Every other evening, I pass a group of men outside a kiosk bar, hunched over plastic tables stained with the memory of yesterday’s spills. Their shirts cling to their backs, damp with sweat and resolve. They are my father’s age or the age he would have been if time had been kinder. They sit with jugs full of kai kai, eyes hazy not only from drunkenness, but from something deeper: stillness.

There was a time I would have seen them and shook my head at the kind of life they have chosen to live. But now, I envy them and quietly feel sorry for myself.

They are men who have given themselves permission to be still. Men who, after a lifetime of choices — some theirs, most made for them — have opted out of the constant churn of decision. And in doing so, they have stumbled upon something radical: peace in jugs, in bottles, in beer cans.

I, on the other hand, am drowning in the banal tyranny of choice.

As a child, decisions were made for me: when to eat, where to go, how to speak. I longed for adulthood, for the imagined freedom it promised. I thought choice was freedom. Now I know it is its own kind of cage.

Every day begins with questions, and they don’t stop. What should I wear? Should I reply to this message now or later? Should I quit this job? Should I post that thought online? Have I said enough? Have I said too much?

Psychologists call it decision fatigue; the slow erosion of willpower from the endless need to choose. It is why Steve Jobs probably wore the same black turtleneck daily.

But in Lagos, decision fatigue wears a different mask. Here, the stakes of every choice are higher, often existential. One wrong turn could mean an hour in traffic. One moment of inattention, and your entire legs will be separated from your body. There is no room for stillness here. Not unless you force it.

And perhaps that is what I see in those men with their kai kai jugs, the defiant act of refusing to choose anymore. They have chosen their table, their drink, their silence. they have stayed there and they keep going back there regardless.

I used to think they were broken by life. Maybe they are. But maybe brokenness is a form of wisdom.

I do not drink — not often, and not well. I have not yet found the courage to sit in public and sip anything that might loosen my thoughts. Perhaps I haven’t seen enough shege. Or perhaps I am still too entangled in the illusion that I can out-decide the chaos. That if I just choose better, think harder, optimize more, I will finally arrive.

But what if the men are already there?

What if the goal isn’t mastery over life’s choices, but surrender? What if, after enough storms, the real triumph is anchoring yourself to one small act of stillness and letting the world whirl past?

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever get there. If I will ever be able to let go of the grind and sit with nothing but my thoughts and a cup, or a jug, or a gentle breeze. I think about this as I go house hunting yet again with options of houses, none greater than the other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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