No doubt, this piece is going to be one of the millions of pieces that would be published on various media today on the subject of what we celebrate – Valentine. The newspapers and the magazines must say something; bloggers and nearly everyone on the various social media platforms will say something, too. To say the least, the Facebook posts and twitter tweets will alone run into hundreds of millions, covering features ranging from an exposé on the heroic virtues showcased by St. Valentine, through pieces of ‘free advice’ on the ideal way to run the day, to wishing their significant others happy Val’s day. And so, I’m not sure of writing something special here, but I’m pretty sure I will be writing something pretty different.

Today, I choose to retell a story: The oldest story in the world. The story of boy meets girl and the world stops moving. The story of how it always starts, irrespective of however it may possibly end. It is quite a story, and one we could all, in one way or the other, identify with. It is the story of Pure Love, and we find its very first expression in the first man, Adam.

We may not fully under this story until we travel back in time to Genesis, the very beginning. Imagine Eden. Imagine the assortment of animals and the variety of flowers. Imagine Adam seated there all alone, the only one of his kind; how else would he have found companionship with the animals or be fully satisfied with the banquet of rich food and choicest wines. Yes, in the midst of many he was all alone; in the midst of plenty yet so hungry. He didn’t even know what to expect or ask for until God his God came to the rescue, uttering these fine words: It is not good for man to be alone.

The climax of this story resides where the woman shows up. We can at least isolate two facts here: One, Adam didn’t know she was made with the bone taken from him, for he was not just asleep but was made to sleep deep! Two, Eve’s nakedness didn’t strike any cord in him, for they didn’t yet know about their nakedness until after the Fall. With these facts in mind, two questions are expedient: How come Adam knew she was taken out of him – “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!”? How come Adam made such a terrific exclamation, as if he knew what he wanted all along?

I’m not Adam, and I surely wasn’t there with him when the presence of Woman electrified his being, but I know what happened to him: He felt it! This episode reveals that intuition, as a source of knowledge has always been at work, and is as old as Woman. It was intuition that told Adam that she had been taken out of him – that like produces like. It was also intuition that told Adam that Woman was all he needed all along but didn’t know. This intuition is LOVE. Little wonder someone defined love thus: Love is the feeling that you feel when you feel a feeling you’ve never felt before.

Commenting on this story, the oldest story in the world, Scott Hahn submitted that before the Woman Eden was only a garden, turning into Paradise with her coming. And in one way or the other, all those in pure love can identify with this oldest story. When boy meets girl, that girl that fits what only his intuition knows, earth stops moving.

Today, better than any other day, we celebrate this story, and I choose to retell it, The Oldest Story in the World, and the very story of our love. We especially thank Fr. Valentine, of sacrificial memory, for giving us a reason for this celebration and retelling.

Aside the fact that we don’t ‘originally’ choose such status as gender, race, and sexual orientation, we get to spend our entire lives making choices. ‘Originally’ leans against the backdrop that we are now even capable of altering some of those seeming natural choices via the likes of transgender and homosexuality. People can now even choose a different skin colour or identify with a different race. In fact, the one thing we just can’t stop doing is choice-making. Funnily enough, even the hesitation to make a choice is already a choice.

What is more, we appear to hold our power of choice sacred. Deny a man that right, for instance, and he could transform into a monster overnight. Even daddy’s little girl grows up too; it gets to the point where her own way is the only way that makes sense her. She’s bold to remind all those who think she was born yesterday that she’s come of age to run her own shows both by herself and on her own terms. And she holds especially sacred the choice of her ‘Mr. Right’ and would take it personal with anyone – just about anyone – who dares to get in her way.

Our seeming obsession with choice-making is both the child and an expression of a bigger obsession – FREEDOM. And this would inform why ‘self-determination’ is the first fundamental human right, which is dressed under the cloak of ‘right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’.

However, there is a big problem. And this is it: our understanding of choice and freedom is not just shallow but annoying. This shallowness draws from the fact that we have more often than not related with those concepts solely from the standpoint of pleasure, and this one-sidedness lands us into interpreting freedom as license. Cowed by pleasure-mindedness, we choose without consequences in mind; we exercise freedom divorced of responsibility. Too bad.

