The Battle between Chance and Choice

By

Obododimma Oha.

One opened one’s eyes and saw oneself in a very miserable country; others opened theirs and saw themselves in well organised and beautiful places. They will all be subject to these accidents of birth until they once more shut their eyes, turn their backs, and plunge into the darkness. To my knowledge, I did not sign any agreement to be born in any miserable country. Let’s just be honest now: if I knew where I would be born or had the option of being born in that well organised and beautiful place, why would I choose to be born in a miserable country? Do I like shipwreck?

If there is anything called “destiny,” which for the wrongs I have done in a former life, has posted me to a miserable country to spend years, to punish me, that thing is heartless, to say the least. If, like the ogbanje (which the Yoruba call “abiku”) I had chosen to go to a miserable country just for the love of adventure, I must have been stupid, very stupid. If it has been to cause pain, then, I must have punished myself. Adventures are picked wisely.

But even then, it is no longer “chance,” something that just happens beyond us, but “choice” if I did in my former life stupidly choose a miserable country for my adventure, as an an ọgbanje. As I indicated above, I must have been stupid, a real mumu! A mumu adventurer!

I think that there is a big thing happening, beyond our control. That big thing put zillions of galaxies in their places, great distances away from each other and if one is located in this galaxy, one might think that other galaxies are vacant, that one is the only precious creature located in the little dot, little punctuation mark, called a “planet.” One galaxy is many light years away. Just check your dictionary or google it to find what a great distance one light year is.

Now, to be posted to a miserable country on a miserable planet in a galaxy many light years away from the next one is not a happy thing. It is even more unhappy because you don’t know where you have been posted. It is only when you get there that you can open the envelope and see that you have been posted to the beautiful or miserable place. You have no choice. Perhaps, the only choice is to open the envelope.

But now you are here and cannot go back (Go back where?); what would make it lighter for you is to lean on choice: choose your life. First, your citizenship. You are free to change your citizenship. That is the only level of change allowed in the posting! You should get up and get smart and choose where to make your nest. Choose where you could remake your life. Don’t be mumu thinking that where your parents found themselves must be where you have to stay; eat the food they ate, play the same type of masquerade they played and enjoy the same moonlight play they enjoyed. Move to improve. Don’t be an incurable mumu! My late father did well to escape from our village in the 1930s to Cameroon to do legitimate hustling and change his life. While in the village, he had no formal education. His father did not allow him to go to either school or church. It was in Cameroon that he taught himself to read and write, using books owned by children who went to school. But when he came back to Nigeria later, he was rich and established plantations. You see why I said that you have to move to improve.

Even if you can’t change your citizenship or do not want to, change your ways. Let the lives of other exposed people touch yours. Think like an enlightened individual and try to be better than you are. Don’t stagnate or retrogress in your thinking.

Your marriage, too, is an occasion for choice. The person you choose to come into your life makes a great difference. It alters the punctuation mark of your life. Your marriage can further cripple you or make the burden lighter for you. Remember that that relationship is for a long while, too. So, it could be second misery, second hell, if you make any regrettable mistake.

Am I leaving out your profession, your work? Yes, you choose it too. It should be clear to you as soon as you leave secondary school what you want to do. You are a sad specimen if you jump from palm-tree to breadfruit tree. You have to know what to do in life early. The question of people telling you what to with your life is senseless. It is great shock if after your PhD you still do not know what or where you have to fit in and you think that anything that turns up, you take it. You are leaving your life to chance!

 Nobody lives life for another person; not even the very vehicle that brought you here! Indeed, other lives could help you to get wiser; other people could show you a better road but won’t walk on it. You will walk on it yourself. Am I just getting motivational? Am I just trying to be a preacher? You decide, as you wrestle with chance and choice!

Maybe where to run the profession is another context of choice. As you move around and survey the world, as you check to see if there are more miserable places than others, you could take a step of courage and choose where to do what. It may be tough for you at first, forcing you almost to regret making that choice, but look clearly to see how you can turn Ur into Jerusalem. You must have seen other environments, many in fact. Each that you pick punctuates your journey of life; could even puncture it. So, when you have made that choice, hold yourself responsible and try to make the best out of it.

There are many other occasions for choice in life. In fact, the law is choice here. Mumus, incurable mumus, confuse choice and chance or think that choice is chance. Even an empire, country, state, any community... is subject to choice. Citizens in it must choose what they want. That is one difference between dictatorship and democracy. No country is made-in-heaven (even the country of mumus). No country lasts forever, even if it is in your pocket and is your private possession. If one group says it wants to opt out of a union, allow it to go and negotiate (unless you are looking for a slave!). If it wants to renegotiate where it wants to go, that is its business and it is permitted by the law of choice that reigns here. Don’t be a pain in the arse and interfere with the law of choice. That, to me, is what injustice means.

Indeed, we spend all our life on earth making choices: when to wake; when to get out of bed; whether to say “Good morning;” in what language to say it; what to eat for breakfast; whether to talk to somebody; whether to make a call, to WhatsApp instead, etc. Life on earth is so much about choice. I know that there are some things we have no control over, but how we navigate around them is a matter of choice.

Further, I am sorry for those individuals and groups who confuse chance and choice, or try  to give to chance what belongs to choice. They are making this journey more tedious and tiring!