Cities like Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt supply many alternatives, however they’re additionally emotionally heavy areas. You get up each day already not on time, already anxious, already desirous about visitors, payments, and deadlines.
Life within the metropolis has develop into a race nobody signed up for, however everyone seems to be compelled to maintain operating. The physique was not designed to dwell in a state of perpetual alertness; sadly, that is what city life calls for.
Lagos visitors alone can subtract half your humanity earlier than 10 am. That’s two hours of honking, fumes, pressure, and overstimulation earlier than work even begins. By the point you arrive at your vacation spot, you’re already exhausted.
Nothing about this tempo is regular. Individuals are not dwelling, they’re simply surviving. They’re sprinting via days they don’t have time to really feel, via feelings they don’t have area to course of, via heaviness they don’t have the language to explain.
For this reason so many individuals really feel disconnected from their very own lives; all the pieces is in regards to the subsequent process, the following invoice, the following rush. Relaxation has develop into a responsible pause, a norm that’s not purported to be.
The financial stress we’re silently drowning beneath
The second weight is cash, or, extra precisely, the concern of not having sufficient of it. The financial actuality of right now isn’t what our dad and mom lived via.
Sure, they struggled, however issues weren’t this brutally inflated. Our technology is paying double, typically triple, for a life that provides much less stability, much less hope, and fewer respiratory room.
A variety of younger Nigerians are incomes lower than minimal wage, and even these “incomes properly” are nonetheless scraping by as a result of all the pieces is dear and nothing is steady. Salaries finish earlier than the month begins. Hire, meals, transportation, electrical energy, knowledge; every appears like a sluggish, affected person thief.
There’s a silent grief in this sort of maturity, one which not many individuals are prepared to speak about brazenly. There may be that deep emotional disgrace connected to being hardworking but always on edge financially.
The dream was stability, however what many individuals obtained as an alternative was survival arithmetic, psychological gymnastics, and weighing the need of Agege bread and beans towards the profound have to fulfill a shawarma craving.
And with the obleé season upon us, a brand new form of stress is born. Cities, particularly Lagos, would develop into a pageant the place you’re anticipated to indicate up, costume up, attend all the pieces, belong someplace, seem like you’re doing properly, even when your account stability is on a hospital mattress, and you possibly can virtually hear the ‘beep beep’ for those who hear shut sufficient.
This technology is the one caught within the harshest model of maturity, the one the place working onerous doesn’t assure consolation, the place desires value greater than earnings, and the place merely staying afloat appears like a full-time job.
The loneliness of crowded cities
Let’s speak in regards to the loneliness. Metropolis life creates the strangest form of loneliness, the one which exists even if you find yourself surrounded by folks. You may dwell amongst tens of millions and nonetheless really feel utterly unseen. Everyone seems to be busy, everyone seems to be dashing, everyone seems to be stretched skinny.
Friendships now survive on postponed catch-ups and “we should hyperlink up quickly” guarantees that by no means materialise. By the point a free day lastly comes, all they need is relaxation and silence, which inevitably means the hangout by no means makes it out of the group chat.
Connection requires emotional vitality, and younger Nigerians barely have sufficient of that left to maintain themselves functioning. When you’re always in survival mode, relationships begin to really feel like further labour. You’re keen on your pals, however you not have the time to indicate up for them persistently. You care, however you’re drained.
Slowly, with out which means to, folks begin disappearing into themselves.
Love is tougher as a result of everyone seems to be exhausted
Romantic relationships haven’t escaped this exhaustion both. Love is not purely emotional; it has develop into financial, psychological, and transactional. Individuals are much less involved about love. It’s now a “Are you able to maintain me emotionally and financially?”
You may’t blame the ladies for wanting monetary safety, although. The world is simply too onerous to outlive alone. However our younger males, too, are collapsing internally, craving softness and emotional refuge they themselves can’t keep. Two drained folks attempting to like one another in a hostile economic system usually find yourself treating it as an obligation, not intimacy.
The horizon of affection is popping bleak; the burning lamp on the finish of the tunnel has been quenched by self-serving, selfish, self-absorbed, thoughtless and poisonous behaviours.
Courting now appears like negotiation, and vulnerability is dear. Sadly, many younger folks would somewhat keep guarded than danger the emotional debt of one other heartbreak.
The emotional worth no one is quantifying
Hypertension was once a late-stage hazard reserved for folks of their forties and fifties. Now it’s hitting twenty-three-year-olds who haven’t even seen half of life but. We now have folks experiencing quarter-life disaster and hustling further onerous simply to make ends meet.
Younger Nigerians are dropping themselves within the rat race earlier than they’ve had an opportunity to realize it totally. Hobbies have disappeared, curiosity has disappeared, playfulness is changed by sarcasm and on-line ‘drags’. Many individuals don’t even know who they’re exterior of survival.
Can this be salvaged?
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
