I used to be super ambitious and very competitive. Ambitious for ambition’s sake. I wanted to be the first, go to the best schools, have the best results because, well for one thing that’s all I really knew. If there’s a number one, why be number two?! I thought. Also, if I am honest, I liked the power and prestige that ambition brought. The respect tingeing the tones of people talking about your intellect or capacity. There was a lot of self-importance and pride mixed in there some where but I don’t have the strength to untangle that baggage right now. Lol. I didn’t know contentment. I didn’t understand contentment. There was always more. Another high, a better opportunity to chase…Because mine had to be the biggest, the best. And I think my family gave me a bit of that mindset…and my secondary school exacerbated it. It was really really competitive and made me believe that stopping to smell the roses was wasting valuable time that could have been used to plant another rose bush or something.

And for a time, I was doing exceptionally well. All As in my A levels. I hadn’t gotten into Cambridge to study Law but I’d gotten into the London School of Economics and even though I appeared outwardly shattered, my teenage heart was joyful as I’d always wanted to live in London, despite my father’s desire for a Cambridge grad. First year in school came and although still competitive, I was distracted. All this freedom in this new city?? Freshers week? Access to all my friends?? No House Mother Margaret to force me to classes?! College! #GROWNISH.

I slacked.

I winced every time my work was returned. I was fast slipping into second class category but figured, “It’s cool! First year doesn’t count.” Besides, I thought, I’d catch up during the holidays. I told my parents, No Nigerian vacation for me this Christmas, momma needs time to study!

First term of first year ended Friday 09 12 2005.

10 12 2005. Plane Crash. Little sister gone. World changed.

In a second, my paradigm shifted.

I remember just thinking, “I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THIS STUFF!!” I spent the rest of my 19th year reevaluating everything I had thought was responsible for bringing me happiness: Doing well, being the best, receiving accolades. It hit me, I don’t need to be the biggest, the brightest, the best…if I’m not going to be the happiest. Scratch that, if I’m not going to be happy. How empty things are when they can’t build us another human or recreate our memories. I just want to be happy y’all. It’s such a little request to ask of the world, such a small demand to put on myself.

About two months after I returned from maternity leave I was approached by a ‘friend’ at work. A gentle man who has always considered me his competition even though he is older, in a higher job group and get this…a totally different subsidiary company. Loool I’m like bruh, I literally do not SEE you in my career path, literally or metaphysically! He came, all concern and worry, to ask me why I am underperforming. Beloved, I was shook. What are the paremeters for determining this underperformance, sir, considering you don’t know the work I do? How do you know that I am slipping, Ronald McDonald? The answer brethren, lay in the fact that I was no longer as ‘VISIBLE’ as I used to be. In his words, everyone was no longer talking about me every where so he wanted to know if I had lost my mojo…or (I kid you not!), I was actually found to be empty of content in the end.

Sometimes people can give the most ‘helpful’ set downs. I suspected this was shade shrouded in the mourning garments of concern. Do not let toxic or manipulative people around you or they will shake and shatter your hard-won self-confidence! I chose to give the benefit of doubt, because hey despite my manager and supervisor’s comments, what if I was indeed underperforming you know? Responding honestly, I simply stated that I may have appeared less prominently in work matters, because my focus had shifted. I had been pregnant (guy had not seen me for over 9 months oh and was there keeping score tabs on my silence), was off having a baby and settling into my new roles as wife and mum. These are equally high priorities for me to do correctly, to get right, in the same way my work is. And I think that’s ok. At the point of pregnancy, my focus was on having a stress-free experience and just enjoying the beauty of that moment. Weirdly, even if I felt I had taken things easy, my ranking was just as high as the year before so I clearly wasn’t doing too shabbily…just working quieter. I’m back at work now, with the noise to show for it. LOL.  But, his ‘concern’ made me think.

There was a time that the mere thought of anyone outperforming me or considering me anything less than stellar, would have catalysed a movie-style 360 turn around. BUT, I’m wiser now and I know not to trust the vicissitudes of public acclaim. I know that happiness for me is not in things, not in achievements, but in the little pleasures my life is filled with. And I have learnt that contentment is sweeter than ambition. Some people might think it’s slothful, I think it’s just times and seasons. And good ole self-awareness.

I am content. And that is important to me. Understanding that there is only one runner in this race: Me, allows me to move at my pace. Leaving no one, lacking nothing. Settle the parameters of life for yourself. Do not fall into the pressure to move faster than you want or slower than you need, to fit into a box you didn’t build. It is my life and only I determine my happy button, my accelerate setting, my mood gears. Me. Not society, not work, not anything else.

Me.