The Empathic Social Observer – Page 2 – The Empathic Social Observer

PEARLS FOR MY LITTLE ONE: LETTER TO MY NIECE

Dear Mandy,

When I look back at grandma’s voice in my life, what echoes most is her steady insistence on self-worth. She spoke it not as theory, but as something she believed I deserved to hold onto—even when she herself was still learning what it meant. And isn’t that what mothers do? They plant seeds, even before they know the full tree that might grow from them.

However, self-worth without discernment is like honey without bees: sweet but defenceless.

For me, learning that balance has come in unexpected ways. Sometimes, it feels like laying out small riddles to the people I let close, just to see if they can read the language of my heart. It is not about trickery. It is about recognition. A person who sees you—truly sees you—will not stumble where swiftness is the honour due. People of worth can not sit comfortably with one-sidedness. Their spirit will press them to give something back.

They will not treat pearls like pebbles.

But here’s the part I want you to remember: withdrawing when the riddle is left unanswered is not cruelty. It is dignity. It is not pride to flinch at being mishandled. It is the soft, firm knowing of what you carry and the grace of refusing to lay it before blindness.

This, however, is not a call to live narrow or paranoid, constantly on defence. Life will bruise you regardless because no one is perfect—we ourselves, even with the best intentions, have hurt others unknowingly. The aim is not to build walls so high that you suffocate, but to recognize the urgency with which someone reaches for you. That urgency speaks volumes.

Perhaps that’s the second lesson, my darling: self-worth is not just a defence; it is also a gift. To know your own value is to walk lighter. It frees you from endless proving. You will test, yes. But you will also rest. Because what is truly for you will recognize you without delay.

Also, don’t forget that it is wisdom to leave people alone when they want to be left alone—another lesson I had to learn and weave into the balance of discernment.

I have an inkling, however, that you may not even need this particular lesson like your mother who, almost innately, seemed to find the balance. She knows when to draw close, when to step back, and how to honour herself without apology. For me, it was less natural. I had to wrestle with it, to learn by trial, to test and be tested in return.

And so my wish for you, little one, is that you will inherit the best of both: your grandmother’s steady voice, your mother’s quiet balance, and my hard-earned discernment. With these, you will walk sure-footed into the world, knowing that what you carry is treasure, and you are never less for expecting it to be treated as such.

With all my love,
Your Auntie.

The Empathic Social Observer.

P.S. Some people call it “playing oblivious.” I call it sparing yourself unnecessary battles. Not every invitation to wrestle deserves your strength.

TO THE ONE WHO THOUGHT THEY’D BE A WRITER BY NOW

Dear You,

You thought it would’ve happened by now.

You thought you’d have a book—maybe not a bestseller, but something with your name printed on it. Something real. A spine. A dedication page. Maybe a small cult following on Goodreads.

You thought the words you wrote in your journal, in the margins of dental notes, in scraps of WhatsApp chats, would amount to something more solid by now. Something established.
But here you are.
Living in the parentheses.
Surrounded by half-done projects, open tabs, and stories you don’t feel brave enough to finish.

It’s okay.
I’m not here to push you.
I’m just here to sit with you in the “not yet.”

Because me too.
Everything in my life feels half-baked, like batter waiting on heat.
An e-book unopened.
A blog with five drafts and no posts.
A dream deferred because real life needs dinner and deadlines and someone to reply to that email with “Kind regards.”

But I still believe in you.
Not because of what you’ve published—but because of how you see.
Because you notice the quiet things. The ache behind a sentence. The way some people speak in ellipses and others in punctuation marks.
Because you feel everything like it’s your job.
And maybe it is.

Writing is a long, strange becoming.
It rarely feels like success.
It mostly feels like returning. Sitting with yourself. Listening. Starting again.

So no—maybe you’re not “a writer” in the polished, podcast-interview, book-tour way.
But you’re writing.
Even when you feel like a ghost in your own pages.
Even when you think no one sees you.

I do.

And I’m rooting for you.
Not the polished, perfect version.
You. Half-baked. Becoming. Trying again.

With softness,
Meestique.
The Empathic Social Observer.