Be that as it may, our power of choice, which is the expression of freedom, is the best thing that has happened to our species. But to make choice and freedom worthwhile, we must construe them holistically and relate with them truly. We must not just choose for the fun of choosing; we must make informed and right choices. Yes, for a choice to be informed, we must understudy and then evaluate the implications/consequences of the said choice. For instance, being in the know that premarital sex can pave way for pregnancy, STDs/STIs and the likes, would significantly inform the choice of indulgence or abstinence. More so, we’re moral beings and imbued with the mechanisms to relate with right and wrong. And so, our choices also need to be right – not wrong.

On freedom; it is not license. The hallmark of freedom is responsibility, especially of knowing that one’s freedom stops where those of others begin. We keep and enjoy ours; they keep and enjoy theirs. Plus, we owe the larger community the duty of contributing our quota to securing and ensuring order, peace and progress. Why is incest a taboo? Why is a father not ‘free’ to lie with his daughter even if she consents; a mother with her son; siblings, etc.? Why is incest a crime and punishable by the law of the land? Of course, incest, as typical of sexual encounters, all things being equal, promises pleasure to parties involved and has no business to do with consanguinity (blood relationship). However, it holds pain to the society at large because of the negatives associated with inbreeding, which can especially result in handicapped children.

And so, freedom and choice can be guided and guarded by information, morality and community. There are not unlimited after all. I hope this is not disappointing.

While I was working on my new book, The Wonder of Books, I requested Michelle to write in what she felt, liked or loved about books. She obliged my request. Michelle is this darling jolly good fellow, who tells her truth without mincing words. To say the least, she’s amazing – in every sense of that word. Check out her journey with books here:

“Reading, as a hobby started with fiction and stayed that way for a long time. From early books like “Chike and the River” and “Eze goes to school,” my imagination was opened. And so, at an early age, I found myself wondering what was going on in people’s minds and how they saw things, and wishing they would write it down so I could experience it with them. My imagination was made fertile and my horizon broadened.

After that, I encountered fiction set in the Victorian era. Oh what joy! I finally understood their ways, feelings, politics and society. It was like being transported to the past – a world of breeches and gowns, corsets and garlands, polite talks and veiled speeches. My perception of the world changed and my vocabulary was greatly coloured at the time by words like Nay, Aye, Milord and Milady, Dukes, Duchesses, Earls and all the pomp that went along with it. I would curtsey in my mind when talking to an elder. I dreamed of a world of being so proper and beautiful. Again, I had a taste of a world that my age mates knew nothing of and could care less about. It’s a euphoric feeling.

Then, I got a little serious and started reading about subjects. Psychology was my first port of call. It was enlightening. Getting to know how people thought and why they did what they did. At the time, the tendency of developing multiple personality was so great because I had such detailed imaginations about what I had read. I could talk and parley with the elderly because of the wealth of knowledge I had acquired. My hunger to learn more did not stop there, because like a fire being fed, it continued to rage. I moved on to self-help and motivational books. I had to improve – the books made me realize I had to push my limits. Anytime I thought I had attained perfection, another book showed me why I had to up my ante. I realized that some talk could be all excitement and emptiness. I wanted depth so that the “imaginations” could have and make meaning to others.

Thus far have I come, still acquiring knowledge and being further in my thinking and understanding than most of my peers. I can say that the flavour of my personality has been greatly coloured by the knowledge I have gained from reading, because I have combined a lot of people’s experiences and imagination with mine and that has put me ahead and given me a class of my own. I look forward to reading more because it’s the most exciting thing in the world.”

Chioma Michelle Odigbo

odigbochiomalovette@gmail.com

 

A feminist is a person, male or female; feminism is an ideology, and being an ‘ism’, it shares the collective limitation of all ‘isms’ (capitalism, socialism, communism, humanism, radicalism, lesbianism, constitutionalism, etc.). And what is this collective limitation, one may ask. It is this: they are at best half-baked and at worst badly-baked ideologies; they stretch their ideals to the limits in the process of which touch with real life is sometimes lost. For instance, while capitalism prefers profit to human welfare, communism prefers human welfare to industry; neither of capitalism and communism is very correct. Of course, we’re working with capitalism because it is, in more ways than one, the lesser evil.

