Nigeria, Canada and the US

 

So, I’ve lived in 3 distinct nations now and the whole experience just got me thinking about how countries have unique personas and people within that world adopt the persona while holding on to the diversity of people in a complex microcosm.

 I was born in Nigeria to fully Nigerian Yoruba parents and even after we moved and lived in Canada for a decade and a half, our house was still a little part of Nigeria. Nigerians in general are noble and conservative. They are proud folks with conventional appreciations. Discipline was very important; as well as keeping up appearances. This leads to a disproportionate amount of financial success but also a distinct lack of the care-free lifestyle of the ‘chase your dreams’ generation. I’ve seen many of my friends quake under that pressure, but, conversely, it’s helped this untameable kid grow into the self-controlled man writing this today. The rigidity built on respecting elders and doing ‘what’s expected’ presents an interesting contrast to the Canadian world outside.  

Canadians are lovely folks. They are just so amicable, and usually assume that you’re on their team until proven otherwise. They really do have that archetypal optimistic disposition as it usually is the most resilient disposition in the face of the cold. The trouble with tending positive is that we as Canadians are sometimes disingenuous as we’re all navigating the world trying not to offend people. Sometimes, my perception was that us as Canadians didn’t strive to do more and be more as we tiptoe around difficult situations content with tolerance than harmony. Satisfied with being marginally better than our neighbor (the US) even if we had the potential to really be the best version of ourselves.  

Then there’s the US and the Americans. Some have described the American attitude as self-centered or brutish. Those descriptors aren’t false, but there’s nuance. American exceptionalism has built a culture of personal responsibility and confidence that can tackle problems that are way bigger than the expertise of the people which lead the action and movement. The confidence can be both used to take up causes for those less fortunate or to stomp on the will of others in pursuit of personal gain. I’ve seen both of that happen in real-time. The confidence to speak up, take risks and ruffle feathers can rub many the wrong way till you see it done in pursuit of a truly noble cause. This in particularly complex as America is brimming with a great many, sometimes contradictory, always judicially valid number of ‘noble causes’. 

In my opinion, neither of these three styles of living are particularly ideal. The great thing is that I’m privileged enough to look at all three as a marketplace of ideas and build the me that I want. My task is to somehow distill an identity that is a conglomeration of the three and then raise myself in one of these environments with that identity. There are things that I can not stand for and that repulse me in each of these places, and, contrastingly, I feel called at certain times to any of these among other places. There’s a privilege in to being able to look at these personas from the ‘outside’ but a confusion in seeing none of them as an obvious home.