WE WEAR SUNGLASSES SO YOU DON’T SEE THE FIRE BURNING IN OUR EYES.

3This is the first in a series of essays I’m calling “Abuja Roads”—a meditation on driving, fury, beauty, and what the road reveals about who we really are. I love this city. But I also want to fight half its drivers. Welcome to the contradiction.

1. On Lane Wanderers and the Indecision of Character

Abuja.
The beautiful city I grew up in. The only city I’ve really known as home.

The roads are wide, like they were designed for dreaming. And at this time of year, between the end of May and early June—the city is in bloom. The red-petal trees are in full performance, screaming against the lush green of roadside lawns and leaves, bold and unignorable. The colours clash and sing. And it’s clear: rainy season has begun.

The trees always announce it before the skies do. And whenever I see those petals scattered across the road like flower girls passed through, I know change is here—maybe in the weather, maybe in my skin.

There’s something about Abuja’s views that gives you that “inside-outside” feeling—like you’re both far away and deeply within something. The quiet neighbourhoods. The polite, well-dressed people who mind their business.

And yet.

Driving in this city I love has revealed another side of its soul. A microcosm of its collective psyche. The road has become its own kind of mirror.

Of all the things that trigger me in this life, nothing outranks the drivers who refuse to pick a lane. The ones who perch their vehicles on the lane markings instead of inside a lane. They sway from line to line like the roads were custom-designed for their indecision. As if being halfway here and halfway there is a strategy. As if everyone should wait while they figure themselves out.

I’m convinced this kind of driving speaks to something deeper: a certain kind of indecision about life itself. Or maybe it’s greed. Selfishness. The kind that keeps all options open, even if it means blocking others from moving freely along their own paths.

But maybe—just maybe—the intensity of my reaction also says something about me. Why do I get so triggered by indecision and dogged self-preservation? Why does that energy offend me on such a cellular level? I don’t know. But I watch it. And that tension alone is worth writing about.

2. The Elbow Men and My Inner Gore

Then there’s another group of drivers—mostly taxi men, mostly male—who love to hang their non-dominant arm out of the window like a soft flag of ego. Always relaxed. Always on display.

When I was younger, my mum told me they do it to show off—that they can drive with one hand. A testament to skill. Or masculinity. Or both. The way she said it stayed with me—not angry, just… detached. That tone mothers use when they’ve seen something foolish so many times that it no longer surprises them. Only bores them.

I wish I could assume that same posture in my mind.

Instead, I find myself nursing dark, ridiculous thoughts. Fantasies. That one day, a car will clip one of those arms clean off. Blood spurting, dismembered limb flying across the tar, finally coming to rest on the pavement. Just that one wild moment of chaos—enough to teach them to keep their body parts inside the damn vehicle.

Of course, I know where this comes from. I’ve watched one too many serial killer documentaries. Vikings. Game of Thrones. All that gore. But still, I marvel at how easily my mind goes there. I marvel at my own capacity for absurd rage. And yet… I keep watching.

3. The GLK Spirit (a.k.a. Carry Your Wahala and Go)

Next up: the drivers of the GLK.

You know them.
The big-bodied Benz SUVs that move like they were born with entitlement in their engine. The ones who drive like they paid for the roads. Who act like your lane is optional when they need space.

I’ve stopped arguing with them. I simply move. Let them pass. I file them under “arrogance that comes with wealth,” especially in a country like ours, where money is a kind of armour, and driving a GLK is less about transportation and more about domination.

Carry your wahala and go.

4. “Na Woman Dey Drive”: On Gender, Skill, and Fragile Egos

But no rant about Abuja roads would be complete without the classic line:
“Na woman dey drive.”

Every woman who’s ever driven in this city has heard it. Usually from the moment a man realises that it’s you, a woman, in front of him—obeying traffic laws, being cautious, not needing to impress anybody.

He says it with that special brand of contempt. Like it explains every traffic situation. Like it’s a diagnosis for slowness. Or uncertainty. Or just existing with ovaries and a driver’s license.

Sometimes I pause. I ask myself: is this still 2025?

