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WHAT ARE YOU THANKFUL FOR?

As the final hours of the year slide quietly away, it is only human to look back, tracing the paths of our days, sifting through moments that have shaped us. With the twilight of 2025 upon us, will you gather at a humble or grand table, surrounded by laughter, silence, or absence? Perhaps you have already counted your blessings—each one a dim light in the dark. Or maybe your mind is busy weaving hopeful blueprints for the dawn of 2026. Just the other day, I watched the children in CoComelon sing their gratitude for life’s simplest gifts—things we often overlook, absorbed as we are in our hurried routines. How easily we forget that wonder. If we slow down, just for a little time, we all have so many things to be grateful for. Even the most ordinary blessings are worth our quiet thanks. In this spirit of reminiscence, my heart swells with gratitude for more than I can name, but here are a few gifts that shine especially bright: Sanity Good health A job/craft The gift of memor...
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WHAT I’VE NOTICED DURING THIS PERIOD AND WHY THE LOCKDOWN MEANS NOTHING


There’s absolutely no big deal about this lockdown and the coronavirus outbreak. Despite my tentative unemployment and fear of the unknown, the shutdown means nothing. It is like another sixty-day public holiday. The type you get for no reason – like the collision of a few work-free days and some weekends. So that instead of closing on a Friday and resuming work on Monday, you enjoy your bliss from Thursday till Wednesday.

Then the churches are closed. All football matches are cancelled. And there is a compulsion to spend this normal public holiday at home with your family. Exactly this is what the lockdown is for me. And there are no lessons to learn anew. No "aha" moments of any kind. Life is the same and there is no newness under the sun.

The only exceptions are the things I noticed. One of such is that Zainab (my immediately younger sister) and I do not see issues in the same light. She was a youth corper in Ibadan until the family convinced her to come home, just before the lockdown took its full effects.

This girl, we would be having a discussion, and she would suddenly find my opinion repulsive. Is it possible for a younger one to be wiser? I had thought that the elderly are more equipped for the rumination on the affairs of life. But I am now forced to think otherwise.

Zainab told me the other day that I was violent. This had a devastating impact because I couldn’t have braced myself for such a blow. I used to think that I was convincing – not violent. She said I was insensitive, I thought I was descriptive. To Zainab, I was rude when I found myself humorous. Do you see where this is going? We don’t agree on anything.

I also started to notice how grown my baby sister, Aisha, has become. I was always away for work, and we haven’t spent much time together these past six to seven years. But this smallie is now actually a mature teenager with mood swings. I miss when she was a five-year-old.

I met Sir Kay during this lockdown and he died in the middle of it. He was a man I respected, starting from when we watched the night together, during the unrest that erupted after cultists started invading people’s homes for lack of security. Sadly, Sir Kay died in his sleep, survived by three children and a loving wife.

Nothing has changed during this lockdown. I have only seen how people can change – especially those you thought you knew very well. And what it means to say that nobody’s promised tomorrow.

By Alawoki Akeem

Don’t Forget to Be Honest!


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