I’m a fan of Chimamanda’s. I like the fact that she’s a feminist and sticks her neck out to trumpeting why she thinks the existing gender structure is fraught with more negatives than positives. She first bought my admiration by her “Danger of the single story” (TED talk), which UNN’s Lionfm played every other morning of my Nsukka days. I especially enjoyed her 2015 graduation speech at Wellesley College in the US and her “Why we should all be Feminists” (TED talk). Her books – Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah – are even some of the finest books on the planet, and a budding writer like me should like her for her ‘wordsworth.’ However, Ms Adichie isn’t responsible for my feminist bent; she didn’t influence me that far. I only came to discover that we share similar views on gender and social engineering. And if you insist that a feminist must profess feminism, then we both belong to a feminism type that is unique to us: we don’t fight about it; we merely state the obvious and leave the rest to ‘your’ reason.

I became a feminist watching my mother, interacting with the women in my personal space, observing the generality of women, studying philosophy and coming out different. I became a feminist when my sense of justice, right and wrong developed. And when it did develop, some things just didn’t make sense anymore. There were things I couldn’t tolerate anymore about this whole gender stereotyping. Why on earth, for instance, should my dear sister be inferior to me – in any sense – because she is feminine? Why on earth “must” a man have something when there is a woman that could make a better delivery of the role? Why, why & why? I’m not saying this because I want to win the admiration of concerned women, but because I quite don’t get it! I don’t even understand St. Paul instructing Timothy to have women ‘shut up’ in church.

I’m a feminist because I believe in the equal access to opportunities and prestige by men and women. I’m a feminist because I believe everyone should be more merit-oriented than chauvinistic; meritocracy has remained a core value of worthy organizations. I’m a feminist because I believe in the democratization of service; everyone should serve. I’m a feminist because I need my lady-friends to be the very best of themselves and not be limited by anything artificial that goes under the aegis of ‘gender roles’. I’m a feminist for every good reason that you can think of. Yes, I preach ‘complementarity’ and decry ‘subjugation’.

Don’t get it twisted. I know enough about social engineering. I know that there ought to be some sort of roles, functions and ideals in order to achieve social order, leading to collective progress. But I also know that those that sat at table to decide the present structure didn’t mean well enough for the collective lot. If you know what Female Genital Mutilation, FGM, is, especially its four types corresponding to levels of intensity, then you’ll agree with me that that idea came from the pit of hell.

On my part, I really can’t think much of a man who dares says to a lady, “C’mon keep quiet and sit down, you’re ‘just’ a woman?” What is ‘just’ about being a woman when my very own angel mother is one? I blame the lady too who would dare open her mouth and say, “Don’t you know I’m a lady?” Am I blind? Even a blind man knows you’re a lady by the electric charges you fire at him. I especially blame the custodians of the perpetration of gender inequality who succeeded in making her think so.

Mind you, the husband is not superior to his wife in any sense; he’s only “primus inter pares” – first among equals. He is not first by right but by privilege. And the problem with every privilege is that it has the capacity to blind – and has blinded many a man. I pray for us men, that we may regain our sight, and that we may see what the future of gender struggles holds for us. Yes, it’s such a struggle where everyone gets to lose. Someone said it best: “In a family fight… there is no real winner as the entire family is the ultimate loser.”

I hate feminism, at least as we experience it in practice, for one reason: It seeks revenge instead of redress.

 “Tuesdays with Morrie: an old man, young man, and life’s greatest lesson” by Mitch Albom is as a thriller as it is unconventional in concept and style. I can quickly remember a number of times that movies moved me to tears, but never had a book done that to me until when I was buried in the pages of this great book. What is more, nothing about me, especially my values, remained the same anymore. And I can tell you for a fact that Tuesdays with Morrie is a must read.

The book is more of a report than a prose or drama or motivational. Mitchell Albom took to reporting the proceedings and content of his life-transforming Tuesdays meeting with his dying professor, Morrie Schwartz. He introduces the book thus:

“The last class of my old professor’s life took place once a week in his house…. The class met on Tuesdays… The subject was the meaning of life. It was taught from experience. No grades were given… No books were required, yet many topics were covered, including love, work, community, family, ageing, forgiveness, and, finally, death… A funeral was held in lieu of graduation… the last class of my old professor’s life had only one student. I was the student.”

Mitch goes on to give a fitting description of his book in the following words:

“Although, no formal exam was given, you were expected to produce one long paper on what was learned. That paper is presented here” [i.e. the book Tuesdays with Morrie].

Let me spare you the rest of the book. I’ll love you to read it for yourself. Buy a copy on amazon or do a free Google PDF download.