Identity assumes Responsibility

 Early May this year, the sun dazzling down into the room from the adjacent window, it had rained last night that could be the reason why the sun shun effortlessly and doing it more, I had thought. Saturday morning in college meant nothing to us but our brief conversation time, catching up with what happened through the week, from different classes to lecture, dress styles from people we have met and people we just sighted on the passways. We'll confabulate about family matters and friends too while preparing our breakfast, we talked interpreting sometimes in our dialect for better understanding and absorption. Our discussion was often interrupted by loud laughter swollen with words rushing to be completed midways to hit the perfect joke. My sister will often richen the joke with what commonly called "warri english" Pidgin. she made the perfect jokes and I loved it, I love Saturday morning because of our talks.

This Saturday morning of early May, we were discussing a close friend, who had left our home town where she stays with her mother, to stay with a wealthy relative of hers and school there because her father wasn't in the picture even though he was alive. Few months into her stay, she was shortly returned, when we asked her, she defiantly claimed her Uncle, the close relative was wicked and stingy and wouldn't want her to stay in order not to become better than his children, that the Uncle's wife had said she wanted to focus on her Children. At least everyone bought this story but I didn't. I had previously met this Uncle of hers, honestly he wasn't so kind but helped people who actually needed to be helped and this his cousin was one. Later we got to find out she had misbehaved, was caught sleeping with an opposite neighbor, in panic that anything could happen to her, perhaps getting pregnant, the Uncle returned her, so he wouldn't be held responsible. 

I had brought up the issue citing it as waste of opportunity, how she had wasted the opportunity of going to college as we were discussing opportunity available for young women seeking formal education in our time with recent world recognition of equality and feminism. I told her the easiness of climbing up the ladder with this recent waves of equality as the world continue to see the unparalleled importance of women, embracing them into politics, finance, health-care and many other services. When I'd cited the example of this close friend of ours, my sister had said "she didn't have someone to look up to" which was true but I had told her "but she had a past to look back to". "knowing where you're coming from should tell you where to tread, how to tread, if at all you should tread it, an insight of where you are going and how to get there".

 Identity, which was not only who you are, what you do, how you do it but also where you come from.... Where you come from, as I explained to my sister that sunny Saturday morning has a way of constraining, teaching, and affecting someone's life, infact maturing you in a sense that nothing could. When I say "where you come from or coming from" I don't mean your upbringing alone but also your past experience, both good and bad, it is what that survives in spite of everything. From the author of "Sweet Sixteen" a one time compulsory novel read for college entry exam, He said "is easier to climb a tree with an empty stomach than with full stomach", I didn't have someone I could look up to, is a setback not an excuse, like every other setback can be defeated. It is true that it is hard having a life someone desires without having somebody backing he/she but that doesn't dismiss its possibility. The identity of where you come from, influences who you are, what you do and how you do it. Your past experience or your upbringing intrinsically influences one's decision. It opens you up to become responsible, accountable, answerable for one's action. It forms the basis with which you think, talk, acts and other times draws a lucid border-line to what you cannot do, say or think.

In a world filled with many activities, one can be easily distracted and lose sight of "who he/she is", at such trying times you must draw insight from where you come from.....