First things first, a disclaimer. This humorous but serious entry is not for everyone. If you are lily-livered, or a hypocrite or a truth-hater, please, stop reading and move on with your half-life. If, on the other hand, you are a realist and can withstand the harshest of medicines -welcome to a special reading.
Many people who are alive are dead. It is possible you reading this are actually dead, living-dead. You are dead if you endure -rather than enjoy- life. You are dead if you are perpetually bitter, afraid, depressed, hopeless and just there -absent in the mind, but present in the body.
You are dead if you are insane. By the way, this work only discusses or uses insanity loosely. We don’t here refer to our mentally deranged co-human beings walking about naked at whom most of us poke fun; oblivious that we ourselves may be in a worse state of mind. God forbid: yes, but.
An ENT surgeon, Dr Mfon Inoh, once told me that an alarming percentage of the Nigerian population is deaf. As in, you and I may be really or partially deaf and not know it. Put another way, ignorance of deafness doesn’t mean you are not deaf. Not knowing you’re HIV-positive or hypertensive cannot make not.
Insanity -or rather, mental health challenge- is like that too. You could have it, and not know. You could be doing or saying quite some insane things but neither you nor those who know or relate with you would suspect let alone admit you had since crossed that thin line. Check yourself, roll your mind over your actions and words in, say, the last three months.
Did you frequently act insanely? Did you use words a sane you could never have? Did your reaction to something someone did or said shock you negatively? Have you become too easily irritated or are you suddenly always shouting and threatening, even violent?
If your answer is yes: well, em, urgh. Fire on the mountain. I know that Nigerians like to laugh even at fire, but this is an inferno -not fire. Plus, unfortunately, in this matter, laughter can be further proof that indeed one of the medulla oblongata nuts is loose!
Even more unfortunately, I cannot help with more diagnoses. However, don’t despair. I can tell you how to battle it to a standstill. If my prescription seems controversial, you choose whether to overcome your situation or allow the fear of controversy keep you in those invisible chains?
Tough ailments demand tougher treatment. Insanity is one of the toughest sicknesses. To come out of it demands the toughest handling. If yours is not full-blown; you know, you have it but it doesn’t yet show, you must check what or who is dipping you into depression.
Are you troubled by the economy or survival fears? Is someone you cherish causing you anxiety? Is the problem your childhood reminiscences or family history and patterns? Or, is an emotional competition wrecking you psychologically?
If rejection is messing you up, go to the mirror right now and even if you always believed otherwise, smile and tell yourself how tantalisingly majestic you look. Throw a fist up in the air, lift a leg stylistically and bend athletically. Give yourself what I call the pep talk of life. And, while grinning like a billionaire, take an oath of allegiance to self, an oath of self-love, now.
I swear that I am more important than everyone else. I swear that I shall henceforth not love or worship or respect any other human being or thing more than I do myself. I swear that no matter what happens I shall never allow my heart or my head to lose traction even for a nanosecond in spite of and despite how anyone or everyone despises, ignores, maltreats, plots against or turns me down. So, help me God!
Now, you are good to go. Pick up your phone. If there are people you’ve overloved, people you keep calling or smsing, who never pick nor reach back, block them immediately. You may call them one last time to satisfy your religious conscience but waste no time to block or delete such numbers -all of them.
The benefit of that action is monumental: it is a masterkey to your mind. It gives you back control that you lost or handed over stupidly to (an)other(s). Too many people are in or quarter to insanity because the men and women they worship as God don’t pick their phone calls nor allow them into their gates, for no reason. Too many people are today too sick or comptemplating suicide just because they allowed their mind to be like one checkpoint-less mcadamised thoroughfare.
Furthermore, if money or allied razzmatazz of life is what bounds you in that melancholic cul-de-sac, tell yourself never again. Learn how to live within your means, permanently. Never overreach yourself, no matter how easy or attractive it might seem. Stop damaging your today because of greed and envy; flee from scenes or people who irritate or annoy or provoke or humiliate or de-inspire you.
Cut off treacherous company, even if you consider them oxygen or pivot or catalyst of your life. Reduce the sickening importance you attach to Facebook and sundry social media posts. 99 point 99% of the time, things are not as rosy or flamboyant as painted by social media photos. In fact, your Facebook friend dealing you insane technical knockouts in dizzying succession, with empty flashy posts, might be craving your current state that you have refused to thank God for.
Wake up and shake off the madness: if your friends grant your mental health enemies access to you, sacrifice such friends. Let me explain that: if you’ve a friend who’s fond of bringing up persons or topics you don’t like, warn and if they persist, cut off. If you’ve social media friends (99.99% of them are not) who keep posting people or stuff inimical to your mental health: use the block or delete button. Physically and virtually clean up your space of every toxicity and its reminders: twenty four seven.
Stop comparing and contrasting your life with others’. Guide your thoughts from superiority or inferiority complex, self-pity, pride, etc. Understand that there’s a small something about life that’s beyond you and all the big some things you believe you possess. Yes, hard work, education, discipline, connection and timeliness may all be grade A determinants of success but they are not classmates with grace, the one-member riot squad from on high.
At this juncture, it’s worthy to emphasise that mental health is a fundamental, hypersensitive, narrow corridor of health. We should strive to keep away 99.99% of the people we interact with and of the things we do or say from this corridor. Let’s feed our mental health with the informational supplements that for every one toxic person tormenting our life or walking away, there exist a million others out there desperate and praying to be close and useful to someone like us. For crying out loud, there are over seven billion people on this earth -never forget that.
Lastly, always remember that, in the final analysis, you need grace on your side, more than anything and everything else. In addition, that frenemies who posed as wellwishers -some of whom you have blocked or deleted from your telephony and mental shelves- will do everything to keep you in the valley with all sorts of ridiculous pieces of advice and threats. Tell them to cool down, that they’re not God. While hoping this is not too controversial for you to help yourself with, may I welcome you back to sanity and may you sanely enjoy the good life.
God bless Nigeria!
Publicise your deal-breakers (2)
… next Monday, please