To blog…or to sleep?!

I have written many times on this blog about how I often blog when I should be asleep. This is because my days are so busy, that there just is often no other time available. So maybe I just need to accept it, or cut down on other activities…

Anyway, these are a few thoughts that have been circling in my mind, and I want to capture them before I forget them!

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– RE – an interethnic marriage.
(I don’t like the time “interracial”, because there is only one race, the human race.  Did you know that there is only one “extant” species of human being, homo sapiens sapiens? That is me, and that is also you, if you are reading this, and that is everyone you know. To me as a proud and unapologetic creationist that is too much of a coincidence, that we humans, are the only “animals” capable of our deep level of intellect, understanding and morality, so much so that we don’t like to think of ourselves as “animals” – only come in one species!  Imagine the racism if there were two or more species!  Heck, even within the one species there is endless racism, even though we are all literally the same species – so imagine how this would be compounded if there was more than one biological species?!

Anyway, the point I was going to make regarding an interethnic marriage was this: it is my hope and determination regarding an interethnic marriage, if I were to eventually have one, would be to “press through” the glamour and the consciousness of his ethnicity versus my own. All the criteria would be exactly the same, I would evaluate him in exactly the same way, as I have done and continue to evaluate men, regardless of their ethnicity. Above all, he like I would be defined by all-consuming commitment to Christ of the Bible, not what falsely passes for “Christian faith” in the world as we know it so that first and foremost he would be —-his name, a man of strong faith, integrity, character, laughter, humour, who also happens to be of —- his particular ethnicity. First and foremost, I want to engage with him based on who he is, that is his character, his innate humanity, rather than his ethnicity, and I hope that that is the way that he would relate with me too!
So hopefully the interethnicity would be an exciting additional feature to the marriage but would not be the entire marriage itself.  The main thing would be two people doing their best to love God and serve one another and the community around them.

Finally, you know, I have already evaluated and subsequently walked away from countless men from seemingly “exciting” ethnicities, because regardless of ethnicity, their character was poor or their pursuit of Christ was lacking.

Also, I was thinking and laughing to myself that the word “boring” does not truly belong in the same sentence as “Nigerian”. You know, Nigerian culture is not boring in the slightest, and I love being a Nigerian, if that was not already clear! The food, the music, the dressing, the community spirit, the humour! (Came back after writing a few more paragraphs to add “the music”, only to see that it was already there!!!) There are so many comedy channels on Facebook mimicking Nigerian practices, especially Nigerian women. As a people we love to laugh, and we often laugh at ourselves and our own habits, and what a shock to discover that not every ethnicity is like this! So as a Nigerian woman, I will often be right at the front of the queue to share many of these clips making amiable fun of…Nigerian women! Or I will sit there laughing my head off at clips of Nigerian men mimicking their womenfolk similarly shared to me …by other Nigerian women! [So yeah, I wrote the entire paragraph above completely forgetting that I myself have had a YouTube comedy channel gently/angrily poking fun at Nigerian culture! In fact, my sister and I were pioneers in this humour genre and the first people I ever knew to do this!!!]
So like so many other Nigerians, I love my culture and I am so grateful for it, and regardless of the ethnicity of the eventual Mr Huggie-Wuggie, I am confidently planning to carry my culture firmly into that marriage!

So when I described marriage to a Nigerian man as “boring”, what I meant is that the initial choice to marry a Nigerian man is not as glamorous say, as marrying someone from somewhere completely different. However life within the actual marriage would be anything but dull. And you know what?  Pragmatically I know that it might seem exciting to marry someone from a vastly different culture, but honestly some of these cultures *are* boring, and I would probably be bored to tears on a daily basis!  (“And can you imagine their food is so bland?!!!” – Possibly ranting to a family member when my husband is out of earshot!)  So in that case the initial choice to marry someone from a vastly different culture might be “exciting” but it might lead to tedium on a daily basis. You know, I’m of the general belief that every culture is composed from human creativity and ingenuity, so there would always be something interesting and captivating about a culture if you look hard enough, but lets be real, in some cultures you might have to look harder than for other cultures!

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Post about my alternative to falling in love:
Basically, this is probably so obvious from all my posts about evaluating my husband’s character, but basically I have come to the place of thinking that spouses should be chosen with the thinking mind rather than the heart.
Instead of “falling in love”, I am going to consciously look for a man who is walking in the appropriate commitment to Christ, and pursuit of Christ.  I am also going to look for someone who is compatible with my own life goals and dreams.

Here is the complicated bit: even though I am not going to be choosing a husband based on “falling in love”, I still need to be emotionally deep and intimate with him. So I am also going to look for someone with whom I could be emotionally compatible. Above all this means someone who dreams of an emotionally intimate marriage the same way I do, someone who deeply wants to be in love, who would be happy to spend hours pouring out his heart to his wife and listening, or at least effectively pretending to listen, to her pouring out hers in return! It might also mean being compatible in terms of enjoying the same emotional triggers, like in my case profound music, sunsets, literature. My husband is likely to be an introvert like me. This might come as a surprise to people who know me, as I can act very extroverted. In fact, the Nigerian culture I have praised above definitely brings out my more extroverted tendencies.  You know, sometimes I think I am actually both, or an ambivert. However my most innate personality is that of an introvert, and actually quite a quiet one at that, believe it or not!!!

