Favvy_Okwans🖤

There's this thing Pastor Iren would say. He'd say, "Proximity to the blessed will make you blessed, and proximity to the cursed will make you cursed." You can make or mar your life by proximity. He'd usually illustrate this with the story of Abraham's interaction with a pagan king made the king successful and how Lot's proximity to Sodom nearly led to his destruction alongside the city. I was having a conversation with a friend today, and he raised a question about whether there could have been innocent people in the biblical cities God instructed the Israelites to destroy and take over. It started as a joke, but there are certain things I don't find particularly funny, one of which is biblical misinterpretation.  My position was that these cities had been given opportunities to turn away from their evil ways, yet they persisted. And when judgment came, the consequences weren't necessarily limited to the individuals whose actions had contributed t...

" "People know exactly what they are doing." That was my exact reaction when I heard her say, "I'm still looking for my previous predator." Because what?? You literally called the person a predator. A predator! Which, if we're going by the hunter's description of the different kinds of men, is the kind of man who hunts, pursues, and goes after what he wants, he doesn't nurture, he's there to kill and eat, and you're telling me that after recognising this person for what he was, you're still looking for him? Now, I understand that human beings are complicated, there are times we know something is bad for us and still find ourselves drawn to it. Sometimes, knowing better and doing better are two entirely different conversations. But this particular statement got me thinking. What exactly are we looking for? From the conversation, she had experienced someone who nurtured her, someone who offered a different kind of treatment, yet she st...

As a society, we are too quick to tear people down for their opinions. We're too quick to marry a misconception to an entire race because of one person's actions. We're too quick to pass judgment, carry our cameras and tripods, and call out people's crap. Sometimes, we don't even wait to understand what a person is saying before we've decided what it means and who else deserves to be dragged alongside them. I came across a reaction video to the famous "Men Dey" video where a man was advising other men not to get married because one woman had spoken about the kind of man she wanted and, from his interpretation of her response, how she seemed to be relinquishing accountability in a relationship. And I couldn't help but wonder, are we being serious here? Because somewhere along the line, we seem to have forgotten that this was one woman's opinion. One woman expressing her preferences, her expectations, and perhaps her own understanding of what a r...

"While the percentage may be applauding, it is not all women." ~ X Watching the "Men Dey" video, it is very easy to misinterpret what went on there. Why? Because what most of us saw was a collection of clipped moments from a much longer video. The goal of such clips is often to get people talking, sometimes even to ragebait us into engagement. And just like that, we pick a side, run with one version of the story, and start acting like experts on a matter we hardly have the full gist of. The pastor eventually had to make a public statement explaining what happened. And honestly, it was one of those things that, if we had looked a little closer, if we had tried to see what was actually in front of us rather than what our biases had already programmed us to see, we might have understood from the beginning. You see, the "Men Dey" response wasn't necessarily an entire hall filled with women independently declaring that men who could provide a lavish lifesty...

There's this thing my boss always says that I used to find ridiculous, but over time, I began to understand it. He'd say, "There is certain knowledge I don't want to have," and I'd be perplexed. Because as how na? How can you deliberately not want to know something? But here's the thing: it is so much easier to learn when you don't have to unlearn first before you learn. Something that stood out to me in that video was the pastor talking about how being with older, richer, or often married men can heighten a woman's appetite. And I think there's something worth paying attention to here. This is the same principle at play when we talk about a yahoo boy finding it difficult to settle into a regular job. When you've become accustomed to making money through shortcuts, the thought of working a regular job, earning gradually and building something over time can begin to feel almost unreasonable. It's not necessarily that the job has no value...

"They are always exceptions to the rule, but what makes you feel that you can be the exception?" ~ Mr Paul. Before I talk about the video, lemme tell you a story from one of the medical series I've been watching. There's this character, Izzie Stevens. She woke up one day to discover that she had cancer, but the cancer had dangerously spread. Even with treatment, radiation and multiple surgeries, she had only a 5% chance of survival. Five per cent wasn't much, but it was all she had, so she fought. And somehow, she survived. It was a medical miracle. Nobody treating her believed she would make it, but she did. Now, Izzie was that one in a million chance. Because even people with a 70% chance of survival can still die, do you get? A high chance of survival doesn't guarantee life, and a slim chance doesn't make survival impossible. Now, back to the video. Men dey. The idea is that somewhere out there, there are still young, rich men who are ready to spend lav...

“When we overcompromise for the people we love, it soon turns to resentment.” ~ X In the words of Huwa, stop glamourizing the art of chipping away at your own spirit to make someone else whole when they don't even recognise it. We do this silly thing when we're in love or when we love people. We give up parts of ourselves to please them until one day, we can no longer recognise ourselves. I remember attempting to learn how to play the drums because I liked a drummer, lol. One time, I even learnt to play the famous Free Fire video game for a guy, or watched an entire 80-episode series just to have something to talk about with a friend. But growing up is realising that I didn't have to. Yes, love requires compromise, but when we begin to overcompromise, it is no longer just compromise. It becomes giving up the very things that make us who we are. And that can quickly spiral into resentment in the long run. There's this really cool couple in Grey's Anatomy, Arizona and...

