myself this: Shifting gears isn’t enough. Moving is permitted, and at times, necessary. But the real deal, the only deal that counts, is to keep moving.

The ironing board taught me that greatness can start anywhere. This proper desk is teaching me that it must continue anywhere, through silence, through fear, through the uncelebrated middle chapters.

The world still doesn’t care where I am. It only cares that I am still pressing the words out, still ironing the wrinkles from my dreams, still building a root system strong enough for whatever is meant to grow next.

The doing continues. Even here, even now. Especially now.

One of the most memorable throwback was the time spent with Kenny. Fun fact, I have a group of brothers who have been so close for, give or take a decade. My L&S brothers who’ve become kin.

Back to my story, 2023 was the year Kenny was getting married and moved fully to Lagos. I’d coincidentally moved to Lagos too, in that period, and it was a great time to continue all the waka we did in Ibadan.

After settling in Lagos, Kenny invited me over, we bonded over food, FIFA24 before they renamed it and even playing VR games. Ol’ boy, we had videos for days, videos our children would watch with some level of cringe. I remember I was speaking with Tosin on one of those occasions when Iyanu joined us and recorded a video of me blushing shamelessly on the call.

Back to my story, while bonding with Kenny, I also couldn’t wait to be out of his lair😂, just because Kenny used to haphazardly, yes haphazardly say Zukwanike. Bruhh, that word used to pull a string in my heart, cos Kenny always said it in and out of context. However, one day, curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to check the word up. And at that moment, I had a light bulb moment and decided to design a wall paper for my phone and laptop, cos really, Zukwanike.

3 years down the line, I’m on a team call, and we’re checking in; talking about life as young adults in volunteering, and from our voices, and words, it sounded like there’s so much, so much in life like my brother, Tobi will say. And it was at this point, I remembered Zukwanike, I chuckled and remembered the moments spent with Kenny, cos Zukwanike.

Back to the call, one of my colleagues, A, talked about being overwhelmed and was on autopilot and needed mental rest. I wanted to unmute and say Zukwanike, but virtual meeting courtesy. Then, I felt writing this was necessary because I’ll need this piece again and my friend would always read this, as she hounds me to write every week.

Like my thoughts, I might not have a definite end for this piece, but as I think about the walks around Ogudu when I was at Kenny’s place, filled with thoughts, maybes, fear of the future, and all of the worries an over thinker would naturally carry, I realised that what was needed was to Zukwanike.

So, dear young adult or even old adult, you might feel you’re like a container pouring out into others, and you’re not being filled like you’ll love to be filled, for you, life might be happening back to back, however like the proverbial got that shuffles to the back before hitting with its horn, you probably should take few steps back, and even Zukwanike.

On a final note, like my friend and brother will say, ZUKWANIKE.

This piece is dedicated to friendship, to brotherhood and true friendship.

I've been stuck behind my outdated halogens for too long, squinting through my windscreen, second-guessing curves and corners. Meanwhile, cars with L.E.D headlights glide past with what looks like daylight spilling from their fixtures. There's an undeniable superiority to the technology; cooler running, longer lasting, more energy efficient. But it's not just the specs that get me. It's the way those drivers move through the world.

Some drivers go too far, of course. Full beam, in-your-face bright. Not caring who they blind in the opposite lane. You know the type, flooding your mirrors with harsh white light, making you wince and curse under your breath. It's rude, it's dangerous, but it says something: they know they can see. That confidence, maybe even overconfidence rides behind the wheel with them. They've tasted what it's like to have real illumination, and they're not going back to fumbling in the dark.

L.E.D lights are simply better. More efficient. Sharper. They announce presence without apology. The beam pattern is cleaner, the colour temperature closer to natural daylight. When you upgrade from halogen to L.E.D, it's not just about seeing farther, it's about seeing clearer. Details emerge from the blackness that you never knew were there. Road signs become legible from greater distances. Potholes reveal themselves before you hit them. Animals step out of the shadows before they become casualties.

And when you're behind the wheel with that kind of clarity ahead of you, there's a certain peace. You move differently when you're not guessing what's up the road. Your shoulders relax. Your grip on the steering wheel loosens. You can actually enjoy the drive instead of white-knuckling it through every stretch of unlit highway. The journey becomes less about survival and more about progress.

