I once stayed in the east. And, even though the language was heinously difficult, I fell in love with certain expressions.
It was enriching to understand that, like Yoruba (my language), Igbo is also a parlance packed with depth and wisdom and beauty. How a single word like “nkemakonam” can be diluted into a stream of several meanings, stretching far and deep into the core of human identities, snaking its roots under the earth of being and ownership of being.
I'm thrilled by the dense rhythms and depths of Igbo words. One such word is “Ifunanya”, which I had always thought meant “love” and love alone.
But it actually means “to see”.
To see.
Have you ever felt a stirring in your belly, just because the thought or voice or face of somebody crossed your mind?
Have you ever felt lighter, looser, brighter, just by remembering that you will soon see someone, or meet with them?
Do you include a particular someone in your plans? Do they now have a say in what only you used to have a say in (whether they utter or d not utter a word to signify that they have a say in it)?
Do your thoughts have a new color in them? Does your body tingle when someone is near?
Do you feel at home just because your face is buried in somebody's skin?
If your answer to these is a shy, grinning “yes”, my dear, you are in love.
And nothing in this world smells as good as the person you love.
Love is the most beautiful thing in the universe. It's there in a parent's smile. It's there in a sibling's hug. It's there in a baby's toothless welcome. It's there in two gazes that meet and meld and become one. It's there in the smiles strangers share. It's there in the stern eyes of a devoted teacher.
It doesn't matter WHO you love. Love is love, as long as it is consensual.
Love is the most magical thing. It strips you of your skin, your hair and airs, and spreads into your naked soul. It erases your sexual organs and attacks your heart and fills it up with peace and answers. It makes barriers disappear and an overwhelming sense of naturalness appear.
Many people think we go to love. No, love COMES to us. Happens to us. Takes us by surprise. Takes us unawares. Makes us lose our bearings and find them all in the space of same second.
Someone dear to me defines love as “trust and memory”. To trust someone completely, in my opinion, is to love them completely. To revel in their memories and then smile and say to yourself (or to people around you) that those were people with whom you spent your best days, to be lavish and lurid in your remembering of someone, is to love them indeed.
Above all, love means “to see”. Ifunanya.
To see that people are not angels after all; at best, we are angels with broken wings.
To see that love is not rosy as it were; that it could be turbulent and trying and tiresome, especially when it is intense and genuine.
To see that there will be pain and diffidence and ennui; that it will come to a point when “the songs we will be singing” will turn to be “the songs we used to sing together”.
To love is to see all of that person's unfinished progress, and still CHOOSE to be with them. To be bold. To fight for it because you are sure BOTH OF YOU are fighting for it, and also sure of what you are BOTH fighting for..
To love is to compromise AS PARTNERS, to sometimes sacrifice habits and pleasures—MUTUALLY.
To love is to miss someone massively when you guys are apart, no matter what time and distance say.
To love is to believe in your relationship WHEN IT DOESN'T IRREVOCABLY HARM ANY PARTY. To love is to take a stand and make a move all in the direction of an end: that you both be together, because it makes sense to BOTH OF YOU to remain together.
To love is to stand by each other through the worst passing times. To have faith in your strength as a couple. To never give up on each other because a glow simmereth still. Even if you guys are “out of touch”.
To love is to be there WITHOUT CHÖKING EACH OTHER. To love is to be honest. To say it and mean it and do it. To want to spend the rest of one's life with that person, and be there for them, even when they are going through their worst, ESPECIALLY when they are going through their worst.
To love is to see love, and accept love. To remember that it's the people who are with you through the hard times that mean the most.
To love is to KNOW. No confusion. No probabilities. No percentages. Just knowledge. A complete knowledge both of oneself and of that person.
YOU CANNOT LOVE ANOTHER IF YOU DO NOT KNOW YOURSELF. Because to know oneself is to love oneself. To embrace and engrace oneself. To be proud of oneself. ONLY THEN can you do same to another.
Are you full of questions?
It doesn't make sense yet?
If it makes you happy and wholesome and purified, it DOESN'T have to make sense to others.
You keep getting broken?
Check yourself!
Check the amount of the love you have for yourself!
Do you love them more than you love YOURSELF?
Ask yourself and SEE!
To love is to see.
And if you get dumped, don't stay there! It's not even an excuse! Someone out there is CERTAINLY meant for you, and you for them. You just haven't got there, that's why it won't work with somebody else!
Stop pretending in your relationship. To love is to find it difficult to pretend. Because how can we truly 'see' what is false and garish, what blinds?
Love is the greatest maturity!
Love is NOT blind!
Love is not infatuation!
To love is to see.
And to see is to see your worth, your match and your dreams unfolding and merging all at once.
And though, what you really want in life will never come easy, WAIT FOR IT!
There are no latecomers in marriage—if you are marriage-oriented.
And while waiting, KNOW WHAT YOU ARE WAITING FOR, AND KEEP THE SPACE FOR IT.
That, dear Human, is the greatest SEEING of all.
I love you.
BIO:
Enit’ayanfe Ayosojumi Akinsanya is a young Nigerian writer. He was the first-place winner of the 2022 intercontinental “The Green We Left Behind” French Embassy Project Prize for Creative Nonfiction. His novel manuscript, “In the Half-Dark” (tentatively titled), was a major finalist for the 2018 Nigeria GTB Dusty Manuscript Prize for Full-length Fiction. His works are in Brittle Paper, The Shallow Tales Review, Eunoia Review (forthcoming), Aayo Literary Magazine, Livina Press, Arts Lounge Magazine, Fiery Scribe Review and several more. He had a short-story collection ebook published in 2021, titled “How to Catch a Story That Doesn't Exist”.
You can find him @Ayomi_Osumare (Twitter).
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