"A man without conviction would fall for anything." ~ PVO One of the things I think is important is having a mind of your own. It's so easy to get carried away by what everyone else thinks, what is trending, or what people around you believe. Before you know it, you're agreeing with things you don't even understand, simply because everybody else seems to agree. You need to know what you believe in and why you believe it. You can't afford to be a coconut head that just goes wherever the wind blows, abi? Dearest reader, do you have convictions of your own, or do you just go with the flow? The world around you is constantly suggesting and if you do not forge a firm conviction you'd wake up one day and not be able to recognise yourself anymore because you've become everything and anything.  A friend of mine would say, you have to choose the kind of person you want to be, and we all choose but the funny thing is, not choosing is also choosing but then you b...

"The image of God locked up in sin." ~ PST Kenny How do you see unbelievers? Humans are judgmental. We often have a superiority complex, and it's evident in the way we explain away our part in conflicts, in our tendency to blame everyone else but ourselves, and in how strongly we feel about the things that concern us while vaguely understating the things that concern others. We do it in church too. Subconsciously or consciously, we suddenly take "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers" more seriously. We preach and emphasize condemnation so frequently that we begin to position ourselves as the elites of the human race, like the cool kids' table where everyone else is filthy and unworthy. But what if we looked at everyone else as the image of God? All mankind was made in the image and likeness of God. It's a given. You don't have to be in Christ to have been created in His image. Do you get? However, what distinguishes us as Christians...

You have no idea just how close you are. On today's episode of Grey's Anatomy, a surgeon participated in physician-assisted suicide. The patient was terminally ill. She was going to die; it was only a matter of time. But she was in so much pain, and she wanted to be put out of her misery. If you asked me, omor, beautiful choice oo, but another surgeon, Owen Hunt, who had previously served in the military, was totally against it. He tried to stop the procedure and convince both the patient and the surgeon attending to her not to go through with it. Initially, I was pissed at him. I was like, "Bro, leave the woman to die na. At least that's one decision that's up to her." Kinda shii. But it wasn't until the episode was drawing to an end that I began to understand where he was coming from. While serving in the military, Owen had lost a friend. They had survived an explosion, but his friend was severely injured while Owen was relatively unharmed. He tried ever...

“God made you short, but who made you quiet?” We are all perfectly imperfect humans. We have shortcomings here and there, things that are way out of our control, and that sucks. But we also have things we can control, things we can decide on, things we can change. Sitting around blaming the universe for everything is just such a victimistic thing to do. Yes, you are short, but I bet there is something about you that you can at least have control over, something you have a say in, and you know this. What we do, you and I both, which is sad, by the way, is focus so much on the things and places where we lack that we neglect the things we can actually fix. Dearest reader, we are all disadvantaged in some ways, but we need to look past those disadvantages and figure out what to do with the advantages we have been handed as well. Because really, we are not handed a bunch of disadvantages without an edge. That is not how it works. So, you may be short, like Dr. Bailey in today's episode ...

So, Kingatha and I do this crazy thing where we talk about stories, books, and movies alike as though they are things we have experienced ourselves. You need to see us discussing Grey's Anatomy, talking about Derek's eyes, or discussing a book character we have never met and only know through the pages we've read. It's fun, and because of our active imaginations, we get to talk about these stories as though they are tangibly real. So today, in a bid to explain how sometimes you have an experience that feels like the best thing that could ever exist, only to experience something even better later and realise just how ordinary the first experience had been, Kingatha pulled out the "Ceiling Versus Insom" card. It was a beautiful reference, and I got the gist immediately. Now, for some background, Ceiling was the silly name Ifemelu called Obinze in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah. It was very cute, like an inside joke only the couple understood. Insom, o...

“Some love is so consistent that we mistake it for background noise.” ~ X There is just this kind of love that is constant, always there, and over time, we forget to appreciate it until the day it is no longer there. Suddenly, its absence is loud, hard, and heavy on us because it is the kind of love we have grown so accustomed to. For some people, it is a mother's nagging, the constant bickering of loved ones, or the annoying little habits of our friends. Oftentimes, the little kindnesses we experience over time begin to feel like home. We keep expecting them because we are used to them, and somewhere along the line, we stop seeing them for what they are: expressions of love. Perhaps it is because we have become so familiar with their presence that we no longer recognise their value. We forget that not everyone has someone who checks up on them, someone who notices when they go quiet, someone who remembers the little things, or someone who cares enough to be annoying. We mistake co...

