An experiment in not offending

Since that appointment, however, I’ve learned and have been told many things I can’t do.  One, I’ve to change the style of my writing.  For example, during the campaigns, one of the articles I wrote was read by 25,000 people within the first hour of publishing.  Another one, also within a few hours, was shared […]

Since that appointment, however, I’ve learned and have been told many things I can’t do.  One, I’ve to change the style of my writing.  For example, during the campaigns, one of the articles I wrote was read by 25,000 people within the first hour of publishing.  Another one, also within a few hours, was shared 2,000 times and received as many comments – all within one medium.  So we’re not counting the performance on sites which curate contents that have gone viral.  These texts had some elements in them that made them go viral – some call it controversy.  Now people advise me to stay from that word.
One of the joys of writing is to stand aside and watch thousands of people agree, disagree and fight over what your mortal hand has written.  It appears I can no longer trade in that sadistic, omnipotent glee.
Many people have told me – and they keep telling me – that I can’t afford to offend anyone, “no matter what,” they advised.  Problem is, it isn’t within my power to regulate (in spite of what the emotional intelligence theorists would say) the degree of offence the offended person decides to internalize.  It’s entirely within the jurisdiction, the judgement and the patience of the offended to either be offended or not.  Other than that, I’m one of those who secretly believes that straight talk saves time, conserves energy and gets immediate attention.
What this means is that I needed to change.  So I turned to the change gurus, Chip Heath and Dan Heath,  the bestselling authors of “Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard”.  But before then, I first convinced myself that I needed self-control.  The Heaths however, disagree.  Here is what they told me: self-control is exhaustible, that is, you can run out of it; “psychologists have discovered that self-control is an exhaustible resource. It’s like doing bench presses at the gym. The first one is easy, when your muscles are fresh. But with each additional repetition, your muscles get more exhausted, until you can’t lift the bar again,” they wrote in their book.
What to do?  “Three things,” the authors stated.  Well, I’ve not time for three things, I want the change now.  So I turned to another book: “Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul” by Stuart Brown who believes play is not just “purposeless, all-consuming fun” but a biological drive that is as necessary for our health as “sleep or nutrition”.
This only validated what I’ve learnt from children: if you don’t get it, even when you do or when you’re completely clueless about what you’re doing, invent a game out of it!
So I did.  I invented a game, an experiment of some sort.
  The purpose was to regularly post activities of the governor and see what people think; most importantly, is there any perfect action or saying of the governor – the one that no one would find fault with?  This way things became easier.  Instead of being offended by sloppy thinking and causing more offence by my response, I would just enjoy the rich colours of human opinions from both extreme ends of the spectrum and in between.
During that time, I reported the sayings of the governor: “Don’t harass my people,” he told his convoy and the security detail; “bring eight distinctions and we’ll give you a scholarship,” he told students; “feel free to expose corruption in my government,” he told journalists; “there is no room for arrogance in this government,” he told the political appointees; “hold me responsible for the actions of all the people I appointed,” he told the people of the state; “I cannot help anybody who breaks the law, because I can’t help myself when I break the law,” he said in a parley with Okada riders union; “everybody must do their work or leave,” he told civil servants; “government is not a place to make money, if you want to make money, resign from service and start a business, if you’re good enough, we’ll give you contracts,” he said to civil servants; “President Buhari wants to fight corruption, we agree with him 100 percent, so you must change, if you do not and I catch you…!” he warned the civil servants; “we’ll build a modern market here,” he told traders on a market visit; “those boys [convoy drivers] were reckless, we can’t continue like this,” he said after a journey to Kaduna; and many other similar speeches of the governor – all of which I shared on the social media.
On the actions, I shared:  the fact that the governor, sometimes, pays for his aides accommodation when they travel outside the state; immediate construction of the very bad roads in the state; obeying the traffic lights; launching an investigation immediately he discovered that civil servants’ salaries were deducted; tenaciously solving the water problem in the state; covert inspection of hospitals at night; insisting on not publicizing some actions because he doesn’t want to “play politics with it”; insisting on making road inspections even though it was drizzling and so forth.
Many of these actions are commendable.  So was there any of them that I shared and wasn’t criticized?  No, except the last one on the list, where the governor stop back to the capital city to inspect the work of a road contractor who promised that they had found an effective way to patch our roads.
I was riding with the governor at the time, and although it was raining he came down faster than me, the younger person.  And the people didn’t criticize this only because the pictures still sit on my computer – I didn’t share them.
This recalls a line I read in siffatus salati nnabiyi of Nasiruddeen Albani, it says: “satisfying everybody is an unattainable notion.”