By Ganiu Bamgbose, PhD
One serious irony of life is how many people do not understand that the things they think do not matter are the determining factors of the matters in their life. Like Sam Adeyemi once said, everything that stays in your subconscious state will become internalised someday. Anyone who frequented the Lagos State University-Iyano Iba environs between 2020 and 2023 would have mindfully or mindlessly listened to an often repeated bus terminal song by the members of the national union of road transport workers often played through a megaphone. The blaring sound of the composer always screaming “Alhaji Mola l’oga wa (Alhaji Mola is our boss)” is a perfect example of how not to sing. Frankly I detested the rendition because it made a caricature of Fuji artistes and Fuji is my favourite musical genre.
Alas! I was in my kitchen sometime in 2022 and I found myself not only singing “Alhaji Mola l’oga wa” but also dancing to the rhythm I had lamented about to some persons several times. Gaining consciousness, asking myself and having to provide the answer by myself, I questioned what put those lines on my lips. There and then I became mindful of the power of the subconscious.
It dawned on me that nothing in life is exactly tied to feeling or emotion if there is no conscious effort to grow it or let go of it. Not liking the song did not stop me from singing it unconsciously since I could not consciously help myself from listening to it anytime I passed through the bus terminal. What you allow is a bigger factor in your reality than what you like or dislike.
In the configuration of humans, there are two visible body parts that determine what goes on in an invisible or hidden part. The visible parts are the eyes and the ears and the invisible part is the heart. The heart in this piece refers to a person’s character, or the place within a person where feelings or emotions are considered to come from. You cannot regulate your heart if you do not legislate over what you see and what you hear. I have heard people who spend hours on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and other social media say they are just there for fun. When fun settles deeply into your subconscious, your reality may become funny even to you. Of course these platforms may be inevitable for professional uses sometimes. A fashion designer looking up designs on Instagram is certainly legislating over what their eyes see. One of my undergraduate supervisees recently asked me why almost all my students whose numbers are on my contact list have their status muted on my WhatsApp, and I told her it is because the ideas they share on their status are not ideal for the reality I have created for my life.
Your heart does not answer to you as much as you think. It mainly scans and saves what you see and what you hear. Be selfish about what you feed your eyes and your ears with for that is a strong determinant of your reality. So if you may ask yourself like I am doing too: how much do you legislate over what you watch and listen to?
(c) 2024 Ganiu Bamgbose writes from the Department of English, Lagos State University.