I have basic axioms, and one of them is the popular, “Flee from the appearance of evil.” I have most definitely written on it in passing, but the thing about my axioms is that they keep evolving. So when my coach questioned this line I throw around in a conversation today, it was an opportunity to expand what I actually held. My interpretation of “flee from the appearance of evil” had been hinged on this: if it looks like evil, run. Don’t begin to investigate it, don’t try to discover how bad it really is, just go the other direction. Anyways, the initial Scripture this was picked from is 1 Thessalonians 5:22: “Stay away from every kind of evil.” So I decided to check out the Greek word used there. The Greek word often translated as “appearance” is εἴδους (eidous), from εἶδος (eidos). εἶδος literally means “form,” “kind,” “sort,” or “appearance.” So essentially, that verse of Scripture wasn't just telling us to bolt whenever something looks like evil. It is telling us to flee from ...

“There's always a way. Even when things look bad, there's always a way.” — X Those are the exact words of the most confidently optimistic yet realistic patient I've come across in this series. On today's episode of Grey's Anatomy, Derek Shepherd pulled off one of the most intriguing and riskiest surgeries I've seen so far. It was a beautiful tumour wrapped around a man's spine, so dangerously positioned that one wrong move could leave him paralysed for life. And yet, the tumour was so complex that there was barely any room for error. Initially, when Derek was shown the scan, his first reaction was intrigue. He called it a beautiful tumour, but eventually concluded that it was inoperable. But the patient wasn't hearing it, oga told him to find a way, that there was always a way. It almost felt like the patient had placed a bet on Derek, and Derek now had to find a way to win it. On his first attempt to remove the tumour, Derek stood in the OR for ten hour...

Guess who was very happy about 130 views on my YouTube channel! Background story: I run a mini YouTube channel where I post YouTube Shorts, and I remember when I started out, I was getting a lot of views. I literally got my first 1k views on the channel and I loved it. Anyways, along the line, the views began to plummet. From over 400 at times to 26, or 7, or 5. It was annoying. It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to say, “You know what? Maybe I’m not cut out for this shii.” But then I had to remind myself that I don’t run it for the people, I run it for me. So even on days when I get 2 views, which is usually my sister and a friend, I’m still going to make another video and upload it. That’s exactly why I was so happy when I got a notification that my last video did a solid 130 views. I hadn’t seen that number in a while, and it was really nice. 130 people who don’t know me watched me talk about something I really like. How cool is that? If you ask me? Super cool. Dearest reade...

Is it still loyalty when there are certain boundaries, certain lengths you simply would not go to, even for someone you love or deeply respect? I was having a conversation with someone recently, and their definition of loyalty and reverence sort of baffled me. I was of the opinion that you could be loyal to someone and still have meaningful boundaries. That you could love, respect and stand by someone without automatically agreeing with everything they do or following them everywhere they go. They, however, seemed to believe that loyalty meant jumping into the fire because the person you are loyal to jumped in first or said you should. That if you truly revered someone, questioning them, disagreeing with them, or refusing to follow them into certain places somehow made your loyalty questionable. And it got me thinking. Because where exactly does loyalty end and blind allegiance begin? Is loyalty doing whatever someone asks because you love them, or is it loving them enough to say, “I c...

“Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.” ~ Exodus 20:7 Remember how, in children’s session growing up, this was one of the verses they used to instill the fear of God in us? It was one of the scariest Bible verses, and at the time, it was interpreted to us as, “Saying God’s name anyhow is a sin,” one that God takes very seriously. It wasn’t until recently when I watched this YouTube that I began to understand the verse differently. Not that saying God’s name carelessly is completely unrelated to the commandment, but that the commandment goes deeper than simply saying “God” or “Jesus” in the wrong context. The Hebrew word translated as “take” is nasa, which carries the idea of lifting, carrying, bearing, or taking up. So there is something about carrying the name of God that this commandment addresses. And that got me thinking. By calling ourselves Christians, we take on an identity, we identify with Christ, we carry His name. Which means that perhaps taking His name ...

When the people we love are in pain, we often feel like there is something we have to do. Save them. Help them. Find a solution. Say the right thing that will make everything feel better. But more often than not, the greatest act of care we can offer is simply being there. Sit with them through the discomfort. Hold them when they cry, listen when they need to talk. And sometimes, just shut up and allow them to exist the best way they know how at that point in time. Not every pain needs a solution from us. Sometimes, people just need the comfort of knowing that they do not have to carry it alone. Like I would often say, letting people be is such a love language. There is something beautiful about loving people without constantly trying to fix them. About giving them room to feel, to process, to be quiet, to fall apart, and eventually find their way back to themselves. Sometimes, love is not pulling someone out of the dark, sometimes, it is simply sitting beside them until their eyes adj...