The highpoint of my April 2016 tour of Lagos, Nigeria, was a 2-hour hangout with the incredible Samuel Okonkwo somewhere in Victoria Island. I already reported the details of that hangout on this platform some time ago; I simply tagged that day the first day of the rest of my life, an experience like no other. Ralph and Paschal were there, too, and they felt no different. However, I did save the last dance for now, and I’m pretty sure you’d like it.

I didn’t get to talk about ‘Recruitment Day,’ the longest day of Sammie’s life. On that single day, everything required of an employee of one of the most elite corporate organizations in the world was tested in a series of activities, and to even say that the exercise was very closely monitored is to say it lightly. It was indeed closely monitored, since the firm only had an eye for the very best two of the forty-something-thousand ‘qualified’ applicants. The long and short of it is that Sammie made that number – top two.

However, there is more. Sammie didn’t get up there just like that; no, he did scale a number of hurdles. The most imposing of these hurdles was a straightforward question fired at him by one of the recruiters, and the extent to which he let that question get into him gets to decide his fate. Yes, the question was so imposing that it could bury one’s spirit 12ft below sea-level. My own spirit even fainted when he reproduced the question. “What makes you think you stand a chance?” Let me quickly advice you don’t dare underestimate that question, because it is indeed as powerful as I’d earlier painted it. That question leaned against the backdrop that Sammie was the least ‘paperly’ qualified of the last six standing.

Let me throw some more light. Sammie’s other five contenders stood out for their exceptional brilliance and intimidating résumé. To further clarify this, all five had a master’s degree matching the job description. In addition, four of the five entirely studied in A-rated UK universities with even two or so finishing top of their respective classes. The one that didn’t entirely study abroad had bagged his first degree from one of Nigeria’s very finest private universities, and had gone on to bag a master’s degree in a UK university. And what had Sammie himself got? He had just a first degree from a Nigerian public university in an entirely unrelated course of study. He didn’t even finish first class or top of his class.

Now you see where the question – What makes you think you stand a chance? – came from. To say the least, the question was a legitimate one; I’d have repeated it at least thrice if I were the recruiter. And, as I suggested earlier, it could bury one’s spirit, which was the biggest hurdle Sammie was up against at that point of ‘Recruitment Day’.

But Sammie isn’t Sammie for nothing. He had come out that day clothed in absolute trust in God and sophisticated confidence in his God-given abilities. Let me quickly add: his nickname has always been Whizkid, long before Wizkid Balogun showed up. Yes, this guy is a wizard of some sort. And his reply to that spirit-burying question is as legendary as it is profound: “I have never been this confident in all my life that I do stand a chance. Your people who let me come this far know why they let me.” This answer would immediately be followed up by a comment from the very recruiter whose question had just been smacked down: “You are threading the thin line between confidence and cockiness.”

Now to the point in question: The line between confidence and cockiness is so thin that it takes only a trained mind to discern it, just like it takes only a microscope-aided eye to see a bacterium. After all, what is cockiness if not exaggerated confidence. Yes, cockiness designates one who is overly confident, arrogant, or boastful. The cocky one, like the cock, is the proud one. On the other hand, confidence simply means being very sure of yourself or something

Let’s quickly finish up with our Sammie gist before proceeding. Good to know that this recruiter was good enough to have refrained from tagging Sammie cocky, which would’ve possibly shown him the exit door, but he still found it difficult to see Sammie as just confident. However, Sammie’s answer was purely circumstantial. The Sammie I know wouldn’t have given that answer on a normal day. On a normal day, a smile plus a frank look does the job of communicating his confidence. But on this day everything was at stake, and the only measure good enough for a desperate time is a desperate one. He wasn’t going to let the legitimacy of that question get the better part of him, and he wasn’t about to sell out to a recruiter who gets a paycheck for sending him packing. Sammie knew he had to win, and he did. Watch out for one more gist about Sammie. Soon.

Back to the point in question: Cockiness and confidence. Let me give a clue as to knowing where one stands at any point one doubts where one stands – as to whether one is being confident or cocky. Always employ the humility test. And the answer to this simple question does the job: “How do I feel right now?” The cocky fellow feels on top of the world and, hence, looks down on others. The cocky person feels invincible and all-knowing. The cocky person rides on the wings of the wind in his/her mind. The cocky person loses touch with reality and makes him/herself the very axis of the earth’s rotation; they think everything spins around them.

The confident person is simply sure of whatever he/she is sure of, and can go all the way to demonstrating it. Importantly, and inspired by the humility element, the confident person concedes defeat as soon as he/she is proven wrong; he/she even laughs at him/herself seeing how wrong he/she had been all along.

