By TOOCHUKWU OBIOTIKA
Across Nigeria, the night of December 31, 2025, was not merely a date change. It was a vigil—of candles and choruses, kneeling knees and tired backs, whispered prayers and loud declarations. In churches, auditoriums, and open centres of worship, people watched the clock and their souls, believing that how one crosses over matters. Now the calendar has flicked. We are in 2026. And with the new year comes an old truth we often avoid: our days on earth are numbered.
This awareness is not reserved for hospital wards or the language of terminal illness. It visits the healthy, the young, the strong—especially when hope thins out. When a person, particularly a man conditioned to endure in silence, becomes weighed down by uncertainty, frustrated by responsibilities, and over-burdened by expectations, something fragile happens inside. He may not confess his private failures or secret affairs, but his dignity begins to slip. He exposes a different kind of nakedness: despair, anger, recklessness, even a careless indifference to life itself. This is why thoughtful people approach New Year’s Day with introspection. Resolutions are born not from excitement alone, but from a quiet audit of the soul.
Yet many resolutions stagger under the harsh arithmetic of Nigeria’s reality. The cost of living climbs like an unrelenting staircase: rent, accommodation, feeding, transportation. Each item takes a bite. Our failures, mistakes, and missed opportunities return to us as teachers—stern, lifelong teachers. They ask what we have learned, not what we have lost. And the lesson most urgent for 2026 is neither technical nor mystical. It is moral and human: learn again how to love.
To love, in this sense, is not sentimental excess. It is a thousand small practices we neglect. Be pleasant. Smile without calculation. Reacquaint yourself with your family, not just by blood but by attention. Extend small courtesies we often omit—greetings, patience, listening. Show love. This is not naïve advice. It is survival wisdom. Nigerians are starved for love, and it shows—in our impatience, our suspicion, our readiness to curse rather than converse. Psychiatrists may study it clinically, but any keen observer can see it daily in cities and villages alike, where fear and frustration drive people toward rituals, charms, and shortcuts that promise power without character.
Love is preventative medicine. It disarms the urge to misuse ancestral forces and the temptation to seek domination over understanding. It softens the home, which remains the first republic we all belong to. A happy home is not one without problems, but one where members give and receive love freely. Imagine a nation where people go to work with a sweeter spirit, where the habit of a goodbye kiss—literal or symbolic—restores dignity to departure and hope to return. These gestures are not weakness; they are strength in human form.
This is where we must be honest about prophecy and public life in 2026. Some highly celebrated preachers offer declarations that float above reality—endless laughter, rehearsed celebration, and selective blindness to governmental failures. Faith should never become anesthesia. Prophecy that refuses to name injustice, hunger, insecurity, and corruption is not courage; it is comfort for the already comfortable. True spiritual heritage does not deny pain; it confronts it with compassion and responsibility. Love, again, is the missing vocabulary—love that speaks truth without cruelty, and hope without deception.
Now consider the uniformed men on our highways and roads: the Police, Army, Road Safety Corps, Civil Defence, Customs, Vigilantes. They stand as symbols of order, yet many have not been taught—or supported—to understand the secret of victorious living. Low morale, poor welfare, and social distrust have turned uniforms into targets of anger rather than emblems of service. Victory is not intimidation. It is integrity. It is knowing that authority exists to protect life, not extort it. When love enters service, professionalism follows. When dignity is restored, corruption loses its excuse. A nation cannot be policed into peace; it must be loved into cooperation.
We must also resist the illusion that technology will save us. While America, Asia, and Europe advance with robots that perform tasks and simulate care, Nigeria must remember that machines cannot replace meaning. A robot can serve food, but it cannot heal loneliness. It can optimize traffic, but it cannot reconcile hearts. Progress without love produces efficiency without empathy—a fast road to social collapse.
So what is the magic formula for a happy, dynamic, and powerful existence in 2026? It is disarmingly simple: being helped and helping others. This reciprocity is the engine of community. When we believe it and live it, life becomes easier—not because problems vanish, but because burdens are shared. When such a mindset possesses our thoughts, we learn to live by the minute. We become attentive, grateful, present.
Living by the minute is not panic; it is purpose. It is choosing kindness in traffic, honesty at work, patience at home. It is refusing despair even when resources are thin. It is loving boldly—not as a slogan, but as a daily discipline. If Nigeria must cross over again and again through the days of 2026, let it be with this resolve: that love, practised in a thousand quiet ways, will be our quiet revolution.
•Obiotika wrote from the Living Grace Restoration Assembly Inc.
Nkono-Ekwulobia, Anambra State.
The post Mysteries of endurance and outliving our past in Nigeria appeared first on Vanguard News.
