Uncategorized – The Empathic Social Observer

THE MULTIPLICITY OF BEING

I was having a conversation with a friend when he flinched at the word submission. Not at the idea itself, exactly, but at the possibility that I might believe it. Or not.

He paused, then laughed awkwardly and said he wasn’t sure whether I was a feminist or not.

Take cover! The taboo word has been mentioned.

So I asked him, calmly, whether he thought it was possible for a woman to be a feminist and still value submission in marriage.

He thought for a moment, then said yes.

Then added, “When it comes to you.”

Hold on.

Before you toss your phone on the bed and kiss your teeth at another article you assume will spiral into a tired argument about feminism or submission, let me be clear: this is not that essay.

I’m not here to litigate or exalt feminism.
I’m not here to rehabilitate or condemn submission.

I have my beliefs about both, and perhaps in a future article I’ll share them. But that is not the work of this piece.

What stayed with me from that conversation was not his answer, though, but the reason behind it. He didn’t arrive at yes because the idea suddenly made sense. He arrived at yes because he had come to accept the complexity of my thinking and how that complexity disrupted his mental filing system.

I didn’t always fit neatly into the boxes he had prepared.

And that discomfort – that brief mental tightening – is what I want to talk about.
Because beneath many of our loud cultural arguments is a quieter, more revealing question – one most of us deny asking ourselves, or each other:

Is a person ever just one thing?

We live in an age that rewards speed – fast opinions, fast alignment, fast categorisation. We want to know what someone is so we can decide how to treat them, how much to listen, and whether they are “safe” to engage. Labels sell because they are shortcuts to understanding the human. They save us time. They save us effort. They save us from the exhausting work of holding complexity.
But they also flatten people.

They silence people. I have been a perpetrator, and a victim of this existential laziness, sometimes even to self, unable to sit with inner chaos.

Amidst the laziness lies my almost obsessive curiosity, which has sometimes become detrimental. Another article.

Nevertheless, my own thinking is deeply shaped by my faith – not as a weapon, not as a demand, but as a lens. I don’t force it down anyone’s throat, but I also don’t pretend it doesn’t shape how I reason. And within that faith is an idea I return to often: that God is not singular in expression. Father. Son. Spirit. One being. God the protector; God the raging fire; God the lover; God the judge. I Am. Multiple manifestations, same God.

If humanity is said to be made in that image, why are we so disturbed by multiplicity in each other?

Why do we tense up when a person refuses to be ideologically tidy?
Somewhere along the way, we started mistaking coherence for purity – believing that to be credible, a person must be consistent in the narrowest sense. No contradictions. No tensions. No apparent opposites. But real humans are not essays written to prove a point. We are lived, layered, unfinished.

Walt Whitman once wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself.” Chimamanda’s warning about the danger of a single story wasn’t just about misrepresentation – it was about intellectual laziness.

Because categorising people quickly allows us to move on to more self-absorbed pursuits. Once I’ve decided what you are, I no longer have to stay curious. I no longer have to sit with the discomfort of not knowing. I can dismiss, applaud, or argue with a version of you that fits neatly into my worldview.

And maybe that’s the real problem.
Not that people hold opposing ideas – but that we’ve grown impatient with the effort it takes to understand a whole person. Little wonder, then, that people are unsettled by curiosity. It feels invasive, almost indecent – as though they’ve forgotten that the Creator’s greatest masterpiece is the human being: physical, physiological, psychological, even spiritual. To explore oneself – and another – is a lifelong undertaking, one worth waking up for every morning.

So, I keep returning to that moment in the conversation. Not to correct my friend. Not to defend myself. Not to revel in some sense of superiority or acknowledgement, but to sit with the unease beneath it.

Why did my being “an exception” feel safer than questioning the box itself?

And how many people do we misunderstand, not because they are unclear, but because we demand clarity too cheaply, too quickly?

Meestique

The Empathic Social Observer.

🎀💞THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO LIVING IN MY SOFT, FEMININE ERA

“I’ve spent years studying everything except surrender.”
But I think this is what true softness means—to trust that God’s timing, not effort, births ease.

If you’re anything like me—someone who excelled in school and thought that achievement translated to success and wisdom in every area of life—then you must have realised by now how deceptive that mindset can be.

We were praised for working hard, for figuring things out, for mastering whatever we studied. But nobody warned us that this same mindset could become a kind of quiet self-destruction—the belief that we can fix, earn, or achieve our way into love, ease, or emotional safety. That if we study something long enough, we’ll eventually “crack the code.”
That may be true. But how worn down will you be by the time you finally crack it?

I realised quite early that I didn’t know much about men. I didn’t have a brother, and my dad was this towering, unknowable figure. So, to me, men carried a kind of mystique. I was fascinated by them in a way that bordered on obsession.
But fascination doesn’t guarantee understanding. Despite my effort, I failed at almost every romantic relationship I entered. Maybe because I was always drawn to the most complex, emotionally unavailable ones—the hardest puzzles to decode. My curiosity set me up for heartbreak.

The more I tried to “learn,” the harder I failed. It became a vicious cycle: no reward for my effort, only exhaustion. There were resentments here and there, but in typical Chinwe fashion, I kept hoping. Kept believing that one day I’d finally figure it out. The experts have a name for this condition, by the way — the anxious attachment style. Go figure.

