THE IP MAG

Hi, I'm Sam,  I decided a while ago to take CNA’s advice about loving people loudly. And I honestly cannot tell you why i didn’t see the need to do that earlier. I didn’t think I was getting any cool points for being nonchalant but for some reason I felt content keeping what I was thinking about how someone makes me feel bottled up inside and I somehow still thought they should find a way to know what i thought of them in my mind. I’d love to argue someday that people find it very difficult taking correction or criticism from someone who they’ve never gotten a compliment from. Especially in friendships, I can’t be the one who always points out what is wrong or could be better with something my friends do but I somehow lose my voice when it comes to amplifying the amazing things about them. It actually does say a lot about me if I can dedicate time to articulate what I do not like about someone around me and cannot pay attention to their good side enough to put them into...

Hi, I'm Sam,  To some high degree, everyone appreciates words of affirmation as a love language. It’s easy to neglect that love language when you see the other ones on the list but for me, as someone who loves to write and read, I have a level of appreciation for genuine love that I want to hear them from someone I consider to be a good person and a wonderful addition. I also agree that certain people are not good with words but I also stand to argue that words of affirmation is not only about how many times you say what you say but the quality and genuineness of whatever it is that is being said. Simply hearing I love you for the first time or for the first few times might feel amazing and sound as a morning alarm to the butterflies in your belly but for how long will anyone keep digesting the same phrase of “I love you”. You have to find other ways to say I love you so that when you use the exact words of I love you it doesn’t sound watered down and overused. So even ...

Hi, I'm Sam,  There’s an amount of fear that can cripple you and there’s an amount that can motivate you beyond anything a motivational speaker can say to you. I’ve never wondered what level motivates me but I can tell you that I’ve been motivated so many times in my life by a certain level of fear. I’ve never considered testing its elasticity because frankly it doesn’t matter but I’ve experienced launching into the deep with a certain unmeasured level of fear. I’ve gone through things that might break the next person and I’m sure people have gone through things that I cannot begin to imagine how they got through it but that’s not in anyway in the scope of things I consider possible. That I let a certain level of fear motivate me do certain things does not mean that I go out in search of fear or that it is the only way I get motivated but I like to think that we can’t live in this world and not be motivated by fear. The idea of balance comes to play here, where I feel t...

Hi, I'm Sam,   I don’t think I’m the only one with the unsettling feeling that I won’t get to watch all the movies every made or read all the novels ever written or listen to all the music that I’d probably enjoy but will never get to hear. I’ve always loved the idea of having no matter how little an information about various things that way I can either ask intelligent questions about certain things or have the ability to contribute no matter the little I know to a conversation about certain things. And with that, not knowing everything has joined the list of things that I have an unsettling feeling about. Depending on how you look at it, ignorance can be bliss and on the other side, knowledge is indeed power. I just exercise my free will to decide what side to lean on in a particular time and for various reasons. I’ve always thought long and hard about the concept of saving. It is something everyone agrees to be a good thing but not everyone find themselves doing it. ...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  I expected the day of the funeral to be an emotionally heavy day, not because I was feeling that way but because that was what I felt was expected from me and everyone who loved AHUDIYA so much. I don’t think the beginning of the day was emotionally heavy or it might be that some parts of me was still in denial and expecting that someone would jump out of the bushes to say it was all a prank and despite how expensive of a joke that would be, I think I would’ve preferred that to the reality that was staring at me in the coming hours. As the day went on, I was checking the ticking time like someone who was promised something that was more important than what seemed to be playing out. I kept my cool not because I was strong or because I was trying to be. I kept my cool because I couldn’t find my weakness. I felt numb and somehow couldn’t tap into my emotions in that moment because tapping into that emotion meant I had accepted what had happened and I couldn...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  They say knowledge is power but does that apply to the knowledge of anything or the knowledge of important things which could have an effect on your life? But I guess no matter what it is, it could be important under certain circumstances. I’ve always held teachers in very high regard, that could be as a result of having one as a mum but still. I’ve always admired how they found it important to transfer what they know to others. I’ve always seen them as all knowing in their field because that was the only way for me to accept the fact that they’re able to train a number of people on a specific or few subjects. I’ve always been loved by teachers and it’s not because I was the top student, because I wasn’t, I believe it’s because I was and still very much teachable. I think teachers just want to see the seriousness and zeal to learn what is being taught. That willingness to learn communicates to them what approach to use for any student they’re teaching. It...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  I think to get to the extreme is to not think at all. Nobody gets to the extreme while following a plan, it’s always by impulse and not by a well crafted plan. I always pictured a scenario in my head whenever I am met with greedy traders. So anytime I go to buy anything, I always have an idea of how much something would cost but in most cases I try to know how much something will cost before I go to purchase it. That way I don’t have to haggle because i have that exact amount or something close to it. I don’t like the idea of haggling because i feel that people should be honest enough to put a reasonable price on something, enough to cover the cost price and make a profit but then real life has shown me that some traders do not care about honesty in business and as such will over price their product and they will still get people who would buy it at that over priced amount. Because of my hatred for haggling and my practice of finding out the price of some...

