WHY ASK WHY?

I was born in a Christian home and as a result, I had a Christian background. We don't joke with church attendance. Mum and Dad will instruct us to go dress up when it’s some thirty minutes to service time.

We must go to church with our Bible, a jotter and a pen.

That was to enable us take notes during the church meeting. It was always as though our lives primarily depends on the notes we took in church. As at then having a jotter to pen down notes in church was an emblem of being a good, supposed God fearing Christian. We would look down on people
without jotters and sometimes in our mind of mind think those kind of guys are not serious about their salvation.

Oh what a memory!

Sometimes when we come back from church, mum will just glance through the notes we took in church.

No questions, no comments! Just flipping through the pages we have written.

Occasionally, there were instances when we would be going to church and one of us cannot locate his or her jotter. All of us will swing into action like an FBI team trying to dig up every piece of evidence in a crime scene.

In a year, I can have four to five 40leaves book exhausted. I can write like tomorrow will never come since I was a kid. But then there was a time our bookshelves were full, so we had to discard some of those books we were not using. Some of our jotters were victim first hand.

 We showed no mercy for the books, the efforts that went into jotting, and the inks that was wasted. No mercy!

But then, when I grew up, as a teenager, that habit was only for church. I don't jot in school, I am used to doing that in church, not because I can tell why, but we were brought up to just jot during sermons.

 By the time I got into senior secondary school, I was exposed to another type of learning, one in which most of what the teacher will say in class room will not be in his notes and those things are needed to pass the tests and a greater part of the exams. I had to start jotting, but I was doing this with an understanding, which is; I have to read those things to be exceptional in class.

So much later in life, during my undergraduate days, I prefer to jot things when the lecturer is talking because most of what he will say will be key points he would leave out in his notes. I read my jotter first before reading my notes. It was helpful.

But before I gained admission into the university, I had stopped jotting in church because I don’t get to read them or anything. I just write for writing sake, No purpose! No goal. So I stopped.

Later on, I was challenged one day by a brother in church, ‘Biyi why don’t you jot in church?’ he asked.

 I answered calmly and said “I prefer to listen and internalize all I can than take some notes I never revisit!

He left me! Before I can ask him when last he opened his jotter after a church service.

That idle jotter.

But now, I realize I sometimes need to revisit my church notes during my meditative hours. So I now jot because I need the notes.

The point in this blog post is this;

Sometimes, we have to honestly ask ourselves ‘why we do some things?’

It’s only when we can answer this question satisfactorily that they make a meaning to us, else they will just be traditions/routines that makes no difference.

Such routine has to be halted till there is a why!

And when there is a “why’ for doing what you do, then what you do will make a whole lot of sense cum difference.

Breakaway from meaningless routine, simply ask ‘why are they done?’

I am Agboola Biyi Micheal a BLESSING to my GENERATION, and an ASSET to NIGERIA.