I define the thin line between confidence and cockiness as sophisticated confidence. And, like Sammie, endeavor to only get that far when everything is at stake. Why? Because at the point of sophisticated confidence, only a trained mind can make out the difference between sophisticated confidence and cockiness (they are identical to the average person), and there are very few trained minds on the planet – just one or two in every town. Yes, only resort to sophisticated confidence when you’ve nothing to lose. Otherwise, you might get to lose so much, since cockiness or pride or arrogance registers as turn off to next to every human being.

Knowledge is power. This saying is so popular that the wise mouth that uttered it is largely unknown. It came from the golden-mouth of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), philosopher and former English Lord Chancellor. To say the least, the theme of knowledge was so central to his philosophical preoccupation that he lived and died trying to expand the frontiers of the human knowledge base. He actually died in the cold of winter while experimenting the phenomenon of freezing.

However, there is more to Bacon. Essentially, he set out to depose Aristotle from the very coveted intellectual position he has been occupying from the Ancient, through the Medieval to the Modern period. For him, Aristotle’s logic was not just misleading but wrong, and he took it upon himself to set the records straight. He would then come up with his Novum Organum, a replacement for Aristotle’s Organon. Don’t mind those words, organon simply means “instrument for rational thinking.” Novum is Latin for New. So, Bacon came proposing something new and, for him, better. This is definitely not a philosophy class, but the background might do us some good along the line.

Now to the idols. There was already a dominant thinking around town at the time, that the human mind at birth is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, upon which nothing has been written. Bacon disagrees, and goes on to saying that, given the function of the mind, which is to reflect reality or nature, the mind is, instead, a crooked mirror, given it’s inherent distortions. These distortions he called idols, which, so to speak, are images we hold and venerate in our minds, images lacking in substance. And so, they become obstacles to knowledge acquisition, they frustrate the possibility of true knowledge, they hold us to ransom and deny us access to substantial knowledge. Such are the characteristics of the Baconian idols.

1. Idols of the Tribe (Latin: idola tribus): Why is to err human? To err is human because there is an inherent error in the very configuration of the human person; how much our senses can deceive us; how much we can see what is not there and not see what is there; how well we can hear what was not said and not hear what was said.

You’re a worshipper of this idol if you trust your senses to a fault; if you’re good at insisting you saw or heard something even when everyone else says otherwise.

2. Idols of the Cave (Latin: idola specus): Every human being is a bundle of peculiar tastes and prejudices, borne out of education, exposure to certain literatures (books), experiences, peer influence, etc. The thing here is that the conceptions and doctrines gleaned from these sources are so dear to, and cherished by, the individual that they really don’t bother to go on fact finding; no need to verify.

You worship this idol when you can go all out to insisting that something is true simply because you read it up from a book or was said by so and so. You worship this idol when you base your judgement of what is right or wrong based on what you “feel” is right or wrong.

3. Idols of the Marketplace (Latin : idola fori): Because words are ambiguous, and because language can confuse things up, human communication can distort our understanding of nature. Have you noticed that we even have names for things that don’t exist, such as unicorn and dragon?

Those who are wont to defining things and engaging in unending linguistic analyses are worshippers of this idol. Those who peg specific meanings to utterances without leaving room for the possibility of ambiguity worship this idol.

4. Idols of the Theatre (Latin: idola theatri): This designates various philosophical systems, schools of thought, ideologies, etc., that people embrace to a fault. The problem is that they tend to interpret things from that vantage point without verification or leaving room for other possibilities. The people here are, more or less, set in their thinking.

Many philosophers and religious people worship this idol.

The Way Forward

Knowledge is power, remember?  Having known, it’s high time we deposed them. How do we do this? Simple: commit to mental improvement; improve your mind. It is particularly important that we endeavor to free our minds from these idols before embarking upon any knowledge acquisition endeavor.

We must purge our minds of these idols. With regards idola tribus, always bear in mind the shortcomings of the human senses. With regards idola specus, never forget that our sources of knowledge can be wrong. With regards idola fori, understand the nature of words and language and how they operate. And with regards idola theatri, inasmuch as we’re at liberty to subscribe to any philosophical system or quarters of thought, we should always remember that no one philosophical system is comprehensive.

For the guys in the house, if you think that to be a man is not a day’s job, then try being a woman. Even for one day. Then I bet you’d stop wagging your tongue about the purported difficulty in being a man. Aside the fact that we’ve been socialized into thinking that it’s the man’s job to make all the money, hence the pressure it mounts on us to go crazily hustling, what else? I’m a guy myself, and I’m yet to find a more pressing concern on men than amassment of cash. Truth is, with a truckload of cash, a guy is the single best thing to be on the planet. Interestingly, cash commands all worldly goods; they’re at its beck and call. And I hope I’m not very wrong.

However, not so not so for the womenfolk. From biology to psychology, sociology to economy, the average woman is in trouble. Let me explain.