Hi, I'm Sam,  In all my years of thinking of myself and despite how highly I've thought of myself, I have never considered myself to be a perfect human. I don't shine constant light on my flaws and as a result I can't mention them and by flaws I mean the things I can't change about myself, I agree that every other thing can be worked on, no matter how long it takes. I've always thought that the two scariest things for me in a relationship is getting cheated on and being tolerated. I understand that you are not always in love with your partner every single day of the relationship and/or marriage and as valid as feelings can be, it is also fleeting and a solid lasting relationship cannot be built on feelings alone. So I sit to think about the moments that you're " not in love " with your partner, what exactly is that period called? The period where it feels like their flaws outshine the best parts of them no matter how much you try to shi...

Hi, I'm Sam,  I don’t think I will be the first to raise my hands when the question “ who’s athletic here?” Is thrown in a room I happen to find myself in but in the same vein, with more explanations given, I won’t be the last to raise my hands either. I occasionally exercise but the constant mode of exercise I partake in is strolling. I try to achieve at least 10k steps a day. Some days I don’t get to my target and some days I go way above my goal, it all depends on the kind of day I’m having. One mode of exercise or sporting activity that I’m not sure anyone is really going to find me partake in is field tracks. I don’t particularly think I enjoy running but it’s something everyone has got to learn to not be bad at considering the part of the world we live in. But one thing I do enjoy with watching people or Olympians partake in that sport is the fact that there is a finish line to be reached. No matter what type of field track that is going on, the finish line is som...

Hi, I'm Sam,  I think it’s safe to say now that I’ve spent my late twenties having realizations and somehow finding summaries to my lifestyle growing up. To some degree I can describe in one or few words the kind of son, brother, cousin or friend I’ve been from a toddler till this point in my life. I’ve had the honor of having different people occupying different positions in my life tell me about me from their point of view of from the view of someone else close to me that they’ve paid rapt attention to. Sometimes I find it easy to agree to the description of me and sometimes I’m intrigued in both good and bad ways and sometimes I fight and argue their summarization. But one thing that has never changed and even though I never realized this then was that all of them were very correct to a certain degree and more than fifty percent correct, I was just blind to the parts I didn’t see and agree with and the parts I agreed to didn’t really make up a very large percentage o...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  We have been conditioned to think from a Me perspective and that can really be the only way because we think from what we know when it's about us. We can only make assumptions when it's about someone else because even if they tell us, it might not be true and when it is true it might not be the whole truth and when it's the whole truth it might not make sense because in so many scenarios, their lived experiences makes the whole truth make sense which means that the fact we haven't lived their experiences, it does make sense that their whole truth doesn't make sense to anyone who is not them. The world has a way of toughening everyone up because no matter what we're going through, everything keeps moving at their individual pace. It's easy to think that because you're going through a lot, others aren't but you seem to forget that everyone just gets good as masking their reality just the same way you are. Because you can...

