Lots of people are amazed by all that they recall from their childhood. I know I am. There are days I even yearn to cuddle with bits and pieces of my past, a haven from the monstrosity right outside my windows.
I spent most of my childhood in a village. Vivid is the disorderly, kola-nut-eating teeth on the face of my grandfather as he smiles at me, or the anthem of his dark forehead as he sits in the palatial entrance corridor of his populated home, cross-legged, reading the Qur’an. I can still feel his gaze sending ripples through my body — his equivalent of "don't disturb me, boy" — and the deep, mellifluous voice in which he recites the book still penetrates to my core. I never met a more devout Muslim.
I remember following my uncles to the farms (plural) to watch them work. We’d ride in a cattle cart led by two glum bulls through the dirt roads connecting the small town to its outskirts. It was very early morning; everyone was grumpy but this keen city boy who couldn’t contain himself. My uncles would work for hours and I would help with as much as my weak arms could handle. I’d get tired and lay on under a nearby tree, listening to the on-repeat music: an ear-splitting sound of nothingness.
Other days, I'd stay and play and fight with my cousins. When the butcher's hungry dogs snarled and chased us through the local market, which happened more often than it should have, or over the fence of the one formal school in the village, we'd flee for our lives. Even now, I can see myself frothing with energy, an impulsive kid in the right company to awaken his naughtiest traits.
I’d sprint with no shoes on my feet and the frictious breeze would cast me beneath its spell. Under the scorching sun, my toes would burn. Still, I would press on. With my heart pounding, I would whisper promises, mostly to myself, that once I make it home, I would cause no trouble ever again.
I was only kidding myself, of course. I risked having my limbs torn off by those angry, unpettable beasts so many times that it is a wonder I survived to write this. This was a life-and-death situation, more or less. Testosterone is a curse, kids.
It is usually a fun couple of weeks until the holiday ends. My mother and I would then return to our life in Kano, which, though adventuresome, is also filled with endless school assignments and less thrilling dog chases.
The human race has seen many wonders, but when it comes to making sense of time and how (or why) its complications keep slipping through our fingers, everything turns into a conundrum.
Technological advancements enabled us to predict future events. The sky spectacle that is the formation of the Milkdromeda galaxy, offspring to the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, scheduled in roughly 4.5 billion years from now, is but an example.
We had also comprehended past events; the billions and billions of years on the cosmic timeline of our vast, vast (really huuuugee) observable universe, from the big bang to the last few seconds when Homo Sapiens displaced their immediate cousins, making us the most powerful species on earth. Not cool.
In the brief moment we evolved to become who we are, our soft squishy brains helped us achieve more than we could have ever imagined. Thus, and considering the walls of ignorance we’ve knocked down in the timeframe that we did, it is reasonable to assume we are proficient at understanding common concepts such as the present — the here and now. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Michael Stevens, an American educator with a dazzling personality, in a YouTube video from about a year ago, covers temporal illusions. He explained how an hour in a boring lecture can feel like an eternity, but a whole day with friends seems to fly by in minutes. Years later, the same lecture can seem like a brief moment, and that day with friends becomes decade of slow-mo recollections painted against a nostalgic backdrop.
Which is truly longer then? It can’t be both. Whatever explanation you manage to come up with isn’t nearly as compelling as to why it couldn’t have been simpler. Besides, 1 second lasts the same regardless of where you are on earth or when you are on the calendar, right? RIGHT, GUYS?? — well, not exactly… but that’s a discussion for another day.
Childhood appears rich with experiences that feel deeper, no matter how stupid or common they were at the time. When I was running away from those dogs as a kid, I wasn’t thinking “what a wonderful story this will make.” Nor did the hundreds of those cart rides seem phenomenal and crucial to my identity at the time. Things just sorta happened. We don’t think about it. And I believe we should.
This is one of the main reasons we grapple with productivity and why the self-help industry continues to thrive. Bulgarian writer Maria Popova, one of my favorite humans alive, and while writing about an exercise she partook in time management, observed how the activity both clarifies and horrifies: “… empty atoms of automation and unexamined choice filling modern life with busyness while hollowing it of gladness.”
"The day is the only unit of time that I can really get my head around," wrote Austin Kleon. "Seasons change, weeks are completely human-made, but the day has a rhythm. The sun goes up; the sun goes down. I can handle that."
Most cultures believe, perhaps harmlessly, that we must utilize every moment of our lives, which seems like a good thing. But all they indirectly preach is a struggle to control time — or how its passage makes us feel about the values we so hold dear. Little do they realize that, to begin with, the fleeting moment we call "now" is merely a conjecture we use to help split between the past and the future.
These realizations — or waste-timers, depending on your taste in philosophy — are all around us. Unsurprisingly, not many of us Sapiens bother to marvel or take in just how bizarre they are. We have no yardstick to judge what is or isn't regular. Nonetheless, how we often dismiss the combrousness of attempting to comprehend why time pulls these senseless pranks on our minds, with the subtlety we do, is fascinating.
My looping existential crisis is fuelled by much of the content I watch on YouTube or read on Reddit. And time illusions, clear as a bright day yet hidden in invisible clouds, and much as it does to Maria, remains both comforting and terrifying to me too.
I spent most of my early years with my extended family, a 20-minute drive from Gamawa, Bauchi state. Thanks to their generosity and acceptance, and for the first few years of my life, I was, indeed, one of them. Not anymore.
The city kid, having lived in the city long enough and enjoyed countless privileges, has left the village for good, more figuratively than physically. Happily confined to the broad expanses of city walls, I find shelter and purpose, sated by a roaring curiosity to uncover the layers of why there’s ever a “why.” The city is where I live now. It is where I learned to hold onto what I've known while empathizing with other worldviews. It is where I learned how memes are a love language.
Before all of this, what I experienced in the village left an indelible mark on me; a realization that those people I once thought were so strong can still be squashed under the heavy heels of history.
It is that period of my life that illuminates how relying on adults to make sense of it all cannot satisfy me, no matter how composed they seem when they sit — and yes, even if cross-legged — in the corridors of their homes. This ignited the need to wrestle through the steep eons that made me who I am today.
The ability to navigate each new change, with the understanding that time only gives you so many opportunities to grow, is an essential survival tool. That which makes us who we are, in the long run, is not something any person or event has created for us. It's taken me a while to see and appreciate this. And it’s liberating to finally accept that it is okay to be at a loss in any situation, without harboring anxiety about the clock.