Gbogbo wa la ma je breakfast

Eat your breakfast but don’t choke on it

I have an unhealthy relationship with food. Don’t get me wrong, I love good food but I’m not particularly passionate about feeding myself. This habit became obvious when I moved out of my parent’s house to live alone without a roommate. Breakfast as we were taught from elementary school is the most important food that helps kickstart the day. No matter how small, gbogbo wa lama n je breakfast before going to school. Shoutout to our parents who gave us everything just to see us succeed! May Allah bless and reward them. As you zone off to the days where you got everything on a platter of gold with little appreciation for their efforts (yes, I’m judging you), you may wonder where I’m going with all this talk about food.

Photo by Chad Montano on Unsplash

Last week started on a high note for me. Sunday serve as a day for me to sit with my emotions and get ready for a new week. As a doer and an adrenaline addict, I love Mondays because of the rush, bright energy and vibe, fresh clothes and the chance to start over no matter how messy things were the previous week. Then there came Monday with the hustle to get to school before 8 AM for the first lecture scheduled for the day and the noise of school students starting a new session. I was ready to conquer the day. 

As much as I would love to agree with provii, I particularly enjoyed this class because I was determined to make the best use of the 120 minutes. I followed the lecture and made notes from the softcopy of the material made available to us on our class WhatsApp group. So I had my WhatsApp opened(go ahead and judge me o) and a good friend of mine sent me a message that drifted my attention. “Umaynah, have you checked your mail? So so scholarship we applied for sent mails already”, she texted. I refreshed my mail and there was nothing new(I check my mail every day after morning prayer to catch up with the world and also take note of anything I may have missed overnight). The week before was quite hard on me as I got served breakfast from a major application so being served another one that week would have dampen my energy. It turned out that only people who were rejected got the mails early and those who progressed to the next stage got another mail the next day. I am sharing this experience to highlight the dramatic change in my mood and the thoughts that followed after I read her message. 

A lot of us base our self worth on the things we achieve. This could arise from the external pressure from our well-meaning parents, society and in some cases, ourselves. We doubt our abilities because someone somewhere rejected our application or didn’t offer us our dream job. We go to the extent of questioning the things we know for sure about ourselves. “Am I even good enough?”, “Am I cut out to be an Engineer?”, “Do I have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?”, “What if this person is right about my skill set?”. These questions are important for self-reflection but they shouldn’t be used as a means to tear ourselves apart. 

As you go into the new week, I want to remind you of your worth and abilities. I don’t know how the previous week was for you but I wish you the strength to keep chasing your dreams. I hope you get rewarded appropriately for all the work you put into meeting your goals. I pray your plan aligns with Allah’s plan for you and if it doesn’t, I pray you have the strength to move in the direction He has planned out for you. I hope you don’t forget that you are not alone in the struggle because gbogbo wa la n je breakfast in the corner of our rooms. Eat your breakfast and don’t choke on it. I hope you know that there are more opportunities out there waiting just for you because gbogbo wa lama je breakfast at the end of the day.

With love,

Umaynah

PS: I’m adopting better eating habits so you don’t need to be worried about me.

PSS: I am a terrible Yoruba writer so I’ll go ahead and add a glossary for both Yoruba speaking and non-Yoruba readers. Watch out for more of my Yoruba writeups! Leemao.

Gbogbo wa la n je breakfast: Everyone is eating breakfast.

Gbogbo wa lama je breakfast: Everyone will eat breakfast.