Hi, I'm Sam,   We never forget experiences and one of the things I find very difficult to forget is my interactions with people. This goes both ways though, the way I act towards people and the way they act towards me. The memory sticks whether it was good or bad. In some of the bad cases, I try to make excuses for others that maybe they're not having a good day or maybe someone else has hurt them to act a certain way towards me in a manner that I do not deserve. I have even gone as far as trying to put the blame on myself trying to query my tone in the questions or words I said or my facial expression, just anything to not acknowledge that the way the person acted towards me was not on them but somehow on me.  In recent years, people's interactions with me has somehow been similar. It's almost as if I can anticipate the milestones and with each action or reaction, I take a mental note of what stage in our interaction the person is and I can go ahead to fore...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  I asked my best friend for ideas on how to live and he said "Enjoy Everyday and Every moment" and now I am trying to find a way to put that into everyday for the next 365 days. I told him the advice sounds so simple and straightforward and for the first few moments after he sent that message I tried not to overthink it but how will I create a content calendar for myself for the next 365 days without breaking it down to make sense and use it to plan ahead. In that planning and analyzing, there is every chance that I might begin to overthink and end up feeling overwhelmed that I make a mess of a simple advice given with the purest of intentions and expected to be carried out in the simplest way possible. Sometimes the problem is not with what we have to do but how we decide to approach what we have to do. Our individual lives and experiences aid in figuring out how to approach what we have to do. You might decide to jump into it thinking so much ...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  I've always wondered what angle to think about marriages and weddings. I love it for others but sometimes people say everything changes when you get married and they still say people don't change even when you marry them and this is always in a case of a character flaw, so then what really changes after wedding and in marriage? It's a good thing to love someone so deeply that you'd love to take it a step further but I don't completely subscribe to that mentality because we still witness people go through the long and stressful process of wedding planning just to take a step further with someone they do not completely love and someone they would end up tolerating and stepping out on in the marriage and I'm really curious to know what their thought about that really is because I have tried and maybe the experiences I've come to live or hear of hasn't done a fine job in letting me imagine and explain scenarios that makes sense...

Hi, I'm Sam, Don't get it twisted that love is a beautiful thing. Some feelings are better felt and expressed than described. As complete as the English dictionary might seem, it is possible to lack words to describe some feelings at the initial stage but as some point down the line I begin to use scenarios and examples to describe certain emotions and to me that is way better than using one word which has its meaning etched in the pages of a dictionary.  The biggest trick my mind has consistently played on me is to make me questions every love gesture I receive. I mean it does make sense to question certain gestures and audit it irrespective of who it's coming from but my mind questions the legit and illegitimate ones and then goes a step further to take actions that will jeopardize the legit gestures from legit avenues. At some point the feeling of being unworthy of certain expressions becomes the least of my problems because i find myself constantly fighting...

Hi, I'm Sam, I like to believe that for me life became easy and simple to live after i internalized the harsh truth that certain things will always be an everyday thing. This was a harsh truth because some of these things are not things that could be considered fun. Some of them could be considered fun for a while and then the reality hits that it's just for a while, then the fun starts to dry out little by little. People often misunderstand me when I say that one of my major irks in people is when they complain a lot about things that can be considered their reality for the time being. Some say that it means that I subscribe to the idea that people should suffer in silence but on the contrary, my stance is often that they shouldn't suffer at all or at least try to reduce the suffering in any way they can. For instance, someone in a terrible relationship but refuses to get out of It but constantly makes it everyone's problem by constantly complaining about i...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  It feels so good to know, admit to myself and finally say that I do not feel any bit of urge to keep performing for an audience that is not even paying attention and I would still not perform even if they were. Someone said that everyone is completely aware of what they're doing, they may not be honest about their intentions to others but within themselves they know exactly why they do what they do, they just hope that the other person is not smart enough to figure it out or they hope the other person is not interested in doing anything about it. Just like a talking stage, I really do believe everyone takes records of their interaction with people and they use the record to ultimately decide how to act toward each person. That way they're informed as to what part of themselves they bring to certain people and what parts of themselves they need to strip or hide to properly exist around certain people. This is a skill I think i like, I try to often ...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  I was 16 when I started wishing I could drive, before that I was just there to enjoy rides but what I enjoyed the most was the opportunity to be driven without much thought to where we were going to. At some point my dad seriously considered changing my name because he felt like the name had an effect on me. For better clarification, my igbo name is "Chisom" which translates to "God follows me", so my dad was convinced that the name was the reason i wanted to follow everyone everywhere instead of just letting God do the following. To think I really enjoyed being driven around but I didn't like the idea that my movement also meant that someone else had movement, so I thought it was a huge disturbance. Despite the fact the person was doing his job, It still didn't sit right with me that I had to drag someone around and it didn't help that my movement were not very important. The thoughts of driving started to cree...