What did the Mr Spice say when he lost his ginger?
- I need more time
‘losing your ginger’ is a Nigerian pidgin English phrase that translates to losing your motivation, your drive, or your enthusiasm.
ANXIETY
I have two mantras, ‘Spread love’ and ‘Don’t forget to breathe’. We will talk about spreading love some other time. For now, let us talk about forgetting to breathe.
‘Don’t forget to breathe’ seems like a statement that goes without saying, but when you have anxiety it definitely goes with saying. The average human being experiences anxiety when they are stressed, afraid, or nervous. So you most likely know the feeling. The sweating, the shortness of breath, the knot in your stomach, the dizziness. It is quite unpleasant.
Side Note: I am not a medical expert so I will only be drawing from my own experience and not from the point of view of a professional.
Anxiety is a feeling that can be fairly normal in regular stressful situations. For instance when you have to give a work presentation, you get anxious, when you are waiting for an interview, same feeling. But when you have to call on Elohim himself to provide someone else in your place to do the Lagos bus alighting ritual. When you have to muster up great strength to say a word as simple as ‘owa’, then maybe it is deeper than the fairly normal.
owa - A yoruba phrase meaning ‘there is’, usually used to signify to a bus conductor that a passenger is going to come down from the bus at the next bus stop
Anxiety is often referred to as a thief of time and I tend to agree. You spend a great deal of time in fear, it holds you back from making decisions quickly. You withdraw into a shell battling with your own breath. For me my body ‘forgets to breathe’. A shortness of my own breath, it could be rapid and last for a short time or it could last an entire day, eating at me slowly. I manage it quite well on most days, my method is very simple and I came upon it in a bank.
A couple of years ago I was in a bank somewhere on planet earth trying to do bank stuff. I sat beside an old man whose hands were across his chest and his head bent a little low. I thought he was asleep until I heard him mutter. At first his muttering was incoherent but it later became a little louder, he was repeating the same phrase over and over again.
‘Don’t forget to breathe’
It seemed odd at the time and I thought nothing of it until years later when I had my first extreme anxiety attack. I could not breathe, I even thought it was some form of asthma. I was alone and after some seconds of battling my own lungs willing myself to breathe the man’s words quietly crept into my mind and I realized I was simply panicking albeit on an extreme level. I took continuous deep breaths until I was okay. Those 4 simple words immediately became my mantra.
You see it was not the mantra that made me better, it was the deep breaths. But what the mantra did was remind me to take those deep breaths and It has reminded me ever since. On some days it does not work to be fair, but as far as there are more working days than not, I can manage.
There are many home remedies for anxiety. Meditation, exercise, breathing exercises (my home remedy) amongst others. We spend so much time letting fear and worry on this scale rule us so much that we forget to breathe, we forget to even live sometimes, it really steals time from us. If you have this feeling or think you do then either see a doctor or practice one of the numerous home remedies.
Here is a song reminding you to breathe.
Time and time again you wish to be free of such a crippling condition. I know you hope that a shooting star would appear in the night sky and actually grant you your wish. In the meantime we do the only thing we can, manage.
Do you know that a shooting star is just a flying space rock engulfed in flames until the flames die and it disintegrates into nothingness. A bright light in our lives, a light that signifies hope, so we wish. A light that eventually just fades away.
🤍
Omo it’s hard for me but yes I will not forget to breathe. ❤️❤️❤️