Biologically. If you’re not a woman, then don’t even try to imagine what menstruation and everything that goes with it feels like; merely content yourself with the stuffs you read in books about it. If you insist on imagining, then whatever your imagination produces will at best be close to the truth. What about pregnancy and labour? Don’t even dare it. Let’s just call them hell. The only thing that makes them make sense at the end of the day is the cry of a baby. Needless to say, every pregnancy gets the woman on the death row. Yes, shit happens, especially during labour.

Sociologically. At birth we get poured into ready-made moulds called gender roles. That’s the job description of socialization. While men are poured into the mould of freedom and license, women are poured into the mould of servitude and subservience – especially in traditional African societies. What inhumanities are female genital mutilation and breast ironing! What nonsense! I know what they mean, and the mere thought of them makes me sick. In fact, the system, and I’ve kept wondering who built it, sees to it that women are alienated, that they lose their person, in the bid to filling in their gender roles. And if you’ve got no idea what this means, then you surely can’t get how difficult being a woman can be.

Economically. Thank God things are turning around for the better now. Else, women used to be denied the right of pursuing a career, to work, to earn. Of course, the man who perpetrates the denial of this right knows that real power is equal to earning power. Her career prospects are streamlined to “house-wifery,” with a job description to match: sex machine and children making factory and housekeeper. And so, the possibility of starving her of funds becomes one of the punishment options available for her. She gets to explain how she got everything that didn’t come from the hands of her lord and master, and gets to always draw up a list of her needs and wants, for scrutiny, slashing, approval and funding, as if bidding for a contract. Too bad.

Psychologically. And this is the primary concern here. There is this pathologically sense of incompleteness that next to every woman feels. It is near impossible to find a woman who is just fine, who feels great about everything about herself, who can really mean it while saying, “I’m flawless.” Pitiably, if they aren’t complaining about the size and shape of their head, it’s about the looks in their eyes; if they had their way they’d manually punch a dimple into their cheeks. Their lips, complexion, breast type and size, height, hips, legs, etc., are usually not just fine enough. And let me shock you some bit more: labiaplasty (cosmetic surgery on the labia – a part of the vagina) already shows how far this craze can go. For your information, too, next to every part of the female body part has a corresponding cosmetic surgery.

And so, it all got me thinking, “Who sets the trend, who says what the ideal is?” I’m tempted to draw the curtain on this piece here, but let me say a little more to throw more light.

At this juncture, let’s experiment something. If you’re a lady, simply try this: stand up, join your knees together and observe if a gap formed between both thighs (and you could trying using you hand to run through the gap). Now, here’s the point: “thigh gap.” That’s what the gap is called, and while it made waves, many ladies virtually skinned themselves alive to get one. Here’s the painful part of it: the “thigh gap” ideal was set by the legs of the 21-year-old British model, Cara Delevingne. For God’s sake, how on earth must every woman’s thigh produce this so-called “thigh gap” beauty ideal? There is also the “bikini bridge” and the “collar bone club” – very funny things most women aspire to, forgetting that variety is the beauty of life.

Let me leave it here, then. And I ask again: “Who decides what is beautiful and what isn’t, what is sexy and what isn’t?”

It means so much to me to start by articulating and conveying my sentiments of profound gratitude to my dear friend Ralph Abhademere who made sure I got this book; he had to send me (I live in Enugu) his very own copy from Lagos, and wetted my appetite for it with an over-the-phone review. Thanks Ralph. It equally behooves on me to thank in no small measure my long standing friend and mentor, Fr. Francis. Let me gist you what he did. He sent me a Galaxy Pro tab with these words: “It can help you do a lot.” From faraway Australia actually. Of course, you can trust that blogging only got better on tablet. Yes, to Fr. Francis & Ralph, I do especially care to say THANK YOU.

Back to the book. I’m not alien to Gladwell’s literature; on Obinna’s Udeh’s recommendation and Arinze Nwafor’s lending, I’d read every word of his Outliers. And I remember sharing the gist here. To say the least, Gladwell is a writer par excellence. His command of the English language is legendary, his knowledge of history is profound, and I’m tempted to think that his versatility is unequalled. He would end Outliers after a 300+ paged argument with the mindboggling words: The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all. Do find time to read that book. Let me quickly advice: follow Gladwell with patience, as he could roll out the entire history of the planet to make a point.

Now, his David and Goliath. That story is possibly the most popular story you find in the Christian bible; how the unproven lad, David, fell a gigantic warrior, Goliath. And whenever this story is retold, both the teller and the listener reach a conclusion that suggests that David’s defeat of Goliath is unusual and miraculous. Tellers of and listeners to this story emphasize to a fault the ‘hand of God’ in this seemingly questionable victory. In fact, this story readily serves a worthy example whenever the topic of discourse hovers around an impossible turnaround. And you may continue to hold unto this thinking until you watch Gladwell  retell the story.

