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Ownership
Dear reader,
One of the things I love about adulthood is ownership. God bless the day I realised I could own up to my decisions and nobody could beat me. Yet, I now find that taking ownership of your decisions can be both a blessing and a curse.
It is the raw admission that, “Damn. I’m wicked,” while also making the conscious effort not to repeat it. Ownership is simple. Defensiveness comes with a complexity you have to wrestle with long after you have delivered your talking points. And boy, does mankind love to deflect and blame.
The real sin, the realest sin, is not taking ownership.
The moment I realised that I could take ownership of my rights and wrongs, I did not look back. It is good to look life in the eye and say, “Yes, I did that,” and fully accept the consequences, good or bad, that come with it.
I love ownership.
Entering this new age came with the acceptance that I needed a fresh level of boldness. Call it an anointing, but that boldness takes ownership to the next level. Have you been around old people before? They speak their minds. They are like children with no restraints.
Except a child in Nigeria. Our parents will whoop your behind from the moment you can crawl.
It is why the average Nigerian struggles with taking ownership. The slave mindset was passed down after colonialism. You cannot escape it. To break out of the matrix, you must face it squarely, especially when you have no foundations to fall back on.
And the first step is ownership. It is taking responsibility.
I just had a conversation with my roommate, and she took me down memory lane to junior secondary school. It reminded me of when the early stages of a beggarly mindset wanted to form in me.
You see, in Nigeria, “no” is almost a taboo word. Not because the word itself is bad, but because this is a country of beggars. Alongside the blessing of communal living that existed before colonisation came the curse of entitlement. When people beg, they expect a yes.
Anyway, my roommate took me down memory lane. I remembered how I would have my own and still want what others were having. The temptation to beg was strong. I cannot recall how or what broke that curse, but I can attest that it was not poverty that made me beg. It was a lack of ownership.
Ownership forces you to see and acknowledge what you have. We often deflect from what is already in our hands. But you own something. And you must see the value in what you own so clearly that it fills you. But no, we would rather beg.
Because it is easier to trade the responsibility that comes with ownership and settle for temporary comfort.
What has life given to you? Do you own it?
Ownership also makes us see the full scope of who we are: our strengths and our weaknesses. You can tell that a man or woman is weak by how much they cling to their strengths while refusing to acknowledge their weaknesses—or how deeply they sink into their weaknesses until they forget their strength.
You must see you.
You must see the level of depravity you are capable of, because this will bring you to your knees. But you must also see the God in you as the ultimate strength.
Ownership, like anything else, invites you to see the problem. And the instant you see it, you are conscripted into responsibility.
My friend, if I had a child, they would learn ownership because I fear it is the foundation. In this world, they will need it. For their esteem. For their minds. For their hearts.
They will need to know that what is in their hands may not look like much, but it is theirs to tend, multiply or destroy. They will need to know that their actions belong to them, even when the consequences are uncomfortable. They will need to know that they can admit when they are wrong without becoming less worthy of love.
Goodnight, my bumblebee. Take ownership. Only a moving person will find her luck.
Best,
Rejoice Onize.
PS: Say no and recieve nos.