And then, once we have made the choice of choosing one another based on pursuit of Christ, and pursuit of Christlikeness, and various compatibilities, I hope that we will then work to develop emotional intimacy between ourselves, and learn to talk, and learn to “lovey-dovey”!  So in our case, love will not be something that we fall into, but rather something that we consciously build between ourselves.

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Jesus Class:
Some people act as if they are inherently better than other people because of the social class that they belong to. Christians should know better than this, but all the same many Christians still do this.
As Christians, we should know that we are not inherently “better” or “worse” than other people, but we all have the same inherent high value; made in the image of the Almighty God. And yet even within that some people are worth more, and some people are not worth so much; but that is not based on wealth level or ethnicity or education. Ultimately our worth relative to one another is defined by our character. However many Christians don’t know this, so the first thing they try to do on meeting you is to establish that they are “higher class” than you, so inherently worth more. I should not despise anyone, but I have to admit I do despise this. So thus far, my response has been to demonstrate to them that actually, even if we were to use a conventional understanding of “class” I am the one who would be superior. I admit that this is definitely the wrong approach. So now my current approach is to refuse to get into those games, but rather walk away from people who would issue these subtle challenges.

So I go around, not acting as if I am better than other people, but similarly not automatically deferring to other people either.

Jesus Class is actually a genuine class involving the following traits; it is not “middle class” or “working class” but rather it is “Jesus Class”;
– Treating everyone with human dignity regardless of who they are, how much money they might or might not have
– Remaining humble and down to earth no matter how much money you might have, or how much success you might have achieved
– Living life intelligently, working hard, but not being defined by your work
– Definitely not playing class games, not initiating them myself, but also not responding when other people try to play them with me

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The real reason why you need to be honest with yourself:
so that you do not live your life dependent on other people’s approval.
I practise being honest with myself. This means that I don’t tell myself lies, and I don’t make excuses for myself. One consequence of this is that I do not need to be dependent on what other people might think of me, or say of me, because I can trust my own judgement about myself. This also means that I am not going to be overly dependent on what Huggie-Wuggie thinks of me. I encourage him to do the same so that he will not be overly dependent on whatever I might think of him.
An example: There have been times when men have called me beautiful. And I will look at them and think  – are you serious?! This is not an expression of low self-esteem on my part. I just knew at many of those times that I was looking perfectly normal, unremarkable, making no particular effort with my dressing. So in all, not looking particularly beautiful at all, relative to other women, or general female standards, or how beautiful I truly am capable of looking. That is, I also know that I am capable of making a huge effort, to genuinely look gorgeous and when I make such an effort, I’ll know I look good.

This whole point probably deserves an article on its own, and was perhaps a bad example to choose for this topic, because I have realised that sometimes men approach the women that they think are in their league. So sometimes when a man calls you “beautiful”, it is not because he genuinely thinks that you are beautiful, but because he thinks that you are in his league, or someone that he could reasonably get, and telling a woman that she is beautiful is an accepted way of expressing romantic interest. Humorously this happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I was definitely not looking particularly beautiful that day, relative either to other women, or my own capabilities. And then this man, a stranger, said to me: “You’re so beautiful!”  And I thanked him, in the most non-committal way I could manage without being rude. And then he asked me whether I lived in the area, and I said “No”, and quickly made my exit before he could ask for my number! And to be candid the man in question was not particularly attractive. Not strikingly unattractive either – just normal. And due to his age and ethnicity I bet like no man’s business that this man already had a wife, likely back home in Africa, and was just looking for a legal way to stay in the UK via contracting a marriage to a UK citizen. And then he saw me, quickly sized me up and saw in me a potential “mark”, and struck like lightning. I honestly think that the reason he targeted me was not because I was truly looking beautiful, but precisely because I was not, and I’m guessing he assumed that someone who looked like that would be lacking a man, and therefore more desperate for male attention, and therefore more available to be used or exploited.
I’m guessing he thought that the woman he thought I was was so desperate for male validation that I would instantly melt at his feet just because he called me beautiful.
Even if I was wrong about him in my initial assumptions and he did actually happen to be single and was genuinely interested in me, this sounds like one highly effective way for women to end up in abusive relationships: someone you’ve literally just met tells you that you’re beautiful, and based purely on that alone you agree to go out with him. He continues to ply you with compliments until you embark on a full relationship with him, when he finally reveals his true colours – yeah, none of that is what I dream of for my own life, thank you very much!