And that’s exactly what Gladwell  does in his book, David and Goliath. He retells the story, and then makes us see that we’ve been entirely wrong in our perception of that story. You may wish to immediately turn to First Samuel Seventeen, this time reading slowly and keenly to see what you didn’t see before, to find what your preacher couldn’t find. If you still can’t find why the victory rightfully belonged to David, then Gladwell’s book is a must-read. However, let me give you a clue: Did you notice that Goliath was led down that valley by someone? Why? Did you notice that David only had his his shepherd staff, but Goliath saw more than one, saying, “Am I a bird that you come to me with ‘sticks’?” He certainly couldn’t see well. And he would go on to betray himself by inviting David to “come to me.” Why not go after David. And I trust you really don’t know the place of slingers in ancient battling; how dexterous they are and how precise they can be in taking shots. And that was David; he was already so good at ‘slinging down’ lions and bears in the bush.

Gladwell  couldn’t have ended with the story. He goes on to situating it within various contests, reiterating the fact that underdogs and misfits and the disadvantaged can stand up to, and even defeat, giants, elites, and the advantaged. And this exposé can already see you rising up to the challenges and threats posed by those who we are wont to thinking are cut-out for the top.

Read David and Goliath. And if you find it interesting and life transforming, a bottle of beer is just fine by me. For this referral. lol!

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If the love of money, as St. Paul instructed Timothy (cf. 1 Tim. 6:10), is the root of all evil, then the lack of it is what? By my tunic, the lack of money is as good as the love of it – the root of all evil. Period! As much as the love of money has motivated horrible things, so has the lack of it unleashed untold mayhem on those affected. Let’s be a bit more point blank here. People have watched dearly beloved ones die of both preventable and curable diseases simply because they couldn’t procure medicaid. People have lost next to everything to greedy relatives because they couldn’t afford the services of a lawyer. People have dropped out of school and lost their chances of finishing up on the sunny of life because they or their sponsors couldn’t foot tuition. What is more, the lack of money has proven to be capable of crashing the party of one’s life. To say the least, food, shelter and clothing, which are the very basics of life must be bought – with money.

And then the presence of money. There is a seeming consensus that money makes the world go round, that money comforts the present and secures the future. Of course, there is no gainsaying that money is the passport to travelling the world, playing ownership to exotic toys, hanging out with sophisticated women, acquiescing with the nobles and the “mightiests” of the land, having a say in matters of state, having a stake in the big businesses in town, being greeted obsequiously and treated to royalty in public, cruising in speed cars and living in palatial homes. Isn’t money so beautiful? Of course.

Truth be told, before British Pounds or American Dollars, Indian Rupees or Nigerian Naira, the emotion elicited is the very same. The reason is not far-fetched, as they’re basically the same passport, only with different coats of arms on them. The chase after money is so hot and the pursuit of it so swift that one begins to wonder what money is all about. Why would someone, for instance, disregard his/her health in this hot chase after money only to end up spending most or all of the money made on recovering from ill health? Why would a parent, for instance, devote so much time and energy in the hot chase after money, with the goal of providing his/her children the best possible education, and ends up been estranged from his/her family because he/she failed woefully in apostolate of presence? The whys are many. Personally, I quite don’t get it, especially how the place of money is overrated.

Yes, the place of money is overrated. And, at this juncture, it behooves on us to call a spade a spade. It is this: money is only a means to an end and never an end in itself. Never forget. Money is never as important as the good life it secures, it is never as good as the good educational opportunities it affords, it is never as wonderful as the good health it ensures through the procurement of good food and access to quality medicaid, it is never as fun as the fun it bequeaths a home, and it is never as interesting as the people it draws close to us.

In essence, be both keen and quick to convert money to purpose. As soon as you can afford something of value to your life and happiness, go get it. And stop glorying in a fat bank account. As soon as you can take your significant other outing, go get it done. And stop thinking of it as a waste or loss of money. Come to think of it, what was the money meant for in the first place? As soon as you can afford a better neighborhood, move! And stop tying yourself downtown. As soon as you can afford further studies, start. For God’s sake, that’s what the cash is for.

You must immediately realize that there is not point where money is ever enough. It is so funny that the craving for more gets crazier by having more, which is exactly why one should savor the sweetness of one’s financial status at every point. If you can afford a Jeep, get yourself one; if you can’t, buy what you can. When you can comfortably afford shopping cloths in a boutique, what are you still doing with open-market clothes? If not for religious reasons, then stop being miserly on yourself.

Finally, I request that you don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking you to go blow up your savings or drown your investments in order to feel your class. I expect you got the simple message I’m passing across: use money; don’t live for money.