I love everything about the Christmas season: the endless array of food and drinks, the palpable festive spirit, and the beautiful luxury of time with family and friends. Just like social media superstar and lipgloss boy Eni, I love the parties as well (house parties are the best, hands down). And let’s not forget the decorations! As far as I’m concerned, the Christmas decorations at Ajose Adeogun street can rival the best decorations in any part of the world.
Another reason I love this season is that it’s a time when we can really indulge in what we love without feeling guilty. I fondly remember helping my older sisters with Christmas Day cooking as a teenager. After we finished, I’d sit at the dining table with a big bowl of jollof rice, chicken and coleslaw, singing 🎵deep and wide, deep and wide🎵 when anyone asked me why I was using a bowl to eat instead of a plate. After all, the New Year, a time to make resolutions to turn a new leaf and be accountable for my guilty pleasures, was around the corner.
Generally, alongside all the festivities and fun, December signifies the end: Chapter 12 of 12. It is a time where we do a roundup of our achievements in the year, checking to see if we did good. For me, 2022 was like that scene in Hollywood action movies where everything is exploding around the actor - cars are going off; buildings are going off; there’s fire everywhere. But the hero of the movie is unharmed, doing a casual, slow motion walk away from the chaos.
At the beginning of the year we were all still grappling with the pandemic, only to be confronted with the war in Ukraine, power shortages, food shortages, and inflation as the months passed. Despite having some of the largest oil reserves in the world, Nigeria’s almost 100 percent reliance on fuel importation means that we are affected by fluctuations in the global market. Therefore, Nigerians’ shared lamentations this year also include the paradox of being an oil-producing nation that experiences fuel scarcity, the consistent depreciation of the Naira against the dollar, uncertainties regarding the upcoming elections, persistent insecurity, and more.
And then, on a more personal note, there’s the struggle that comes with the tendency to evaluate our daily lives through other people's perspectives rather than our own. Worse, there’s the way Nigerians aggressively mind other people’s business. “Your mates in other organisations are doing so much better.” “People with your kind of credentials work in multinationals.” “You’re not serious if you don’t have multiple streams of income.”
After months of hearing such comments while watching my country and the world go from bad to worse since 2020, I decided that my goal for 2022 was to earn more money. I put myself under a lot of pressure to achieve this goal, wanting to be successful to acquire material things, live an easier life, and get nosey people off my back. I worked three jobs and found myself exhausted most of the time. Yet, I couldn’t shake an overwhelming feeling of underachievement because I was working all these jobs and still comparing myself to the people I was constantly told were doing better than me.
Then, I came across something I had written in 2017 which was a reminder to myself that I can be successful at any age. In it, I used Jesus Christ as an example of someone who took 30 years to prepare for a 3-year ministry. I also reminded myself that comparison is the thief of joy. So, just like the hero in the movies doing a slo-mo walk, halfway into 2022 I walked away from all the pressure and decided to simply enjoy life.
My parents passed away close to the holiday season when I was young – my mother passed a week before December and my father passed the first week in December, five years apart. I cannot remember how we spent the holiday as a family in the respective years when our parents died. All I know is that we chose to make every December after they passed awesome. We decided to focus on something other than the pain of losing our loved ones so close to the holiday. We had delicious meals, spent time with loved ones, and thanked God our parents lived a good life. More importantly, we showed up for one another. We held each other and were there for each other. This experience with my family remains the foundation of my belief in the kind of community that stands with you, holds you, loves you, laughs with you, cries with you and breaks bread with you as you do likewise with them.
So if you were to ask me about my 2022, my roundup would focus on things like this: Jesus’ love and grace that continue to keep me alive; long evenings of gisting with my roommate or my girlfriend; video calling my friend and her baby after a shitty day; attending my cousin's wedding and dancing with my siblings; drinking endless cocktails made by my sister; joining the women of THS GRLS and being the loudest one in all of our meetings; hanging out with friends; enjoying a bottle of my favourite beer, and Asake’s “Mr Money With the Vibe'' album. All these things constantly remind me of the joys and the hope that exist on this plane.
It was not easy for me to change my perspective, nor did my life suddenly become easier when I did. What did happen though, is that I was no longer living a life led by anxiety, pain or disappointment, but instead by the cultivation of simple pleasures. Instead of endlessly chasing money, I began to actively prioritise living according to God’s will for me, enjoying the love of my family and all the people I choose to spend time with, and revelling in the joys that we are able to share with one another. It wasn’t easy, but it was certainly worth it.
What does your 2022 roundup look like?
Further reading recommended by Fey:
Society’s Definition of Success Is Making Us End up As Failures