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. } ― Dili
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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.
To every helpful sponsor, thank you. For most of you, your personality drew us together and I prized our acquaintance more than your gifts. Yet, it remains among the most hazardous relational dynamics I’ll ever know to endeavor a non-solicitous friendship around someone with a water barrel when you are yourself parched by thirst.
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
Distant Heroes
To each of my rideshare riders – you bore me through happy times, grief, and many reflections bringing all the excitements and a radical heterogeneity of meaningful human-to-human connections with laughter, sadness, solidarity, and occasional irritation. 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 minutes conversation, left a part of yourselves, your world, and your experiences – highs and lows, with me. Thank you.
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 place, 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 hold no regrets but resolve from your fate, the reveal of the crueler realities of this world from the circumstances of your final moments was the befitting culmination for a beleaguered and tyrannized childhood, and has dealt even more losses. It remains the lowest point of my toil, 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. 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. Fond thoughts also of Sylvia Omini, and 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