That's the thing, isn't it? Light changes the way we journey. It's easier to be calm, to be certain, when your path is lit. We spend so much time stumbling through decisions, relationships, careers, all while operating with the equivalent of dim halogen bulbs. Casting weak light, hoping for the best, missing crucial details that could change everything.

But sometimes, in those rare, grace-filled moments, the path ahead becomes clear. Not because we've figured it all out, but because someone's gone ahead of us, prepared the way, and said,“ in it.” Beyond car beams and city streets, there's something profound about having light on your path in life. About being guided rather than guessing. About moving with purpose instead of stumbling through darkness.

To be L.E.D is more than just brightness. It's direction. It's assurance. It's knowing you're not groping through the dark alone. It's the difference between wandering and walking, between hoping and knowing, between existing and truly living.

The question isn't whether you have bright headlights on your car. The question is deeper, more personal, more eternal:

Are you L.E.D?

Yet today, something halts my steps. Her posture is one of absolute surrender, her entire being consumed by something more potent than hunger or fatigue, letters flowing ceaselessly from pen to page. Her notebook, worn at the edges and frayed with constant use, cradles secrets the world around her may never understand. The content of this notebook might be lost forever, all because the educated think she’s mad.

Consumed entirely, she seems utterly lost in worlds woven by ink. Does she chronicle memories from a life we choose not to imagine she had? Is she a poet whose lines eclipse those neatly bound in bookshops, or perhaps an author capturing narratives the world around her fails to see? Perhaps she sketches dreams and aspirations society believes she abandoned long ago.

Her unwavering focus mocks our superficial judgments, and her passion defies our comfortable assumptions. Her letters might speak truths we’ve avoided, poems we’ve forgotten how to feel, stories we’re too timid to acknowledge. Her sanity might surpass ours, if only we paused long enough to witness the intensity of her quiet rebellion.

And yet, she remains invisible to us, her narrative slipping quietly between our hurried steps. Perhaps, through her, we can recognize our own blindness; the ease with which we dismiss complexities, the subtle arrogance that convinces us we understand phenomena without truly observing them. Behind every figure like hers, there lies an unexplored story, a wealth of wisdom obscured by our ignorance.

Consumed by letters in a society consumed by assumptions, perhaps it is we who are truly lost, unaware of the wealth we dismiss as madness. The stories she holds might never reach us, the wisdom buried within her words could remain eternally hidden, and the beauty of her thoughts might vanish quietly into oblivion, all because the educated think she’s mad.

It made me wonder: What did he see in that fleeting glance?

The moment reminded me of the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter, that enchanted glass that shows not your face, but your heart’s deepest desire. Harry saw his lost parents, while Ron saw himself as a champion, standing alone, finally out of his brothers’ shadows.

But this wasn’t a magical mirror. Just a window. And the worker wasn’t lost in fantasy. He looked, sighed, and moved on.

Maybe he saw the exhaustion of a long shift. Maybe he saw a younger version of himself, full of plans that hadn’t unfolded the way he’d hoped. Or maybe he just noticed his hair was messy and regretted not combing it that morning. We’ll never know.

That’s the thing about reflections; they show us the surface, but our minds fill in the rest. A five-second glance can carry the weight of years.

I think we all have moments like this. You catch yourself in a bathroom mirror at work and pause a second too long. You see a photo of yourself from years ago and wonder when your smile changed. You pass a shop window and, just for a second, you’re not sure if the person staring back is who you expected to see.

The Mirror of Erised is dangerous because it traps people in longing. They become obsessed with what could be, wasting away in front of a fantasy. But the worker didn’t linger. He sighed, a sound that could have meant anything, and got back to work.

Maybe the healthiest way to face our reflections isn’t to avoid them entirely, nor to lose ourselves in them, but to look, acknowledge what we see (or what we think we see), and then keep moving. Not ignoring our regrets or dreams, but not letting them paralyze us either.

After all, the most haunting line about the Mirror of Erised isn’t about what people see, it’s Dumbledore’s warning: "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

The worker, in his own way, understood that. He looked. He sighed. Then he picked up his tools and kept living.

Perhaps that’s the real magic.

