Subjects I Don’t Consider For Discussion! By Joy Isi Bewaji



There are subjects I don’t consider for discussion.

Submission is one of them.

Submission is a tricky little devil, you see.

-Because it is a manipulative ass, it requires many convenient definitions. I do not get involved in classifications of one wretched word that truly should be deleted from every young child’s dictionary.

We can twist it into any form that fits our 21st century illusions, but Submission doesn’t need further explaining. It is simply surrendering to superior force. It is resignation. In many instances, it is subservience and obedience.

And I don’t like those words or what they represent in the life of the Nigerian woman (as I cannot speak for a Kenyan woman since I have never been there).

Every church has its definition of Submission. Every “woke” individual has his/her own understanding of the word to pollute society with.

The word is clear and doesn’t need to be polished.

I do not want my daughters to have anything to do with that word ESPECIALLY in the institution called Marriage.

Submission is second class living. And I can’t live with myself if my child becomes that within any structure. So debates on “what Submission really is” should be saved for a woman who still struggles with self acceptance. Not me.

The sacrifices that Submission carry on its back are pathetic. And I don’t want that for my girls.

I do not think marriage trumps anything else in life.

A degree, a trip, a job, a cause, a pursuit. As far as I am concerned, everything else should be more important, with more urgency than marriage. Even when I try to fix my head into that hole that I am expected to occupy as a creature in society, I still can’t see why I would support a daughter that chooses to get married instead of working on a job, for instance.

Of course we would argue that marriage or children do not stop our dreams. It is the devil that is speaking to you that minute. It is the manipulative voice of a tired uninspiring society.

OF COURSE MARRIAGE/KIDS STOP YOUR DREAMS!!! It delays everything until you are too tired, too distracted, probably too old to care anymore.

And please don’t give me instances cited by Lisa Folawiyo or some other chic character of pseudo-Lekki living. Don’t.

This is Nigeria with 70% dying of basic hunger, not Sex and the City.

I have imagined a grandchild in my arms, and I felt no increasing joy as I did when I imagined something else - my daughters, for instance, being part of the next technological inventions or just being part of the team that builds an important bridge across a city or something like that.

I find no joy in weddings, naming ceremonies or nonstop celebrations of surviving another year with another human being as a spouse. Were you supposed to have killed each other?

Of course, I do not get to tell my children how to live their lives when they are adults and the choices they eventually live with. But I am looking forward to seeing them do things differently from the the usual script.

Sincerely I don’t care for a grandchild. And I do not care for a son-in-law.

If they come, fine. After all, we buy new purses everyday. It is nothing tragic. But I want more. And I do not want that “more” to be achieved at the line between frustration and planning a fourth child.

No. No. No.
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