Making the most out of a bad year

2024 has not been a good year. Maybe not for you, but for the collective humanity, it is not the best of years. But something worth doing before year runs out is optimizing your consciousness to fulfill the gaps you think became evident over the course of the year—and of course I mean with respect […]

2024 has not been a good year. Maybe not for you, but for the collective humanity, it is not the best of years. But something worth doing before year runs out is optimizing your consciousness to fulfill the gaps you think became evident over the course of the year—and of course I mean with respect to events you can influence. 

At the end of day, if you’re like me – a black African Muslim living in the 21st Century, you have to give and take where someone else will not be caught dead thus compromising. In the process of identity formation, people apparently undergo a range of apparent changes.

Most people go through the maturation processes whilst the opinion of others and social acceptation by the global society in general becomes increasingly important. This may result in a heightened consciousness of the self, and this self consequently becomes a central aspect of someone’s nature.

As a result, the prevalence of people struggling with a negative personal image in this part of the Sudan is alarmingly high, given the culture and history of its people. This is a complex thought. But 2024 was a complex year. It just makes you think. 

Tinubu arrives N/Assembly to present N47.96trn 2025 budget

Tinubu, Abbas, others greet Buhari at 82

Because of who we are, yours faithfully, or say a little girl from Ringim in Jigawa, for instance, may find it difficult to see an enviable version of herself in the contemporary Euro-centric global popular culture. She has to grow up in the shadow of a world that is external to herself and sometimes even antithetical to the consciousness of her mission and purpose as a human being alive today.

Given that identity formation and self- image both come to the fore during adolescence and emerging adulthood, the transition is susceptible to sociological drags due to a range of interrelated self-related variables and processes. More specifically, an incongruence emerges in the process of identity reconciliation as linked to the perfect ideal upheld in society – the society as constituted by their own identities, and the one constituted by the external world, which is to be the accepted good by default in the event of conflict.

It is sad to admit, but I believe the events of 2024 from Gaza, to Lebanon and Syria were a strategic defeat against the Muslim world and that calls for reflection. Did we lose because we were right and right sometimes lost to wrong, or did we lose because we were wrong?

Not being able to conceive possible answers to such questions, I believe, is an important contributor to negative self- image in the Muslim world is the, often unrealistic, perfect ideal people are confronted with, who’s net effect in the first instance and best case, is effecting a strict dichotomy between the two contradicting worlds we are forced to live in as African Muslims in the 21st Century and in the second instance and worse case is resigning to the subliminal forces of globalisation and accepting natural inferiority. 

This self-perfect ideal is communicated through sociocultural pressures which may result in the internalisation of the material implications of global exposure. In the shadow of this reality, identity formation in Mallama Ringim may impact the vulnerability to turn to a negative self-perception. 

This is a clear cause of the low self-concept clarity which eliminates the ideation of self-agency. From this perspective, individuals with low self-concept clarity are explained away under prevalent standards as simple folk… and a multiplier of this is that we move to internal sources to derive a sense of self value.

Those who attach more importance to expectations and norms in just one of the two worlds are naturally more vulnerable to developing maladaptive attitudes towards self-value and capacity. In contrast, those who go for both become information-oriented and engaged in pro-active identity exploration and seem to distance themselves from the conservative ideals of their first identity more often than not find themselves losing both. The more they are object towards the ideals of one world the more they wander off from the second base and they become more likely to turn to externally oriented identity building blocks which are not provided by society.

This is why Malama Ringim may be tempted to agree that she is oppressed simply because she is in a hijab. The truth is she may be, but then she is most likely not. 

Internalisation of pop culture ideals may lead to self-cynicism, a self-perspective in which you look at your own self and evaluate yourself on the basis of personal productive output. This is because of the resounding absence of role models who share the same identities, and whose accomplishments part of you can legitimately claim for yourself.

Something can be said about the interplay between self-cynicism and identity formation, but I think that self-cynical individuals may choose self-related identity alternatives, which end up impacting their choices concerning very consequential life decisions. I believe this has a lot to do with all the troubles we face today at home and abroad, collectively and individually. Economically and geostrategically. 

Self-cynicism is bidirectionally associated with self-comparison, a process in which people compare the life prospects within grasp to the class acts of other identities and those they have any chance with. Hence, individuals with low self-concept clarity are more susceptible to engaging in parochial identification of subjects to define their sense of self.

Every time Malama Ringim compares herself to the idealised “strong, independent woman” stereotype she is supposed to aspire being, she fails before she is even in the race. This also implies that our girl-child problems are not only about sending our daughters to school, but actually about convincing them that learning is actually a good thing worth doing, all said and done.

As a people, some of our collective objectives should transcend the ordinary, instead of stagnating in abject commonness. Once, the American people dreamt of going to the moon… and goddamnit to the moon they went. It does not matter what value that has to contemporary problems of mankind – the sheer extraordinariness of it is what drives the nail down and keeps it down. Our minds are still preoccupied with the hazard of hunger and beating malaria.

Identity formation is a contributing index in the development and maintenance of a sound intellect. Individuals searching for their identity and failing may turn away completely, and that results in the type of fragile identity that harms self-agency and self-capacity. That is why Mallam Ringim might exclaim and proclaim the glories of the omnipotent bature in the face of her own utter helplessness, and that of her identity.

An identity needs a self of its own for morale, for the type of self-mobilization that enables successful innovation and progress in all aspects of human life. This self is a product of collective output that is significant on the scale of the entirety of Human Civilization.

An identity is the source-code of a self, making an identity the hardware of a self. To create and operationalize a functional self for our identity both individually and collectively could be the difference between our survival and extinction into the future. Don’t despair, find a self for your identity and try again in 2025.

 Allah yabada sa’a.