Notes on Living is a column of considered points of view about how we are co-creating this life. What stirs our hearts? What feeds us? How do the challenges that animate our most frequent thoughts move through us, individually and collectively? What has life shown us about itself? How are we finding belonging and making meaning/healing in all this?
Here, Ujah Godwin, a creative writer and photographer based in Jos, Nigeria, shares a prayer for our community, a perfect playlist and two reading recommendations.
Happy Love Week.
The year isn’t quite new anymore and our faith in it perseveres. We hope that the morning breeze greets our skin with tenderness, caressing our misery, and cradling the hopeful glint in our eyes. That the sun bathes us in golden hues, kissing our aching bones, sending healing with us on our way. We are optimistic that the weariness of our soul is met with music that makes the happiness we haven’t felt in a while burst at the seams, embracing and giving life to our spirits. We’ve envisioned all the money to be made, the experiences to be had. We’ve seen all the ways in which we would fall in and out of love, all the memories that will unravel into our lives, into shared history, into the index of a building language. The travelling to be done, wandering the corners of a new city, hand in hand with a lover, or a friend, a parent, an offspring. Birthdays that will be celebrated. The ever-increasing to-be-read pile, all the words and stories that will find us, at the various points we may need them. All the dresses to be worn, the outfits in which we would rival the sun, and light up the moon.
There may come the house rent or the tuition fee that would be due in two or four months, and then we would have to watch and account for every penny that leaves the pocket, just so we make it to month’s end. The anniversary of a friend’s passing in seven months, and the grief that holds your body, almost sucking the air from inside you. The plans that may fall through, hopes dashed against the wall, shards of expectation at your feet. Love lost, or morphing into something else you weren’t ready for. Connections may run their course, and difficult conversations become unbearable. Your health may decide to fail you, and there may be no words that will make it feel better, no kisses enough to heal you. Loneliness may pitch a tent in your house to keep your sadness and misery company. When you extend grace to another, harshness may return to you. Love that may find you unable to make it a home.
Time will pass, and the sun will rise and fall, the wind taking with it the dust that clothed your feet. It will be this, or that. Here, or there. An undulating terrain to be traversed. Sometimes, what we might need is to give up, go to sleep. Other times, we might find the resilience in our bones and give it one more try. In the end, all we can do is do what we can. One day at a time.
On the days joy finds us this year, I hope that we cradle it, and let it seep into the crevices of our beings, where the sadness lives. That we let the sun sit on our skin, and learn the hardness of our bones, the toughness of our muscles, and the softness of our skin. On the days the music finds us, I hope that we dance until all that is left inside of us is a lightness that carries us, making our steps firmer On the days love finds us, be it in the embrace of a lover, whose lips have found their way back to ours, or in the company of a friend whose laughter reminds us of all the good that comes with bearing witness, or in running our fingers through the fur of your beloved pet, warmth emanating from their eyes. I hope we remain present. I hope that whenever love shows its face, even in the way your mother holds your hand through a pain that seeks to destroy you, I hope that you make it a home. I hope that you let happiness take its sweet, sweet time.
On the days when grief seeks to bury you, and sadness tries to dim the light in your eyes, I hope that you find hands to hold, and hearts with rooms for you to stay the night. And, when struggle and strife come, knocking down your door, I hope that you have the strength to resist and protect your joy. That when disappointment introduces your jaw to the sand, I hope you extend yourself an outstretched hand, and lift yourself above all that threatens to become weights at your feet. I hope that when the world becomes frantic, that we find pockets of peace, that tranquility finds our tongues.
I hope that we all take it one day at a time, meandering through the moments in the best ways we can. And, when we feel defeat, that we take it all, in stride, knowing that it is a long year, and all we can do, is do what we can.
- Ujah Godwin, February 2024
Listening: moonlit living room
Great for a night of dancing, with a lover’s hand in yours, or while yearning for one.
Reading:
This article on the rewards of being single https://time.com/6342853/single-life-rewards-essay/?s=09,
and Najma Sharif’s newsletter on grief and being ungovernable