Ideally
On the erosion and elevation of ideals
Dear Bolu,
The heat is vicious this time of year. Power is usually a given, but the recent nationwide outages have made it less so. For the time being, hostels are only guaranteed power supply at night, and during the day, we’re to thank our lucky stars for any flash of light we see—our collective lucky star being the sun. But we don’t so much as give it thanks as wish its scorch away. On the scale of discomfort, heat and no power combine to be at the far end. They’re a level above the sight of coleslaw and a few levels below bedtime without you.
It’s evening already, and the heat is not letting up. It’s that time when we know that power is likely to be restored and we wait, bored. Impatient. We find empty conversations to pass the time. I ask Orri about his girl. “Which of them?” he deflects with a smug smile. There’s only one for Orri. For boys like him, there can only be one, try as much as they might to hide it. It’s in their eyes, behind thick-framed glasses, a singular focus in everything. A focus that neither wears out nor wanes. It is not that they don’t dare or they are cowards. They’ve simply negotiated their desires with life and walked away with a good deal. Before them, a vision of their future, clear as crystal. In their hands, the power to bring it to pass. To sit across a table from life and lay claim to anything requires a boldness that, unlike Orri, I am yet to acquire. It is why I am all over the place. With you. Without.
We all know that there’s only one for him. But we tease him nonetheless. “The babe that cooked jollof for us now,” Murdi chips in, in obvious jest. Bibbi. That was two weeks ago. She likes him, everybody knows. Everybody but Orri. “She’s just a friend, abeg,” Orri says. They've both attended the same schools since they were kids—primary, secondary, and now university. Here too, they go to the same fellowship. Is it by choice or chance? I cannot say, but I have my suspicions. Orri sees her as a sister—that is, whenever he sees her. And he doesn't see her often, given his singular focus. This hasn't stopped her from cooking regularly for us: egusi soup, fried rice, jollof rice. No matter, it's all for naught. Oftentimes it is not that we are invisible but that the beholder is everlastingly blind.
We are not the only ones waiting, bored. Impatient. The whole Kina Hall is, in some way, partaking of the same test of long-suffering. We’re all going to pass—we’re all going to pass the time somehow. The rooms on our wing have windows overlooking the rear end of the hostel. On the other side of the fence is a beaten path that links a set of faculties to the central cab park. It’s a commonly used shortcut, so pedestrian traffic is a norm. Kina boys are notorious for calling out to passers-by from this side of the hall to tease them, and on evenings like this when boredom finds them, they find their voices easily, even amidst the sweltering heat.
They’ve been at it for a while, whistling, shouting, and singing. It is not the best orchestra you’d hear, but their song selections are brilliant. I don’t recall the last time I heard, “Girl your behind is a killer, I can see you’re sensual,” sung with such verve. And when we do hear it, we can tell what the subject of the chorus is. Murdi and I hurry to the window to take in the view before it vanishes, and we are not disappointed.
“These guys are crazy,” I say as we both burst out laughing and return to our beds. “It’s funny until it’s someone you know,” Orri says, without looking in our direction. He is no longer moved by such things, not since the revelation of his singular focus. He makes a fair point, but it’s not that deep. I’m to say that but Murdi beats me to it. “How far you now, guy? Na just normal cruise now,” Murdi says with a chuckle. Orri nods, with a smirk on his face in muted disagreement. Before long a light flashes in the socket on the wall. It is not a star, thankfully. At the same time, a loud roar is heard throughout the entire hostel as the show comes to an end. The singing and shouting fade, the passers-by are left alone, and the heat is blown away by the ceiling fan.
Oh well.
It's not a novel idea that we are influenced by the company we keep. We start to like things because others like them. We're disapproving at first, tolerant and accepting after a while, and eventually, we may start to like them. The exception to this is coleslaw, of course. It is never to be tolerated. In the same vein, we may lose affection for certain things because the people around us are disapproving of them. There's no rule for the direction the wind of influence blows, but if you surround yourself with enough people who do things a certain way, you'd start to conform to their way after a certain period.
This is true not only for our actions but also, and perhaps more significantly, for our thoughts and thinking patterns. Some things we doubt but never question because no one around us does. And it is only when we visit a new marketplace of ideas—and indeed of life—that our doubts are enrobed in a question we’re courageous enough to ask. If we're lucky, we get answers. If we're not, at the very least we get other people doubting and asking, and that’s a step in the desired direction.
In addition to our likes, dislikes, and thinking, the people around us also influence our ideals. In the first chapter of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Biff and Happy Loman express their dissatisfaction with their circumstances. Happy—whose name is ironically at odds with his feelings—reveals, “See, Biff, everybody around me is so false that I’m constantly lowering my standards”. It's an interesting observation that we can often feel our standards erode. We can, if we're honest, tell when an action nibbles at or takes a huge chunk out of our ideals.
While we have agency, it is not always easy to live up to our ideals, especially in situations where a successful outcome is almost certainly predicated on the abandonment of or deviation from that ideal. This is not a lament or a desire to live in a world where our ideals aren’t put to the test. In fact, if our ideals aren’t tested or testable, then they’re only nominal, neither worth espousing nor living up to. Our ideals should indeed be tested but as is the nature of tests, they’re not always fair.
I read a criticism of our people some time ago, the main point being that we (the people) complain about the poor state of the nation, yet it is we who perpetuate the behaviours and attitudes that contribute to our poverty. You say nothing works in this country, but you pay someone off to get your passport sorted. You say the country is never going to make it, but you’ve refused to go for your mandatory Youth Service in the state you were posted to, and have instead falsified a bogus medical report to ensure a favourable placement. You say the roads are dirty, but you throw out trash in the middle of the highway. And so on. It is a fair criticism, but it is also difficult to uphold our ideals and principles in a low-trust society where there is little consequence of bad behaviour—a place where you often have to resort to injustice to right another injustice. It’s hard to remain tethered to your ideals when the test is always unfair, and the cost of consistently doing things the right way is getting nothing done. The result of living in such a society is that our ideals continue to erode in a cycle of lowering standards that feeds on itself, expanding gradually till we have nothing else to hold on to.
The antidote to this, I think, is in Happy Loman’s statement. It’s surrounding ourselves with people who aren’t false, who make it easier to not only uphold our standards but also elevate them. It’s creating pockets of spaces in our circles that weaken the cycle of corruption and compromise. Maybe if we finally have enough people dunking on coleslaw and fostering communities where our commitment to our ideals is tested more often in fair ways than in harsh ones, the cycle would break. Maybe then our collective ideals, principles, and standards would stop eroding. Maybe then we’d all gladly serve our fatherland to the tune of the clarion call. Maybe then, we’d find less dirt on streets and highways, and fewer boys harassing passers-by. Maybe then we’d find our nation closer to the vision we all claim to believe in, dear friend.
Fin.
P.S.
I haven’t read a play in a long time so I was excited to pick up Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman as it’s been on my reading list for ages, and I haven’t been disappointed. Plays are wonderfully direct, with little dressing of dialogue. They’re great for communicating ideas without lingering on details about the warmth and texture of the chair the characters are sitting on or the oblique shadow cast by a towering obelisk on a dry patch of grass at the peak of a snowy mountain enclosed by a forest without trees. We could all use a play every now and then. And I’m sorry I was gone a while without notice.
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Write you soon, merci!
- Wolemercy
Coleslaw hate? You're a proper gentleman.