Acknowledgment
不聞不若聞之,聞之不若見之,見之不若知之,知之不若行之;學至於行之而止矣
For your faith, that gave me wings.
For your patience, that suffered me.
For your encouragement, that was relentless.
For your presence, that was unconditional.
For your empathy, when I deserved judgment.
For your comfort, through loneliness and desolation.
For your love, when I was unlovable.
Thank you…
For you taught me the life I now live.
Dulce bellum inexpertis.
Invictus maneo.
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Special Thanks
There are people who prefer the airbrush versions of our lives, the better days, and the fair weather. Others patronize – try to box you into their ideas and presume condescendingly to know how you ought to think and evaluate yourself to fit their delusions of charitable superiority. Some of the names above identified with the most self-inflicting periods of my journey and character in an inconvenient friendship for you. Thank you for believing in me when it was not so obvious. Your names mean something profoundly personal and cherished to me, whether or not I have opted to remain in contact with you. In some ways, the person you knew and loved no longer exists – perhaps undone by the realities of life, which we all share in our forms – but I hold his remnant and know how highly he esteemed you.
Special Thanks also to the notion of Failure and Imperfections: Whatever I am today, it is because of a healthy willingness to fail in friendships, love, family, business, and life. Without these permanent failures, I wouldn’t be better at life, love, and work.
Academia
Near and Far Heroes
To second-class citizenship. “Just go back to your own country…” It is a piece of wisdom early settlers and each of the Founding Fathers should have adhered to, I’m sure Indigenous Americans would agree. It is a piece of insight that would have left most parts of the world free from colonies, forced displacement, and ongoing occupation. It is a piece of advice that many humbugs spew conveniently ignoring its application to themselves and forebears’ unlawful violent immigration and resettling of countries and continents. “…Right back at you. Go back to your own country”. Thankfully, most people will never know the misery of being an alien in a foreign country, requiring the same survival and dignity as your fellows but locked out by law from even the most menial work without a permit. Condemned to rely on bottom-feeders and shady employers who exploit your insecurity for their gain while simultaneously derided as both outcast and burdensome by other locals and popular narratives… “Perhaps you aren’t trying hard enough, or maybe there’s something wrong about you that you’re hiding – surely that’s why you aren’t productive enough to stand on your own feet”. You learn to function under excruciating civic handicap and daily demoralization. You occasionally contemplate an out from life altogether – seeing no end to a far-reaching darkness; each day as dark as the one before. Then, you reassure yourself to live only in the present moment and hold enough hope for just the next mile. Let tomorrow wait its turn. In this ordeal, as with any frontier tale, maintaining toughness and self-respect (which people will often mistake for arrogance) is as important to your well-being as other efforts that reassert a reason for living and self-determination. Dreary years out of residency status kept me in a position of neediness and frequent help-asking for an uncomfortably long time – especially for an independent person. While I resent every remembrance of that phase in my life, I wouldn’t trade the lifelong lessons of feeling alone, being quickly abandoned once discovered as vulnerable, and staying defiant to fate and adversity.
To each of my rideshare riders during the 8 years driving 200,000 miles per year over 3-4 15-hour shifts per week while bootstrapping Afterlife Licorice at the same time – you bore me through happy times, grief, and many reflections bringing all the excitement and radical heterogeneity of meaningful human-to-human connections with laughter, sadness, solidarity, and occasional irritation. For a dizzying 7-day work week spanning almost a decade of grueling non-stop work life with neither respite nor a break, you riders became both the work and the vacation as I participated in your jaunts vicariously. Sharing thousands of moments with people from all works, stations, and places of life that I could not have otherwise met from all parts of the world has affected me considerably – leaving me with no doubt that humanity has far more in common across peoples, cultures, and societies than our upbringing and environment might have us think. Only through a genuine human connection with the person next to you can the world become more colorful and vivid. Every 37,000+ of you from 150+ countries, 80% of which we shared more than a 5-minute conversation, left a part of yourselves, your world, and your experiences – highs and lows, with me. Thank you.
Robert Greene – particularly your work on Mastery. It was an enormous reinforcement to drive and focus through the earlier darkest moments of inner conflict faced with sheer excess work over punishing hours where no other friend nor companion would travel with me, often reinstating clarity and the security for staying on mission. Deunan Knute: a fictional character, and my action figure inspiration for surreal competence. Leil Lowndes: for your definitive guidance that enriched my conversations and connection with other human beings – allowing me to see more treasure in each person as well as broaden my horizon regarding other people considerably from my background. Monica Lewinsky – for standing back up and outmatching the entire world; demonstrating our ownership over our own story. Your resilience continues to inspire my approach to life. MacKenzie Scott – the moment you had the influence to improve millions of minority lives, you did.
Other
Rearview
To Francis Ezeadina Ikwuadinso, we shared a lifetime mixed with affection and alienation. Your unexpected passing left me permanently cratered with shock, and I still mourn you. Your industry provided agency to my aspirations despite your shortcomings as a father. A man of your time and society, I do not hold you blameworthy for who you were any more than the inevitable outcome of our relationship in my adult years. Still, I had tacitly hoped for closer and prouder days ahead of us reignited by success and a newfound grown-up understanding of ourselves – an opportunity to know better the person behind the Dad. I did always hold gratitude for your hard work and what must have been painful sacrifices for you, especially faced with the same pressure in my efforts as well as in observations and shared stories with other hard workers. I am saddened by how much your sweat enriched my life and how little of this impact you ever got to know before your death. We had no closure. Without a conclusion, my mind recursively searches for you restlessly in dreams during sleep. When you come to me, you are elusive and ephemeral. A brass light is cast on you and none of it makes any sense. A meaningless and utterly avoidable death, yet certain in the absence of the will to live. While I harbor no regrets but resolve from your fate, the chill of the bitter realities of this world that wielded the solemnity of your final days as nothing more than a cheap weapon to emotionally blackmail and extort pain for a lifetime was the befitting culmination for a beleaguered childhood; and has dealt even more losses. It remains the lowest point of my labor, and the darkest day in my life. Friends and outsiders bore me through the dissociation in childhood. Strangers now bear me through grief. I grieve only one. Have heard it oft said that the dead see all things. If they do, then you know my most intimate feelings towards you. You also now know the crushing circumstances that held my mind and attention captive daily as I worked for what I thought at the time was the greater good of the family. There is no guilt in the absence of malice. You once told me that in this world we are all alone with no one else. Although I continue to regard your remark a fallacy, I feel its weight ever more gravely since your passing, and I worry that I always will. RIP – Invictus Manetis (You remain unvanquished).
Remembering my grandmother, Mary Rose Mbaezue, whose soft reassurance I could never forget. To the GOAT cousins in my teen years, Chijioke and Eloka Anyaso, do miss you guys and hope you forgive me… Adult life is complicated. To Aunt Chinwe Ozigboh: there are things about our brief encounters in my late teen years that I still deeply appreciate about you that I’m sure you don’t even remember. Fond thoughts also of Sylvia Omini, Blessing, and Chineye Okeke. To dear Aunt Onumasi Okafor: deep within my heart you will always live – death cheats and memories redress. Ifeanyi Ikwuadinso: the nearest ideal I had to a big brother.
Featured Song
Thank you.
Memores acti prudentes futuri