Naturalism says the answers to the universe are contained in the world itself, that there’s no external force behind the goodness and badness of the world. But I have always leaned toward something beyond it. I follow the Providential school of thought. There has to be something.
By Bello Taiwo Victoria
Whenever I feel like I have it bad, or that my life is veering in a direction I did not plan, as though I am struggling to change the stiff gear of a manual vehicle and my short limb cannot reach the brake pedal, I remind myself of people who have it worse. People living in places where the sky is streaked with smoke and the walls of their homes tremble from explosions. Children who are forced to bear witness to the wandering eyes and hands of predators. Yes, people who are truly suffering.
Even so, the feeling of doom lingers.
A few days ago, I got lost in the first pages of A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women. As Siri Hustvedt wrote about paintings, I realised how little I knew. That old panic returned. What if I walk into a room where people are discussing Picasso and I cannot follow a single word?
My suffering is not about survival. It is about a lack of knowledge—about how to read and hold so many things at once. My understanding is limited in finance, literature, history, medicine, religions, and even culture. On some days, that inadequacy breeds an extreme sense of doom.
But does the guilt of not having to wake up to bomb detonations, of not scavenging for food or warmth, diminish my own suffering? I try to look at the bigger picture. Nobody cares if I do not know a painting or how Binance works. So, I belittle my suffering and quiet my mind with a cube of sugar, because somewhere, someone considers sugar in tea a luxury.
That morning, after reading Hustvedt, I drove to the Preacher’s apartment on the outskirts of the city. He had just passed his final exams at law school, and I brought gifts and a basket of ripe mangoes. His security guard opened the wine-painted gate to his four-bedroom apartment, and I was ushered in.
On the large screen of his television, news of a war played. I hate wars. I hate the way the reporters speak while, in the background, children stand with sunken eyes. For them, happiness might be a bowl of hot food, a father’s reassuring voice calling the morning prayers, a mother’s feet quickly moving through the house. Peace is the absence of bombs. I do not know the sound of a bomb, and I do not know what to do with the knowledge of my own safety. The Preacher brought a jug of mango juice, mist clouding the glass. He pulled me into a warm hug and made the sign of the cross on my forehead, as he always did.
There was nothing new going on in my life besides reading. My hand-knitted sock brand was doing well, and my new apartment was still filled with unopened boxes. I was chaotic and content. My life was not—and is not—a straight line. It is a series of fragmented vectors. We sat and he spoke about law school. He went back to study law at thirty-six, despite already running an engineering company. It had not been an easy choice, but it was necessary. He wanted to build a law firm that would handle the legal troubles of his church members. One of them was seeking asylum in Canada after being outed and threatened. His boyfriend, already there, was helping him.
“How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved,” the Preacher said, his previously relaxed face contorted into a ball of agony.
“Freud,” I responded.
He smiled and gently tapped my hand.
“What does suffering mean to you? Is there a scale to it? My pain feels negligible when I compare it to others, yet it haunts me. Is his suffering the only kind that is unbearable? And what about mine?” I asked.
The Preacher squinted at me. He watched to understand what I was feeling. It was the same look he gave whenever he stood on the altar, staring at the very back row of his congregation.
“What is your suffering?” he asked.
“Lack of knowledge.”
He brought his glass of juice to his lips and slowly took a sip before speaking.
“A problem recognised and shared is half-solved,” he said, setting the glass down with a soft thud on a coaster.
“Humans were never meant to acquire all the knowledge of the universe. If we did, we would be God. Yes, we must seek knowledge, and we must read. But despairing over what you do not yet know blinds you to the goodness of life. Tell me, do you know the purpose of all five human senses?”
As always, his words captivated me. He stood firmly in his skin while I felt like a sketch waiting to be filled in.
“To survive?”
“To survive, yes. That is human necessity. But there is something you are missing. The five senses are not just for survival. They are the windows through which we witness the Divine. Sight is not only for cataloguing the destruction of the world and its inhabitants or collecting facts. It is for seeing beauty that brings joy to your soul before your mind can recognise it. Hearing is for the cadence of the voice that loves you. To despair because you cannot hold the ocean in your bowl is to forget to taste the small drop already on your tongue.”
He paused and leaned further towards me.
“Your suffering is a hunger that has forgotten how to eat.”
I found solace in the Preacher’s words, but I couldn’t ignore the thought that he was doing what I often did. We both reshaped my suffering into something more bearable. The Preacher softened it with meaning. I reduced it by comparison. We both hacked at it with a heavy axe of gratefulness.
After samosas and spiced chin-chin, we played ping-pong in his garage. I left with a promise to keep in touch.
On my way home, the clouds darkened and rolled in layers, preparing to open their sheets and fill the earth with spikes of rain. I parked my Peugeot 504—a vintage car I kept in mint condition—outside a café and ran in as the rain began. Inside, the café quickly filled with others escaping the storm. I sat by the window and ordered coffee. I pulled out a colouring book I had bought from a non-profit supporting pediatric patients. I like to think that I am a good person. I had bought several copies and sent them knitted socks.
As I coloured a cottage on a hill, I looked around and wondered: What is their suffering? How does God ease the affairs of billions of lives? Wars, plague, diseases, crimes, poverty—does He move by urgency or favouritism? Naturalism says the answers to the universe are contained in the world itself, that there’s no external force behind the goodness and badness of the world. But I have always leaned toward something beyond it. I follow the Providential school of thought. There has to be something.
On days like this, when my thoughts scatter, I either visit my grandmother’s farm or bury myself in work—creating new sock designs with my creative team. I left the café and decided to go to the farm. By the time I reached the road leading toward the mountains, the dark clouds had started to roll away, the folds clearing. I stepped out of the car and lay down on the wet grass. I smelled the earth and laughed. Cars speed past me—mostly lorries from the city carrying stocks of food and clean water to the people living in the mountains. I stood and began to dance to the rhythm of the wind and the rain. I saw the beauty that my soul recognised before my mind could name it. I saw it in the high mountains and the birds of the sky, moving out from their shelters as the rain subsided.
When I reached my grandmother’s house, her housekeeper opened the door and gasped at my rain-soaked body.
“I want cubes of sugar”, I said. I entered a home with no sound of bombs and was greeted by the familiar scent of my grandmother’s meatloaf. I left my suffering at the door and merrily danced to the kitchen to hug her and eat the bread whose scents filled the house.
Bello Taiwo Victoria is a Nigerian writer whose work has appeared in Brittle Paper, Afrocritik, The Kalahari Review, The Storms Journal, among others. When she is not writing or reading, she can be found drinking coffee and trying to keep up with life. Taiwo is on X @vickyy_torria.