I have drafts, proper ones, the kind that sit neatly in folders, waiting. But for days now, I’ve been circling them. I want to post. I mean to post. Yet here I am, not posting.

And suddenly, I’m in Primary 4, scratching at a desk while Mrs. Modupe drills into us: “Procrastination is the thief of time!” The words felt heavy even then. Now, decades later, the thief is still here, picking my pockets.

My mind flashes slideshows of all the times I’ve stalled myself into regret —that internship application I delayed until the portal closed, the idea I “marinated” until someone else executed it, the conversations I overthought until they fossilized in my throat. Each memory stings like a smoothly shaved scalp sprayed with methylated spirit after a haircut. I swore I’d change. Yet here we are.

But wait. Is this really procrastination? I did post something else this week. Doesn’t that count?

There they go—the two lawyers in my skull, back at their podium. One argues for the defence (“You’re human! Adjust your deadlines!”). The other prosecutes (“Liar. You’re just afraid to finish”). And who’s the judge? Me, apparently.

Nemo judex in causa sua, my law brain mutters. No one should be a judge in their own case. Then why am I holding the gavel? And why am I thinking about Latin maxims when I have slides to design and a side project rotting in my Google Drive?

Here’s what I know: You’ve felt this too. The noise. The chaos. The way you’ll binge-watch your favourite shows or ‘get busy’ just to avoid the one thing gnawing at you. You can dress the elephant in your room in sequins, call it “research,” or “waiting for inspiration”—but it’s still an elephant. And elephants don’t shrink.

So eat the frog. Do the thing.

(I paused writing this to listen to the rain. The breeze smelled like wet soil and childhood. You might not have rain right now, but you have permission to step away from the noise. Take the break.)

As I tie this up messily because some knots won’t be pretty—remember: Lost time doesn’t come back. That truth guts me every time. I’m a balding young man now, Googling hair transplants, still untangling life. But the clock’s ticking. And the frog’s not getting any tastier.

The real mystery is how Mimosa pudica, a plant I hadn’t thought of in years, invaded my mind in the middle of a fully tarred Lagos estate, far from any overgrown fields or Mrs. Ajibola’s stern gaze. As I turned the name over in my head, I remembered its Yoruba nickname: Pàdímó. (No, I won’t translate it 😂)

Then, as I stepped into church, my brain did what it does best: it swerved into pseudo-philosophy. Because if a plant can recoil at the slightest touch, what does that say about the rest of us?

The Mimosa pudica doesn’t just react, it disappears. Brush its leaves, and they fold inward, stems drooping like a scorned Victorian heroine. It’s not cowardice; it’s strategy. A built-in boundary: "This far, no further."

Humans, though? We call it “social anxiety” or “overthinking” when someone retreats from chaos. But what if we’re just Mimosa pudica with shoes on? What if our flinches, the way we shut down after a harsh word, the way we withdraw when the world feels like too much, aren’t weaknesses, but ancient, leafy wisdom? Touch me not. I fold to survive.

Imagine, for a moment, that plants feel. Not in the chlorophyll and photosynthesis way, but in the way poets insist they must. Then Mimosa pudica becomes more than a plant—it is a drama queen, shrinking from life's smallest touches. Each breeze makes it flinch, every touch sends it recoiling.

Or perhaps it’s simply nature’s study in sensitivity; an organism so finely attuned to stimulus that even the lightest contact triggers a protective response. The mechanism is straightforward: disturbance prompts retreat, a biological imperative for self-preservation.

Existential Mimicry: We Are All Pàdímó

Here's the truth: Mimosa pudica is the most relatable plant on earth. It mirrors what we do; just faster, and with more grace. Social overwhelm? Fold inward. Emotional exhaustion? Play dead. Unexpected confrontation? Pàdímó mode activated. We pretend we're above such reflexes, that we've evolved beyond flinching. But watch any group chat when a controversial topic drops, the silence is Mimosa pudica in action. Digital leaves folding, one by one.

But here’s the thing: the Mimosa pudica always reopens. No grudges, no permanent damage. Just a slow return to the light, as if to say, "Try again. I dare you."

Maybe that’s the lesson. Not just in the folding, but in the unfolding. Not just in the retreat, but in the return.

So go ahead, clam up when you need to. But don’t forget to unfurl.

