I was born in Ogbomọṣọ three years before the new millennium, at a time that makes me what you might call, and for lack of a better description, an African zillennial. The story of my childhood is neither more poignant nor exciting than the adulthood I live now. But let me begin with the town where my story takes root: Ogbomoṣọ. They say if a youth’s eyes do not witness a story, they should at least be good for hearsay. A city in southwestern Nigeria, rich in the savannah and flanked by farmlands, it was founded in the mid-17th century by my ancestors, worshippers of Olodumare and the orishas , or, as some would describe it, worshippers of God and the gods. Around the same time, the English Civil War raged in Europe, the Sun King rose to dominance, and the transatlantic slave trade reshaped West Africa. Local empires like the Asantes and Oyos were consolidating their power. The inhabitants of Ogbomoṣọ, like the surrounding towns, were Yoruba. By the 20th century, this place of quiet beginnings would become the home of Samuel Ladoke Akintola, a university named after him, and the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary. The residents,  Christians, Muslims, and traditionalists ,  live together with the ease of familiarity as if peace were their natural condition. This is an autobiographical essay.

Some say we are in the era of the post-truth biography, and that might be ostensibly true. But all these are facts I have sometimes strenuously recollected at the mild risk of straining my mind against my present soulical zeitgeist.

My earliest memory was of a corpse, which I saw from where I stood (or sat), motionless on the veranda of a house that doubled as a crèche. The corpse was lying under a white cloth and was wheeled out from the kind of “face-me-I-face-you” house that must have seen much life and death. I did not know the deceased, and despite my inability to feel much grief, I could feel the cold hand of fear and sorrow as though it had brushed past me.

As a child, I delighted in the small wonders of the world. I hunted grasshoppers in the open field near our apartment, indifferent to whether they came to me alive or dead — what mattered was the thrill of the catch. I loved the routine of trekking home from school with my older sister to buy sauced potatoes, the heat of the sun on our backs. On one of those afternoons, I saw a snake slithering through a roadside drain, or perhaps it was just a lizard. I never really knew for sure. Morning devotion was my mother’s gift to us. Her songs and prayers were so unfailingly consistent that I could say them word for word, her faith a steady rhythm in a life that was, already, building up to be chaotic. The elders say a child is never better or worse than the sort of upbringing he receives. If a child is born into the house of wisdom, is sent to the house of discernment for upbringing, and while returning comes upon intelligence; can he lack wisdom, can he lack discernment, or can he lack intelligence?

Power Rangers played on our landlord’s TV, and his daughter — young but much older than me, and beautiful — was perchance my first awareness of feminine beauty. Guilt came early, too. I once injured a classmate with a sharpened pencil that I had carelessly kept in one of the side pockets of my backpack. His name and face are lost to me now, but the shame of my act lingers, sharp and unforgiving.

I knew alcohol as the devil’s drink. “Nothing good comes of it,” I heard. At my youngest brother’s christening, I tasted it for the first time — under the quick but sly persuasion of my father’s companions — and it burned my throat, both literally and morally.

In 2004, we moved and eventually settled into a small house of our own. It was in a local, suburban neighborhood where rivalries simmered, stoked by what my now-adult, don’t-ever-talk-bad-of-your-parents mind still identifies as dangerous living by my dad. I’ve since come to believe that every experience, good or bad, is a teacher. And learning what not to do is often as important as mastering what to do.

I made new friends and played Sega games with one whose father had just died. That was when I first tried to understand grief — not as a vague, distant emotion, but as something I shared with my friend, something heavy and personal.

I grew into a proper “church boy” when we joined a new church, perhaps because of its proximity to our house, and I loved to work around the building. In all likelihood, I welcomed the “distraction” because it took my mind off simmering domestic issues.

We sometimes ate cashews and mangoes from their stalks on the trees, and played with the former’s nuts, knocking them down from a mound of sand in a game called “koro.” I was the class speaker at my elementary school graduation, and it was a good feeling. But even then, I always knew there were bigger, more challenging worlds beyond.

In high school, I admired and was attracted to intelligence and aura. Sex education for me was very unstructured and so-so, and I believe it was that way also for many of my peers. One was more likely to pick up lessons from TV shows and movies, the radio, from social media, and the internet, including porn websites. I thought everything I knew about sex, my peers had long known. For example, I saw porn for the first time in the last year of junior high, courtesy of a compact disc I took home to play on my dad’s portable video player.

I was a top student, but my performance became less efficient as I moved up classes, even as there were flashes of occasional brilliance. I loved Integrated Science, perhaps because the teacher, whose name I cannot now remember, believed in me and always hinted at it. I proceeded to the Sciences at senior secondary school. I wasn’t forced — I did not think I could be imposed upon, even at that age. I just thought I was made for the Sciences. Admittedly, the fact that my mother taught Biology in another school may have subtly influenced my choice. Mother bought textbooks and novels in Yoruba and English. She also kept a cupboard of books in our shared room, and I read everything I could lay my eyes (never mind my hands) on. Reading was my escape from an unpredictable and fully-blown chaotic domestic life.