And then there will be times when you know that you look great, and yet the compliments are not forthcoming! There is someone I used to know, female, who studiously refused to ever acknowledge that I looked good, even though my compliments to her on her own appearance were always free-flowing. And I would just laugh within myself. This is a very candid post, but it is an example of what things look like when you can tell yourself the truth, and hold yourself to high standards. It means that you are simply not open to manipulation in the same way as you would otherwise be. A third example, and I am blushing a little here: there was a little while ago, someone male, not a stranger, who also acknowledged that I looked good. And he was a little gushing, actually! And I also joined in the gushing over my own appearance, because well, I am such a candid person! Also I was feeling a little disoriented by our conversation so I was talking a little carelessly.

The truth though is that I was a little taken aback at the extent of his praise – did he really think that I looked so amazing?! Or was he just being kind?! if I had made more of an effort, I would not have been so surprised. So anyway the third possibility I want to acknowledge is that you generally have high self-esteem, but all the same you want to go above and beyond for the sake of one particular person’s opinion. [And that particular day I did not think I looked particularly good. I know I did not look bad, but I was deliberately being very careful to go for looking normal, rather than pulling out all the stops.]  The truth is that I am hoping that the time will come when it will be appropriate to pull out all the stops!  How much do I wanna bet that at such a time he will probably say nothing, perhaps because he’ll be thinking to himself: “I don’t want to encourage her big head!”?!  As it happens, such an incident has actually happened between us before, many years ago, when a younger version of me had on an interesting and colourful hairstyle, and a younger version of him said nothing, but simply stared…  (I’d always assumed that he was impressed, but now that I am writing it out…🤣🤣🤣)

What I am going to say next is a complete digression, but to my future Huggie-Wuggie I want you to know that I really plan to go above and beyond in making an effort to look phenomenal for you!  Because of my big head which you will by now be aware of, I will secretly be happy at those times when you are so wowed that you cannot bring yourself to say anything! I know that my approach is unconventional, but in the run-up to actually starting a relationship I prefer to keep it super toned-down in terms of my appearance so that we do not distract one another and so that we can actually just talk. However, after we are actually married, my aim, my dream, my goal, is to dazzle you, always, and apply my earth-shattering, thousand per cent effort to that, to keep you completely “inTosincated”!  Within marriage I also hope to dazzle you in countless other ways that I hope you will find equally exciting, both things which can be discussed publicly on this blog and things which will need to be discussed in private (wink wink!)  (Oh my goodness, I definitely have too much fun writing these posts!!!)

But anyway, I am now going to pull myself back to this post! Physical appearance is so subjective but there are some things which are objective.  Learning to tell yourself the truth in these objective things is deeply helpful. My aim in this post is not to brag. However, the truth is that I have come to a place of applying utmost effort and determination in practically everything. I will say “I give a thousand percent” and it will just roll off my tongue. However, it is genuinely true that I have come to a place where by default I make a strong effort for practically everything. And you know, many times, people do not acknowledge these efforts, where I would go out of my way to acknowledge their efforts. Whom do I have to fall back on at these times?  My God, and myself. I need to be honest with myself so that I know when I am truly doing well, versus when I am not. This means understanding the standards for each thing, and accurately being able to measure myself against those standards. I need to be able to tell myself: “OK Tosin, I need to work harder in this area.” Conversely there will be times when people try to pull down my efforts, or give me faint praise and I will think to myself: “No, it was brilliant.”  Sometimes I will actually come out and say this.

Anyway, I was initially thinking about this post from the perspective not of myself, but of Mr Huggie-Wuggie. I was thinking that in my marriage I hope to flood my husband with compliments because this will help him to feel good and also create a positive atmosphere in our marriage. However, what will really grant him confidence is when he knows that what I am saying is true. And the way he will know this is when he has learned to be honest with himself, and learned to accurately measure himself against high standards. When what we tell one another corresponds to the truth that we know of ourselves, that will help us learn to trust one another.  This is one of the reasons why I want to get married, not so that I can have someone telling me how amazing I am all the time, but rather so that I can have someone telling me sometimes hard truths about what I need to work on, in sincerity and gentleness and grace so that I can do the work and actually be truly amazing. This is also what I seek from friends and this is one of the reasons I am so particular about choosing excellent friends.

And yet, there might be times when through pettiness, or petulance or irritability, I refuse to grant him a deserved compliment. And yet, if he has learned to tell himself the truth, and he knows that he is doing well, my failure to compliment him will not make him think less of himself. Rather, he will instantly know that there is a problem with me. In that case, he might gently challenge me, or he might subtly pray.

And this might also be the same with other people.  When you deliberately choose a spouse based on their character, then you can trust that they generally will be excellent. And yet this will likely not be the same with random strangers. So sometimes it will happen that you know that you are doing excellently, and people refuse to acknowledge it. Other times, there will be times when you know your results have not been so amazing, and yet people inordinately praise it, so that you instantly know that they have an agenda. Learning to tell yourself the truth means that you do not need to depend on other people’s opinions for your self-esteem.  Honestly, the most important approval that you will ever win is your own. Not even your spouse’s. And once you have learned the secret to this, you can stand firm on this, through thick and thin, come what may.