After all, even Pàdímó doesn’t stay shy forever.

Yet here it was, holding my laptop, and my scattered notes. And at that moment, it struck me: this is where ideas are pressed into being. On this unsteady surface, tangled thoughts are straightened, crumpled concepts smoothed out, and knotty problems pressed flat until clarity emerges. The irony was delicious — an ironing board, of all things, serving as the anvil where creativity is hammered into shape.

History whispers this truth again and again: greatness is not born in grandeur, but in necessity. The Christ child, heralded as the King of Kings, drew his first breath in a manger, a feeding trough for livestock. No palace, no silk, just straw and the warm breath of animals. Yet from that unremarkable setting, a revolution of love and redemption unfolded. The where did not diminish the what.

Einstein dreamed up the theory of relativity while working as a lowly patent clerk, pushing papers in a cramped Swiss office. J.K. Rowling scribbled the great lines of Harry Potter in Edinburgh’s cafés, a single mother with nothing but stubborn hope and a stubborn idea. The Wright brothers, bicycle mechanics by trade, tinkered in their Dayton, Ohio, workshop, their minds flying far beyond the wooden beams of their modest shed.

Then there’s Apple. In 1976, in the cluttered garage of Steve Jobs’ childhood home in Los Altos, three men: Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne built the first Apple computer. No venture capital, no Silicon Valley glamour, just soldering irons, determination, and a belief that they could change the world. From that garage emerged a company that would redefine human technology.

Today, some of the most transformative ideas are born not in gleaming corporate towers, but in basements, coffee shops, and borrowed spaces.

But let’s be fair, some dreams do emerge in privilege. Da Vinci painted The Last Supper under the patronage of Ludovico Sforza, and Marie Curie conducted her groundbreaking radioactivity research in proper (if poorly funded) labs. Shakespeare wrote his plays in the Globe Theatre, not a roadside tavern. The setting, it seems, is not the dictator of destiny, but neither is obscurity a prerequisite for brilliance.

The magic is not in the place, but in the doing. An ironing board becomes a desk when you write upon it. A garage becomes a factory when visionaries solder circuits inside it. A manger becomes a throne when it cradles a king. The difference between a dream and a legacy is action; the courage to bend down, pick up the pen (or the chisel, or the microscope, or the code), and begin.

So here’s to the dreamers at kitchen tables, in subway cars, on park benches, in corporate suites, in garages, in fields. Here’s to the birthing of ideas, no matter the cradle. Just begin. The world is waiting, and it doesn’t care where you start, only that you do.

Isn’t that what we all crave? To wipe away the mess, the missteps, the ink stains of our lives? To begin again, unshackled from the weight of what came before?

Once, God looked upon the earth and saw only corruption, a world drowning in its own wickedness. Violence. Greed. Hearts turned inward, festering like open wounds. The cursor of divine judgment hovered over creation. Ctrl A. + Delete. A flood to wash it all away. A clean slate.

But then a sliver of light in the darkness. A man who walked upright amidst the crooked. Noah. Not perfect, not sinless, but willing. A single strand of hope in a tapestry of ruin. And so, God pressed Save instead of Delete. The story continued.

Yet mankind, like a corrupted file, slipped back into chaos. The light flickered, sputtering against the suffocating dark, a darkness so thick it swallowed men whole, choking out truth, drowning hope in the silence between heartbeats. Towers rose in defiance, kingdoms crumbled in pride, and the world groaned under the weight of its own decay. The cursor hovered again. But this time, God did not reach for Delete.

This time, He sent Light — Jesus, the Word made flesh, the unquenchable flame in the abyss. He did not erase us; He entered into our ruin and rewrote our story. In Him, the flickers became fire. The sputtering embers roared into an unstoppable blaze, spreading grace like wildfire. No longer just a sliver of hope, now, access to the Father of Lights. No more stumbling in shadows. Now, we burn.

Coda

We are all half written drafts, full of errors and erasures. We long to start over, to be free of the past. But perhaps redemption isn’t in the deleting, but in the finding. In the stubborn goodness that lingers, unextinguished, like a single candle in a storm.

God saw it in Noah. Maybe, if we look hard enough, we’ll see it in each other too.

Ctrl A + Delete, or Ctrl A + Grace? The choice is always there.