Wisdom in Unexpected Places: A Journey of Discovery

With Sumisha , the podcast presents A Fight for Life , an event dedicated to men's mental health and focuses on suicide prevention . This November , join us in this crucial campaign to raise awareness and save lives , because every man deserves to know that he matters . Details coming soon . Hi , mindful Partners , how are you ? How has the week been ?

It's a year , a full year , that I've been able to bring you amazing conversations , share some musings , personal thoughts and ideas , and bring friends and people with amazing stories to mindfully share the podcast as we try to understand and demystify the ubiquitous term mental health .

I remember that about four episodes ago I think , the 50th episode Ola and I were talking about how we need to break down the terms , that the terminologies that come with mental health , and how this might hamper how we are truly discussing , educate on mental health questions and the difference between mental ill health and keeping a , you know , or a balanced mental

whole being , which is a sort of a holistic thing to do , right , and that's what we've been trying to do in the last one year of mindfully , which we should not live in mindfully , live in mindfully , you suppose . All right . So , welcome to this episode . Um , I can't call it , or another celebrate celebratory episode , but I could say so .

But this week , I re , I am not recording from a studio and , um , I'm recording somewhere far away , very far away from lagos and in aqua . You will get to that conversation some day and all the things that you gave to me I would share that someday .

But today I want to talk about something that happened , uh , during the course of july july the second , I think , to be precise and I would like to say , uh , maybe call this the hidden wisdom in nonsense , how assumptions can block new understanding .

For those who have followed Mindfully Wootamache for a while , you know that I live and I will constantly talk about the four agreements written by Don Miguel Ruiz and the four agreements I . I quickly go through them . Agreement number one to be impeccable with your words . Agreement number two do not take anything personally .

Agreement number three do not make assumptions . And agreement number four always do your best , right . And I call this hidden wisdom in nonsense and how assumptions can block new understanding .

Welcome to this mindful music , if you will , uh , where I try to explore the hidden depths of everyday experiences and uncover the wisdom in the seemingly mundane things that happens around us . I am Oluwatsumishi Oladakwo Kukumu .

All right , today let's dive into a story that I picked up on WhatsApp status that challenges our assumptions and reveals the power of looking beyond the surface . Have you ever come across something that made absolutely no sense to you ? Maybe it was a meme , a random post on social media , or even a comment from a friend .

Our immediate reaction is often to maybe dismiss it , so judge it based on what we already know . But if , what if ? I told you that this very reaction could be standing in the way of new understanding . Walk with me , as the say these days

on social media . Let me take you through a journey , a journey that began with that began with a meme that my friend and baby , if you will bully shared with me . At first glance , it was utter nonsense no punctuations , no grammatical sentence , there was no capital , there was no full stop , nothing . And the meme read life is like a shoe .

You cannot drink a cow because the earth is carrot . Life is like a shoe . You cannot drink a cow because the earth is carrot . My immediate response was bolu what is this again ? Because , trust me , that girl has a lot under her sleeves .

It made no sense to me but , intrigued , I posted it on my social media with a caption that said If you understand this meme , you understand what's been going on in the Nigerian social media space in the past week , because that week was exceptionally interesting in the Nigerian social media space .

Not long after I posted that I posted that on my WhatsApp status and I posted it on Facebook status someone sent me a message and , to my utmost , utmost shock , they broke down the meme for me in a way that completely transformed my understanding . Life is like a shoe . It's in sizes and quality grades .

You cannot drink a cow , but you can drink the product of the cow , that is , milk , and its quality is determined by what and how you feed the cow . The earth is carot . There is a stick in carot approach to the cow . The earth is carrot . There is a stick in carrot approach to dealing with the earth and the people of the earth .

All right , the message continued explaining the moral of the story , so he didn't just break it down , he also gave me a moral to the story . The earth will yield her increase to you , both as a living thing a cow and as a non-living thing a shoe . The quality of both is determined by you , what you say and do . Needless to say , my shock was profound .

I screamed . I said sirema , which , for those unfamiliar , is a term we used to express a sudden realization of profound insights . The person who wrote this broke down . Uh , the person who wrote this breakdown , pardon me even admitted to laughing at their own interpretation . He said even me , I'm laughing at what I wrote .

I explained to them why this response shocked me as a language student , and the same with bolu . The lack of punctuation and proper grammar made the meme look like a long , rambling sentence . But this person , not being a language student , had taken that rambling sentence and turned it into nuggets of wisdom . And here's what he says .

He said and I , as a non-language student , I have taken that long-running sentence , as you see , and turned it into nuggets . So what did this exchange do for me ? It left me with a powerful lesson and understanding that our understanding , or what we think we are experts in , can sometimes limit us .

We judge based on what we know , and in doing so we might miss out on new perspectives and insights . So what's the takeaway from this story ? It is simple Don't let what you know stand in the way of what you should know or what you can know .

Be open to new interpretations , be open to new understandings , be open to new wisdom , even if it's coming from the most unexpected places . You know , or one of the reasons that , for example , we're taking this um , this journey , this campaign of fight for life , is from a conversation that I had with my 13 year old um .

