I’ve been thinking a lot about luck lately...

This piece is best read whilst listening to "Reverie" by Isaac Gracie - https://open.spotify.com/track/56iI6wwW6Lm2DzRxl0TFqH?si=ae7487381b684922

I was always an optimist.

I believed that good came to those who waited long enough to embrace it. I was raised to believe that what is yours comes to you eventually. I stuck with that belief for as long as I can remember.

But then you grow older and one deathly blow from life after another, you begin to reevaluate your beliefs. You begin to ask questions like: when things work out for me, was it because I was patient, or did I get lucky?

I’ve been thinking a lot about luck lately. I’ve been pondering more so on the lottery of life. Especially now with the rising rates of insecurity and the number of deaths that we’ve either heard about or had the unfortunate privilege to witness, no thanks to the roaming delinquents that we called bandits [read: terrorists].

I’ve thought about what separates me from the school teacher who was slain: a cutlass put to his throat and his life taken cruelly.

In 2016, after my NYSC and having just moved into a face-me-I-slap-you apartment in Orelope, I lost my job at a now defunct affiliate marketing startup company.

It was my first time living alone. I was excited but also scared. I had no money. No job, and I’d only manage to get the apartment thanks to savings from NYSC. After months of searching, I had been told to do the groundwork and actually go to offices to apply.

I did as instructed and for two weeks I walked the streets of Egbeda, Gbagada and Ikeja submitting my printed resume to offices in hopes of getting at least a call back. I also looked close to home and one of the places I had reached out to was a lowcost Private School about 10 mins away from where I lived.

I figured with a degree in Mathematics, I could at least teach the basics to Junior Secondary classes. So, I went there. They gave us an aptitude test, and I passed. And then I was told the remuneration.

I was going to be paid fifteen thousand naira monthly for a start and by month six, based on my performance, I’d be bumped up to twenty-five thousand naira.

My pride was hurt, but I was tempted.

How could I not be? I had been applying day and night, and nothing was happening. Plus, I reckoned if I took the job, I could use it to bide my time while I continued pursuing my dream job (whatever that was).

So, hurt pride and all, I went home that day with a decision to take the job and see where life takes me.

But then I had someone I was close to, like a bigger brother of sort. Back then he was all I had. All my online applications were done mostly using his WiFi. I remember how every day I’d trek from my apartment in Orelope to his house in Shasha with the hopes of using his internet to apply for more roles. And on most days, I’d also be guaranteed a meal.

However, when I informed him of my decision to take the job, he shut me down immediately. His argument: I was falling into a complacency trap. He explained to me that as humans we had an uncanny way of underestimating the true effort it takes to do things we consider seemingly small jobs.

He pointed out to me that I was seeking the easiest way out because of a minor inconvenience. I didn’t see not having a job as a minor incovenience, but I didn’t argue. I listened. The next day, I went back to the school and declined the offer.

I would spend another five months looking for a job, only sustained by handouts and the kindness of a bigger brother and his extended family who turned mine.

Now, none of this is to say I was special. Nevertheless, I do think about that school teacher who was slain in the same way I imagine he may have had a moment in his life like mine when he had to choose a path.

What if he could have picked a different path?

What if on the day he was to accept the role, someone spoke to him and told him about the complacency trap he was walking into? That taking that job wasn’t the best option even though it looked convenient.

What if he had then listened and instead waited it out a little more, five, six, eight months, a year, two years, or maybe chosen a different vocation and became a furniture maker?

What if years down the line, in the very moment when in this reality where he was being slaughtered, in the other one he was in a comfortable home with people who loved him, eating a meal and worrying about the next day at his office or his workshop, delivering on a client’s request.

Again, I’m not special, which in a roundabout way is the point. He could have easily been me and I, him. There’s a world where maybe we might have crossed paths. What determines how his life turned out and tragically ended and how mine’s going?

This is not to say anyone’s life is easy.

And even as I type this, on most days, I don’t feel lucky. Yet I am here and he isn’t. And regardless of lucky, no one deserves to have the sum of their choices be one that ends in the way his did.

I hope in the alternate reality, he’s having the best life.

RIP Mr. Michael Oyedokun!

#BringBackOurChildren