One day, you will be somebody’s ancestor. Make your own traditions

This is about me. This is about my rules and my traditions. I teach when I can, I rant when I want. I give out rules that people can apply, and I also talk about my personal opinion as regards my personal life. Whenever I say something about myself, it is not a rule, and I don’t expect you to apply it. I just know how to choose what works for me.

So, I don’t get why people should get all worked up, because I wrote that my woman shouldn’t kneel to give me a drink. I mean, I didn’t stop you from creeping or lying on the floor for your own man. I don’t ever get myself involved in what grown adults do with their lives.

If you want to frog-jump from Lagos to Calabar for your man, please do. It is what works for you. Victor didn’t ask you not to.

I would understand if men were insulting me; perhaps my ways would show them up for who they really are. But I don’t get why a lady would be insulting me for making a choice that doesn’t affect her in any way, or is there something I am missing?

Within the last 10 hours I have received a barrage of insults especially from women who don’t even know me and I find it funny. I didn’t ask you to do away with your traditions, I just said I, Victor Ibeh, won’t do it. As a matter of fact the woman I would marry should have a mind similar to mine.

If you don’t believe in that ideology that a woman shouldn’t kneel to give her man a drink, you automatically are not mine, so why get pissed? Did I stop you from kneeling for your man?

This is why I talk about emotional intelligence a lot. Most folks lack it.

So I decided to eat okra soup and because you don’t like okra soup you get mad at me? Isn’t that some element of insanity?

I will tell you something.
I don’t do tradition.
Me, Victor Ibeh, I make my own traditions.
I think about them and I choose what is best for me, that won’t affect those around me negatively. That is my tradition.
Traditions didn’t make themselves.
People made them.

Your forefathers made traditions abi? I am going to be somebody’s forefather so I have a right to make my own traditions. Those people who laid down rules that you call traditions didn’t have two heads. There is no way, I mean no way I am going to accept to do something just because some dead person deemed it fit to practise it during his/her life time.

I have to think about it and see if it suits the man I am today and if it will serve my own interests. It might have served their interests, but it may not serve mine.

Where were you when Mary Slessor abolished your tradition of killing twins?
Why are we still fighting against FGM?
Why do we oppose widowhood rites?

The other day we were told about a tradition where a man was initiating little girls into the world of sex. Unfortunately, the man was even HIV positive. Isn’t that a tradition? Why did we speak against it? If really traditions are untouchable then we shouldn’t abolish any. We must be willing to apply it in it’s full capacity.

But no! We are smart. We choose traditions that are convenient. The ones that serve our interests and then we make a whole lot of noise about upholding tradition. Bro, you ain’t upholding shit.

I decided from a very young age to be rebellious and iconoclastic.
I won’t impose my beliefs on anybody but I won’t also allow anybody to force me to practise anything except I know for sure that it is for my own good.

Some of you traditionalists insult Christians for practising things just because they saw it in the Bible. You say Christians don’t think, that they don’t use their heads. Yet, you practise traditions without thinking about the rationale behind them.

You shouldn’t just do things because your forefathers did them. You should do things because you are convinced that they are right for you. In reality, we are not even practising tradition as it should be practised. There are so many things we do today that are the direct opposite of our traditions. You see how hypocritical we are?

My family or town don’t decide what or how I live my life. My life is personal.

I have seen people whose daughters wanted to get married and they would travel from Lagos to the East just to satisfy Umunna (kinsmen appeasement). I mean…your whole family reside in Lagos. You want to get married, then you all start travelling back to the village? What for? I don’t get. You take the risks of travelling home, when you can comfortably do everything in Lagos?

Well it works for some people. It will never work for me.

I will now take my daughter home so that some umunna who never cared if she existed, if she ever had clothes to wear, if she ever went to school, who were not there for her in any capacity to gloat and make money out of her suitor?

Does that even make sense? I mean what if she had died? The best these umunna would do is just to say “take heart.”
Just as I make my own traditions, I also expect my children to make theirs. I will never bind them with my own rules.
They should choose what works for them, as long as it guarantees their happiness.

So please stop taking some things I say personally. They are my realities; not yours. Go create your own reality and stop expending your energy on criticising me for having a mind of my own.
Go use your mind!!

© Victor Ibeh 2016