You Are Still a Human

In your down moments, regardless of how high the standard you hold yourself to, it must never fail you to accept that you are STILL a human. You have flaws and you will fail when you least expect. You are not God. Let this sink!

I probably wrote that quote in my down moment. In one of my moments of fallibility with great pain. You are human, you are fallible, you will make mistakes. Deal with the realities of your humanity and give yourself the chance to fail.

Most people don’t ever forgive themselves when they falter. They have a pyramid of standards that they’ve kept, they are shrewd with principles and very tough on themselves. That defines me sometimes. I rarely forgive myself when I dare to fall from the standards I set for myself.

Sometimes I even begin to think I’m a different kind of human, no error, no mistakes, no slips and falls, no oversight, nothing. I want to always be the person with right judgement, an impenetrable moral wall, without a black record or a sign of weakness. All these are great until I started becoming quite ungraceful and unforgiving to myself.

I hold myself not only to these standards, I also ensure that I pronounce upon myself the harshest punishment for my slips.

Imagine that your little mistakes continue to strain blood from your conscience every time you remember. Career mistakes, relationship mistakes, communication mistakes, etc.

If you are overly critical of your slips, It will be difficult to make efforts, difficult to dare, difficult to try new things.

Sometimes I don’t forgive myself when people say no to me when I make a request. I instantly feel that for you to say no, something must be wrong with me or my request. I have to be the problem, not the timing, not the chance, not the resources that’s most time not enough, not your right to simply say no. I question the relevance of my project to the point of dropping it. I equate acceptance to the validity of my endeavours, to the quality of my ideas, to the usefulness of my impact.

If I set out in the day, all glazed, hair brushed, skin moisturized, prayer clocked, confession made with a pair of dreams to complement it. A single rejection can cancel my existence and put a dirty mark on my countenance for that day or week, If nothing shrugs it off.

Yeah, it was that bad.

When I was a younger man and unmarried, one of the reasons I didn’t approach many girls was not only because I have a decent moral upbringing. I do. Not only because I was taught that it was wrong. It is wrong. It is because I cannot survive a no. Yes. I told some of my friends recently that If a lady in my neighbourhood refused my proposal, I would leave that neighbourhood if I had the means. I cannot bear walking on the same ground with the same lady who rejected me, lol. I take myself so seriously. It was that bad. I don’t forgive myself easily. That finely extended to many things. Many people are like that. They cannot handle corrections not because they are proud, it would mean that something must be wrong with them to commit an error in the first place.

One of my university buddies got his girlfriend pregnant after he finished secondary school. Whenever we discussed the issue, I cannot help but ask him how he survived it. It was tough. His mum fainted when she heard and his reverend dad chased him out of the house for a while. The consequences were dire. If that happened to me, that situation would likely bury me. Not because of the weight of expectation on me but because I may not recover from the sentence I’d give myself. I’d think about everything!

In 2010, I was the president of my faculty (SAAT) in the university. We had designed a beautiful award ceremony to wrap up our administration that would later become a culture for many years in the university. We set up a committee who worked assiduously to deliver a groundbreaking event at one of the university’s indoor sports facilities. Everything was checked. Sound, venue, tickets, awards, DJ, MC, artistes, bouncers, refreshments etc I waited for the most important vehicle to arrive at the event venue driven by one of our own, Toba. It carried the DJ’s equipment and multimedia gadgets we needed, majorly electronics. And then it dawned on me that the vehicle did not pick the generator to power the equipment when the lights were out by 12:00AM. It was either too late to go back to the other campus which was about a 30 minutes drive to pick a generator or I was overwhelmed with other things to come up with an SOS plan or something more complex. The guy who rented out the generator had left for his house. About 1 hour 20 minutes into the awards ceremony. Light went out in the most heartbreaking way. The hall was pitch black. All the beauty, glam and aesthetic of the hall plummeted followed by a loud and spontaneous ‘aww’ from the basketball court. Gasps, hisses and insults followed. My breath ceased. I had a suit on. I found my way out of the hall with my vice president walking beside me. She was confused. She looked into my eyes for an answer in that darkness that only our scant phone torch made better. There was none there. The only thing I remembered in that instant was my plea to God, that he would please allow the ground before me to open up, swallow me and put an end to my shame.

You want me to finish the story, right? A miracle happened. You might have to wait for my memoir.

Today as I write this to you, I know better. I have ceased to elevate myself beyond who I am, a human. I have broken a few things and I survived, I have grown. The goal is not to intentionally break things or mess up, that would be stupid and self destructive, the goal is to grow despite what we fail at. The goal is to learn from our mistakes. The goal is to give myself the freedom to fail, to try new things and to excel.

My experience did not take away the pain of failure, it only toughened my resolve that after the feeling, the tears, I need to get up.

I hope this helps?

Have a great day and breakthrough from within.

©Abiola Iyiola, 2025