THE LIES WE FACE; THE TRUTHS WE IGNORE

25/06/2020- I had the most enlightening and humbling experience ever.

I spent about four hours trying to create a pattern for a skirt I was knitting manually; it was something I knew my knitting machine could do, but had no idea how.

After spending a lot of hours coming up with the pattern and knowing I would need about the same time to recreate the pattern on the other part of the skirt, I got frustrated and annoyed with myself. “How can I be stressing myself so much when I have a machine that can do this?” And so, I got up, prayed a little, asking the Holy Spirit to work through my hands and brain in miraculously figuring out the pattern. Sadly, I spent more hours just wasting wool, nothing came forth.

After some time, I just buried my head in my hands, tired and almost resolving to stick with the usual patterns I have always known. All of a sudden, I had the faintest idea. I took a picture of the machine, scanned with Google lens and just let Google come up with anything that could help. Amazingly, I got a link to a YouTube community filled with the most resourceful materials and videos about knitting from start to finish (which I had amazingly subscribed to long before then). For the first time, I knew the specification of my machine and all other things it could do which I had no idea it could. In fact, I had been planning on getting a supposedly “better” machine not knowing I was sleeping on one of the best and dulling on wealth. I just kept shouting “Ah!!!” as I watched.

It was hard to admit, but somehow I had just come to realize that not knowing a thing is bad, but not knowing that you do not know is the worst thing that could befall a man. For the first time in a long time, I closed my machine, packed up all of my wool and unfinished works, sat down with my system and notepad, downloaded videos and began to unlearn, learn and relearn again, right from the basics.

…

One of the most amazing things I have experienced this year, is the opportunity of watching someone teach but give replies to some of the questions asked in the most honest way possible, as “I don’t know.”

“Ah! Sir, how will you say you don’t know?”

I grew up in an environment where not knowing can make you get ridiculed or lose a job. In class, not knowing means you are an “olodo”. Senior school pranks involved asking teachers wrong questions or questions with inconclusive answers just to make fun of the them as they struggled through hours of explaining their wrong answers. So, even if you do not know, just say something to show that you know or just act like you know. Who doesn’t want to be globally celebrated and applauded? Hence through life, the pressure from the place of competition and societal acceptance keeps bringing us to the place of producing and living through the wrong answers; transferring pretense and ignorance across generations.

Just last week, I was telling my brother I wanted to get a Redmi phone, trying to explain the model I wanted.

“Xiaomi you mean right?” He asked for clarity.

“No o. Not Xiaomi. It’s Redmi I want.” (I had no idea I had just made a dumb statement)

He began to laugh and beat the table loudly. “So you don’t know Redmi is a product of Xiaomi. Is this how you will go and disgrace us outside?” He asked in between loud laughs.

And as others joined in the fun, I smiled and replied. “Well, you can laugh all you want now, because now I know better and you will never laugh at me concerning this again.”

…

Actually, it has been more than the knitting experience. In fact, I have not touched my machine in the last two months. It has been an evolving experience leading to the discovery of what other things I have been fooling myself about knowing but which in all sincerity I know nothing. One of it is what I have just started with, learning how to use this platform to get people to talk about the things they ordinarily would not share but could help others in knowing and doing better (I actually did not know about medium publication, until a rejected offer pushed me into finding help for myself). It’s amazing how much we miss all because we do not know.

Here is my conclusion: Sometimes, the answers we seek are right within our reach. We only need to start with being honest with ourselves about the things we think we know but do not know, and start from there. For some of us, it is time to shut our fears and launch out. For some of us, it is time to admit our weaknesses and reach out for help. For some of us, it is time to admit our ignorance and start learning again from the basics. For some of us, it is time to shut up and listen.

For me, it’s time to start sharing from the place of these things we do not tell which however, can be of great help to others. Let’s start from these truths.

For if you embrace the truth, it will release freedom into your lives. (John 8:32 TPT)