He's a boy I've talked about him countlessly on this show and then , where he was trying to tell me what happened in class , a boy , a girl , had um pushed at a boy in his class and the boy was holding himself back from fighting the girl , the girl and , excuse me , and the girl . Everybody kept saying to the boy you can't touch .

Her is um , she's a girl . And my son said he felt some death of anger . And I'm like , okay , why do you feel so angry ? He said not , maybe not anger , he was just some sort of displeasure . And he said , mommy . I said yes , everyone is teaching the girl how to fight . I said , yes , who is teaching the boy how not to start the war ?

And I'm like , okay , what ? How not to start the war ? So I I continued the conversation . I'm like , okay , so how do you mean how not to start the war ? He said , well , I , in the little that I know , like I said , it's 13 . Most men are built to fight , to protect and all of that . But the power is in when a man knows not to start a war at all .

And he ended up with something that was so profound so profound at least to me . He said that if men are raised to be men , women will enjoy being women . Right , like I said , wisdom can come from so so many places .

If we allow for that wisdom to teach us , if we stay in the moment , if we try to , uh , to engage , to engage the things that come our way . I was saying the other day to some people that that prejudices could simply I think it's something that I posted way back on Facebook prejudices are simply uneducated perspectives .

Right , and I'm thinking that if we could take time and take time to understand other people's perspectives and work with these perspectives as we try to engage life , we'll probably we'll have less gender wars , we'll probably we have less anger , less judgment , less prejudices , because most of those wars that we're all trying to fight , no one , no one , knows exactly

how it started .

We've just been passed down our things , wars , ideas , concepts have been passed down to us and we just take them , and then we go to school and when we go to school , we have all of our teachers , from primary , from secondary , and then we have parents who are domesticating us , um , trying to help us live life the best way they know how to , and some of

them get it right , some of them do not get it right , and then we are thrown into the world trying to try to make sense of what other people are also thinking . So you have what you're thinking and you have what others are thinking .

This experience taught me a valuable lesson Often what we know or areas of expertise that we are in can cloud our judgment and prevent us from seeing things from a different perspective . By taking a moment to understand the why behind something or someone or someone , we can gain insights that we might otherwise miss .

So the next time you encounter something that doesn't make a median sense to you , pause , ask yourself why , sick to understand the deeper meaning before making a judgement . You might be surprised at the wisdom that you uncover . I'm also a big thank you to bulu atife obakoya , who sent this meme .

That just sent me , that sent me on a scent of thoughts and I had the thoughts coming in and , of course , to alicia's olalua , who also gave his thoughts .

He was the one who broke down that uh name for me in a way that has um , and I promised him that I was going to write about it and I was going to probably do a short musing mindful musing on it , and what better way was for me to do that than today ? Like I said , I can't call this a celebratory .

It's one year of Mindfully With Tumisha , the podcast , and I'm going to be on um . I'm going to take a two week break , uh , to step back and look at what we've done in the last one year and see how we can make it better and what you can do for me while we're taking this break . Uh is also it's just two weeks . I'll be back before you know .

It is to send us a text via the link that will be in the show notes or follow us on social media Mindfully With Tumishe on Instagram , tumishe Okoku on Mindfully With Tumishe , of course on Treads , on Twitter also and , of course , my personal pages .

All of this are in the show link and you can also just send us a text message , just unnecessarily send a text and send a message on how we can make things better .

But do not forget , of course , you heard at the beginning of the show today that Mindful Witch Miche is putting together an event called A Fight for Life , which focuses on men's mental health and suicide prevention . If you did not know , november in some parts of Europe is called Movember .

That is M-O-V-E-R , where brave men take a stand for , take a stand for , not against , because for and against , if you will , are certain mental , certain health questions for men . But in november it focuses on post-trait and suicide prevention and we are choosing because of course , this is well , mindfully with tzimishe to focus on suicide prevention .

We will be bringing the details soon . Ola and I spoke spoke about it on the 50th episode , but officially we're starting this campaign . Join us as we take this crusher campaign and raise awareness to save lives , because every human being I know deserves to know that they matter , but in this case , every man deserves to know that they matter .

And that's it for Mindful Agent Michelle for this week , and we'll be back in the in about two weeks , okay , uh , but of course we have all our episodes streaming , just uh , listening to , and , don't worry , I'll be posting those links of episodes that I believe would bring you some clarity , from grief to understanding stories , to understanding exactly what , um ,

mental health questions and ill health is our friendship , which we're heavy on on , uh , mindful to michi , and we'll be talking so much more about the november event , and that is a fight for life . Please follow us on all our socials , mindfully with Tumishe , on Instagram , on Facebook , on Twitter . You can also follow me personally , tumishe Okoku .

If this story is mundane as it sounds , if you enjoyed it , please subscribe and share it with others who might find it valuable . Until next time , keep an open mind and always seek to understand the why . Love yourself , love your neighbor , love your country , country . Above all of this , love god . He is the essence of your being .

War but not for long , no , not for long .