Add that to my I-can-do-it attitude, and I became a chronic heartbroken-er. It’s been brutal. My self-esteem has dissolved and been rebuilt more times than I can count.
And yet, it was only today—while kneeling on the floor of my bedroom, crying and worshipping—that I realised something simple and profound: I could have invested all that energy into seeking God’s face about these “mystique” creatures of His.

That moment came with a wave of surrender. For once, I stopped trying to fix or decode, and I let go. I told my Heavenly Father, “Teach me. Give me ease where I’ve only known struggle.”

This realisation about my little knowledge of men has also opened my eyes to a far more humbling truth: I don’t know a lot about a lot of things. And maybe I was never meant to. The best way to navigate this life isn’t by gathering endless knowledge, but by submitting to the counsel of the Holy Spirit.
Ask me how He will guide me now, and honestly—I don’t even know. The only thing I know is that He dwells in me, and He will guide me in the way He knows I’ll understand for every situation.
And that, right there, is my conviction.

For as long as I can remember, relationships have been hard. I’ve blamed myself, convinced myself I was the problem. But then I asked, “Surely, it can’t be only me who’s defective?”
Imperfection is a human condition—so why should I be the only one suffering for mine while others, equally imperfect, find their people?
Maybe the unfairness was never in my lot, but in my perception.

I’ve seen God answer so many of my prayers. He’s broken barriers for me before. So maybe this time, instead of praying for “the one,” I should pray for understanding, patience, and grace. Because if there’s anything I’ve learned this year, it’s that His grace truly is abundant—just as Scripture says.

🩷💖From the Writer’s Journal:

This piece began as a lament but ended as a confession. I used to think strength meant doing, knowing, striving. But I’m slowly learning that it also means surrendering—to love, to uncertainty, to God.
Maybe the soft era is not about being delicate at all, but about being still enough to be guided.

Meestique,

The Empathic Social Observer😊

THE QUIET WARS WE FIGHT

There are some battles you fight with your voice—loud, visible, dramatic.
But there are others where the battleground is your mind, your relationships, your inner silence. These are the kinds of wars you can’t always name, but you feel them…
In your discernment.
In the shift in the atmosphere,
In the part of you that knows something deeper is going on.

I’m not writing this to impress you with spiritual talk.
I’m writing this because I’ve seen firsthand how unseen wars can erode trust, twist perception, and try to mute your spiritual clarity.

So this is for anyone quietly fighting a war they didn’t choose, but can no longer ignore.

I’ve been thinking a lot about war lately.
Not the kind that makes headlines, but the kind that happens quietly—between the “Amen” and the argument, in the strange hollowness after worship, in the too-loud silence of a room where love once flowed freely.

Spiritual warfare.
We say it like we understand it, but most of us imagine either cinematic exorcisms or philosophical metaphors. Rarely do we recognize it in the moment it’s actually happening:

when forgiveness becomes impossible

when bitterness becomes seductive

when the perception of Christians and our faith in pop culture is one of weirdos and misguided fanatics

when to speak the truth of Jesus Christ makes you stand out as a troublemaker who doesn’t encourage logical thought

when sleep steals your prayerlife and offense becomes your love language.

Nobody tells you how sneaky the enemy is.
That he rarely knocks loudly. He whispers. He rewrites reality in small, believable sentences:
“You’ve failed again.”
“She doesn’t care about you.”
“Why bother?”
“You’re not enough.”

He is not creative, but he is consistent.
And if you are not armed, you are available.

Ephesians 6 is not poetic filler.
It is God’s strategy for people living behind enemy lines. Paul didn’t say, “Put on the vibe of resilience.” He said, Put on the full armour of God.
Because this war does not wait for you to feel ready. It doesn’t care about your calendar or your therapy appointment. It will attack you through your relationships, your emotions, your insecurities—and it often begins in your mind.

This is not a call to paranoia. It is a call to sobriety.
To know when what you’re feeling isn’t just hormones or mood or miscommunication—but a targeted scheme to rob you of joy, clarity, unity, and peace.

And in those moments, the real work is not to “win the argument” or “fix the situation.”
The real work is to stand.
To resist the temptation to return fire in the flesh.
To pick up your sword (Scripture), your shield (faith), your helmet (salvation), and pray like the war depends on it—because it does.

There is no soft way to be a soldier.
But there is grace.
Grace to stand even when your legs shake.
Grace to repent when you fall.
Grace to forgive when it costs you pride.
And grace to be alert—not anxious, but awake.

Because if you’ve ever felt like something invisible is trying to steal your peace, distort your love, silence your prayers, or drain your joy—
you’re not crazy.
You’re just in a war you were born into.

But child of God, you were also born to overcome.

This post is not the final word on spiritual warfare.
It’s a flashlight in a dark hallway—just enough light to help you reach for your armour again.

So if you’re in the thick of it, feeling misunderstood, misrepresented, or just spiritually numb—
Know this: you’re not alone. And you’re not powerless.

We fight from victory, not for it.

“I’ve spent years studying everything except surrender.”But I think this is what true softness means—to trust that God’s timing, not effort, births ease.

“I’ve spent years studying everything except surrender.”
But I think this is what true softness means—to trust that God’s timing, not effort, births ease.