Maybe we’re all a bit too grateful
For a long time, one town in Lagos was the centre of my world, and on days like this, days of thanksgiving, I get thinking about her again. They will call it many things now, but when I was growing up there, Mile 12 was quarter to slum-hood.
Kosofe, the neighbourhood I called home, was somewhere between residential quarters for the popular market and no man’s land – so landlords would build houses with tens of rooms for hundreds of people. Too many different types of people.
My first best friend was a neighbour, Solomon, a pastor’s son who was at least 15 years older than me. Somehow, between church services and choir rehearsals, he managed to get addicted to cocaine. I recall seeing him rip a bass drum open with his head during a church rally while I was on my way home from primary school. I hear he’s better now - but he doesn’t remember me anymore.
Of all the kids in our ‘compound’ – I was the only one whose parents bothered with private school education, but since we were all learning, it was a minor difference in my eyes – until I saw all my friends drop out of school one after the other.
Nobody taught me to be grateful.
My parents mentioned it, but all they really did was remind me.
Remind me that we didn’t have it as bad as anyone else – because even though our closest neighbour (two steps separated his door from ours) had a bigger living room and a brand new sound system, I and my siblings were in school.
This last weekend, I decided to spend time with my family. My shameless self still lives under my father’s roof, but when I’m not out trying to convince people I’m gifted enough to get paid, I’m in the spare flat trying to sneak a smoke, or two. Then I get high and crawl into the cocoon that is my room, never to be seen again. Until it’s time to eat.
We were about to have lunch on Saturday when a minister decided to show up at the house - the patron saint of bad timing. From the moment he knocked, the Eba started getting cold - but my father let him get through the regular struggle conversations about life, until it was time to pray.
The man shut his eyes, dove into supplication and began swimming through prayers of thanksgiving. He thanked heaven for breath, for sight, smell, for feeling, for food, for the weather, for the wealth that he assumed we were basking in, for contributions we had not yet made to the church, for how the violence in the North East had not found its way to Lagos.
It was all very fucked up. And I was angry.
But it was more at myself than anything else, we knew where this 'minister' was heading and we followed him nonetheless.
Because we feel the need to appreciate, to show that we recognise the freedoms and luxuries we enjoy and those who have given them to us, we ‘give thanks’. In church, it is through pledges and praise sessions that drag until it becomes obvious they are well designed excuses to improve the size of the church and it’s numbers.
Outside religion, it is gestures like cowering, kneeling and prostrating like very happy slaves. We acknowledge and appreciate, until we find ourselves worshipping with hopeful eyes.
Some of the people I see myself as most indebted to have told me that I’m too thankful; I’’ve been acting like I understand what this means.
When one does a good deed for me, I’m the type to say thank you, and find a way to give something back, then show up whenever they need me and a lot of times when they don’t.
But people like being appreciated, so what exactly is wrong with it?
If nothing, it rids giving of its essence; the feeling of helping another, even if you will get nothing in return.
As we thank profusely at every turn, we encourage others to expect different forms of gratitude for their charity.
That is why the minister gave thanks until my father thought it fit to shout his Amens till he noticed; we are afraid that if we do not roll on the floor in thanksgiving, our benefactors will notice and tomorrow, when we ask for more, they’ll look at us with our empty, expectant hands and walk slowly away.
I refuse to be a party to that shit.
Starting today, I’m done with thank you’s; at least until I leave home again in a couple of days.
So if you plan to give me an opportunity, or help my affliction-stricken wallet in one way or the other, just do the deed and walk away. I will say no words of appreciation. ‘Thank you’ is dead to me. You can always look upwards if you feel pained; your reward is in heaven.
