Backdated: 31 December 2021
I wanted to give this piece another home. I wrote it over two years ago and a lot has changed since then. I’m happy with my growth even if it’s not at the pace I wished for or exactly as I imagined it would be. Growth is growth, and sometimes it retrogrades before leaping ahead.
I’ve been thinking about my upbringing a lot, especially religion wise. When it comes to reclaiming African histories and cultures, there seems to be a debate on whether we should drop all of the new in favor of the old. Some people say we should completely do away with Christianity because it has only ever been used to control us.
Other rightfully point out that the religion (but not actually the version that’s done harm) has been on our continent for longer than it’s been on the colonizers’.
Regardless of the above, I believe that religions should be useful. They should add to your life and help you on your way to enlightenment or wherever you’re trying to go. Whether you remain in your birth religion or leave it, you learn something from your upbringing that can be of use to you in some way, and that’s what I would rather focus on.
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The sun is setting on 2021 and I am setting the sun on the part of me that’s holding me back. I’m letting her retire and take a back seat in this game of life where all she wants to do is play along leisurely and not even try to complete the story mode whereas I want to enjoy the whole game and mod and use cheat codes. Neither of us wants to play it exactly as designed, but at least I want to thrive and not just exist.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
All my original writings before [I started blogging] were based on religious theory - continuations of thoughts I began during bible study - and fiction pieces. I also wrote a lot on gender and history. Of the four topics, religion and gender are (were?) too controversial (or perhaps polarizing is a better word?) for me to consider blogging about but they also have a lot more credible people working in them to administer correct information. Whereas Igbo history, while it has many scholars with groundbreaking work has just as many ppl pushing out misinformation. Since I am a historian I felt more comfortable focusing on that. However I still managed to hold myself back with all sorts of excuses that exist only to limit me and keep me from writing exactly what I wish to write.
Not to mention I force myself to straddle a line of approval. I desire to write what I think other people need or want instead of just being myself. I often don’t know who I am - it’s my greatest issue in life that I’m finally ready to tackle and I’ll do so with the idea that started nweobi; Jacob vs Essau.
It’s like that quote, “in me are two wolves…,”? In me is a Jacob and an Esau. Throughout the history of the world there has been this prevalent trope of the mysticism of twins and duality. Whether it be real twins or the Gemini constellation or even doppelgängers and evil twins. In West Africa we have the Igbo Ejima and the Yoruba Ibeji among many others. The former are prosecuted and killed while the latter are praised and celebrated, but they are both omens.
In literature and other media, when twins or doppelgänger are introduced they are usually meant to represent the warring sides of individuals themselves. Them versus their supposed darker half. Confronting their inner demons. However I think it’s more than that.
With Jacob and Esau, they are both flawed; they both sin and they both suffer for those actions in different ways. However it’s explicitly stated that God loves one and hates the other. God? The supreme being of love and justice? Despises one of his own creations???? This baffled my dad and conflicted him, which got me thinking.
How and why?
Well let’s look at it this way. Esau gave up his birthright, his God-given blessing, for a bowl of stew. Yes he was fatigued, but he wasn’t dying. And then he regretted it and hated his brother for taking the blessing of the first born when he himself gave it away for food. He has no foresight or conviction. He wanted it because he felt it was his place. He was content in life, only hungry for the next meal or hunt. Where as Jacob was a fighter. He’s been struggling since the womb looking for ways to gain blessing and success.
Maybe we can look at it as God hating Esau’s complacency. Why should we not do all we can to live the life we desire? Why be lazy about it? Why not cherish it? He was angry he lost the blessing but why didn’t he cherish it enough to wait for his mother to cook or even just try and cook or roast something on his own? Why walk into that obvious fire and then hate the one who set it?
When I look at myself I see that I’m living like Esau when I should be living like Jacob. I want the best out of life but I’m so so disgustingly complacent. I don’t want to step out of my comfort zone and I don’t want to do what I need to do. Yet I pine and anger when things don’t go the way I want them to. Isn’t that worthy of hate? I despise that side of me.
However, I don’t think it needs to be killed. Killing your evil half or your doppelgänger is a pretty common trope, but I don’t think that’s the solution. After all it is still a part of you. You have to learn to live with yourself and manage yourself. The solution to duality isn’t to destroy a half it’s to regulate.
So , with the setting of this last sun in 2021, I lay aside the side of me that is an Esau and I will begin to nurture the side that is a Jacob. I say goodbye to the old complacent me, I wish her well and hope to reconcile with her one day in the future as Jacob and Esau did, but as of now we walk separate paths.
Goodbye 2021 - you were wretched but you’ve taught me a lot, so I can’t say that I hated you.
This year I will be reflecting more on my relationship with spirituality, dipping back into fiction writing, and documenting my attempts at living an embodied life. Some of that will be done over at Hot Literati where I’ll be a contributing writer for the year.
Here’s to a 2024 full of joie de vivre~