Do they really think driving is some mystical masculine birthright? Do they not know that driving—like cooking, like cleaning—is a skill? That it’s learned through repetition, refined through experience? I work in a skill-based field. Every day, I see women perform delicate, precise, life-altering procedures. So why is steering a Toyota the line some men can’t cross?

Maybe it’s not about driving. Maybe it’s about power. Space. Control. The same script, new location.

Just yesterday, one man threw his sense into the gutter—trying to overtake me from the right side of a single-lane road full of potholes. Nearly scratched both our cars just to prove that he was The Man. I just shook my head.

Na wa o.
I rest my case.

5. But Just Before I Rest…

There’s still so much more to say. I haven’t even touched on the ones who reverse on expressways or the drivers who use hazard lights as an apology in motion. But one essay at a time.

Maybe the roads are just a stage.
Maybe we’re all performing—anger, masculinity, survival.
And maybe, just maybe, the car horn is our national dialect for “Notice me.”

So yes, I rest my case.
For now.

Meestique,

The Empathic Social Observer.

LETTER TO MY FUTURE DAUGHTER

Dear Daughter,

I write this to you even before meeting you, knowing that if you are like me, your heart will be open—bleeding sometimes for justice, to see and be seen, aching to love.

It is not out of vanity that I compare you to me, or that I want you to live in my shadow. It is because with every letter I write, I want to share myself with you—fully and honestly—so that you will see me as human, flawed and learning, just like you will be. My words come from experience, both pleasant and painful.

You will come to understand, however, that we all succumb to vanity sometimes. Knowing this—recognizing it in yourself and others—will be useful in the years to come. But that is a letter for another day.

Today, I want to speak to you about something simpler, yet harder to master:
Actions are more powerful than words.

Because you are a woman, words may carry great weight in your life. Compliments will thrill you. Apologies might disarm you. Promises could make your heart swell. And yet—none of them are the truth. Not on their own, anyway. And that’s a lot coming from me who loves words and knows how powerful they can be.
But you must train your mind to become more perceptive to actions—your own, and those of others.

Let your words be few, and always rooted in intention. Speak to shape the world, not to decorate it.
And when others speak—pause, and watch.
The person who says they care but never shows up for you,
The friend who always talks about being honest but tells white lies to everyone else,
The man who writes you poetry but flinches at the idea of sacrifice—
These are your lessons.

People will be watching you too, even when they don’t realize it.
They’ll watch to see if you bluff. If you fold under pressure. If your actions betray insecurity.
Let them watch. But more importantly, let yourself watch. Let your own actions be the evidence of your values.

If you ever feel lost between what someone says and what they do,
Always choose to believe what they do.

That is where truth lives.

With love,
Your Mother

To the One Who Still Believes in Books

“We need people who can imagine. Fiction builds empathy. It puts you inside someone else’s head. It lets you understand things you don’t get told directly.”
—Neil Gaiman

Dear You,

You’re the one they call idealistic.
Head in the clouds. Too sentimental. Too slow.
You read too much, they say. You feel too much.
You’re the kind of person who gets goosebumps from a well-placed semicolon.
The kind who lingers on a sentence long after the world has moved on.

They call you dreamy—like it’s an insult.
Like dreaming hasn’t been the birthplace of every real thing we now live inside.

But you know better.

You know that stories build bridges where silence once lived.
That a novel can shift your moral compass faster than a debate.
That fiction sharpens the imagination—and imagination is the beginning of everything: innovation, empathy, resistance, design, hope.

You know that someone else’s fantasy often becomes tomorrow’s fact.

So when the world tells you to grow up, to be “practical,”
when it dismisses your softness as weakness,
when it looks at your stack of books and sees only indulgence—
remember this:
Your reading is not retreat. It’s rehearsal.

You are training your mind to stretch, to leap, to sit with nuance, to hold contradiction.
You are learning how to inhabit the lives of others without losing your own.

And that is no small thing.
That is how revolutions start quietly.

So keep reading.
Keep imagining.
Keep being exactly the kind of “unserious” person who might one day rewrite everything.

With admiration,
Meestique

P.S. They laughed at dreamers until they needed one to fix their algorithm. Stay soft. Stay radical.