I was Assistant Male Senior Prefect but didn’t accomplish anything I am proud of in that position. I regret my inactivity today. I didn’t know what that kind of positional leadership entailed, nor did I bother to find out. Now I understand that leadership, at its core, is about having a vision, and not even about people or titles. I failed my first JAMB — scored 199 — then proceeded to a pre-degree program at the Centre for Distance Learning, Obafemi Awolowo University, where I brushed up foundational sciences and finished with a score of 79.8% to get in to study Dentistry and Dental Surgery. I picked my course of study like I selected the Sciences at senior high — I thought it was a good challenge and knew I was smart enough to do it. It was also the “highest” my grades could realistically fetch.

University was a turning point. In 2015, shortly after my resumption, I suffered a traumatic incident that reshaped my life. Not that I had been a stranger to trauma, but there was a before and after to that one. I sought solace in books — bought and read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and Steve Farrar’s Finishing Strong and Point Man. Those would become the first of hundreds of books I read and studied in the next decade.

At the start of my second year, I was ravenously impatient for meaning in my life. Influenced by some ideas I read, I decided to unrestrainedly explore extracurriculars with increased participation at the local association of dental students at my university. I took on leadership roles at the Obafemi Awolowo University Dental Students’ Association, IFUDSA, which became my proving ground for personal and professional growth. Again, my academics, which started exceptionally well, began to dwindle. I realized that to embark on any adventure, the support of your loved ones is not only important but necessary, as it could easily make all the difference in the world. For me, it was relentlessly tough and depressingly lonely. The person with powerful support seems better than their peers, lacking such support, one should redouble one’s efforts. But that is as much as I would like to say. Self-actualization is ultimately a single-player, internal game, and I learned to be more responsible for the space I occupy.

My relationship with God became more personal in my early 20s. Dealing with burnout and failures, I went from resilience to antifragility. I realized I’m a spiritual man having a human experience, made by God in His image and sent to the universe, specifically to earth, to the developing Third Worlds, to work with others to execute a work that He has already finished since the beginning of time. I have been given discernment, people, leadership & service gifts; my source is God, and I am made in the Creator’s image. I discovered I was created to build visionary relationships, build helpful companies with others, and write things that can help myself and, possibly, other people. I am to contribute to establishing strong institutions. To do this, I’ll have to form strong partnerships with others and live a supernatural and revolutionary life, or what we Christians call kingdom living.

I also realized that I will return to God whenever He calls me home, and that God’s purpose lives on in others. I believe that success, in a way, is readiness for death — the willingness to leave not at any moment, but at any moment God says so.

My principles, in no particular order:

• Spiritually purposeful, revolutionary, kingdom living
• Gratitude
• Forgiveness
• Equity

The most fulfilling adventures/greatest achievements:

I:

• read hundreds of helpful books and picked up a few mental models
• overcame public failures in my 20s
• am surviving and thriving on a major traumatic event
• worked while in school
• discovered what I need to do in the long term
• am proud of the type of person I became while getting my professional doctorate

The most difficult things I’ve done:

• Growing up, living with my dad and his extended family
• Surviving a major traumatic event
• Repeating a class in medical school
• Being IFUDSA president
• Becoming a Dr.
• My first full marathon

My most difficult adventures are not exactly my most fulfilling, but they are undeniably all interconnected.

The only thing deserving of being said about the present is that I’m grateful that I can write this. I’m grateful for clarity and for both undeserved and deserved help. But most importantly, I am grateful for good people, or shall I say good company. Because, sometimes, even good people can be bad company. Vision is key.

I am morbidly fascinated with outdoor running. Nurturing solace with movements in nature is something that appeals to my spirit. What running makes possible is the chance to grow my endurance while doing that. Running, for me, is more than a hobby; it is meditation in motion, a silent dialogue with my body, the world around me, and my Saviour. Like any other endeavor, it is prayer if done properly for the sake of itself. Lately, my love of the greens has made me develop an interest in golf. I have also enjoyed football in the past, and I still occasionally play that sport. And yet, these pursuits feel like preludes to a grander aspiration: the triathlon. I long to embrace water, road, and open-air in a single, unbroken journey, testing the limits of not just my endurance but my will to transcend what I thought possible.

I dream that someday, the Third World will be a land of opportunities, where her sons and daughters can live to their fullest potential.

Raising a godly family based on God’s intergenerational covenant is key. This is the most important thing for me. I believe my descendants, helped by God, will contribute to lifting the brokenhearted out of their suffering.

I will work with others and contribute to economic empowerment and economic integration on the continent; we can improve how we take risks while building, capturing, and providing value.

We can also define and significantly promote the African/Black sense of identity, cultures, and languages via literature and the media.

I may be wrong, but I believe the best way to be, and find, a good spouse is to maximize for fear of God and good judgment. The best way to be a writer is to read and write prolifically for just one person — myself — before I write for others. The best way to build a great company is to ethically create more value than is captured for each stakeholder. The best way to advocate is to pursue a worthy cause for which the fear of death means so little.

One does not gather olú-ọrán mushrooms in haste; two hundred of them are not enough to make a stew. And one does not eat a scalding stew in a hurry. It is with wisdom and patience that one brings an elephant into town. And it is very carefully and patiently that a snake climbs the coconut palm. These are the sayings of the elders.

Some of these may be moonshots, but I am unreasonably confident God’s plans always live on in others. Death never wins.