The Boy Who Forgot What Rest Felt Like

I once knew a boy. He was brilliant, the kind of brilliant that fills a room. He worked three jobs in his final year at university. He tutored at dawn, transcribed audio files through the afternoon, and hawked data bundles on weekends. He graduated with a second class upper. His mother cried. His church celebrated. Everyone said he was a testimony.

Nobody asked him how he was sleeping.

That boy is not rare in Nigeria. He is everywhere. He is you, maybe. Or someone you love. We have built an entire culture around his story. The hustle, the grind, the grace of God and we have forgotten to ask what it costs a body to live that way. What it costs a mind. What it costs a soul!

Stress, when it becomes the permanent weather of your life, stops feeling like stress. It starts feeling like personality. You forget that your shoulders were not always this tight. You forget that you used to laugh without calculating what came next. You forget, slowly and then completely, what rest felt like before rest became guilt.

This is what chronic stress does. It does not break you dramatically. It dims you. Quietly. The way a phone screen gets scratched not from one fall, but from being carried everywhere, every day, against everything rough.

You were not born to be a machine. Not even a machine with grace. You were born to live fully, softly, with room for stillness.

Claim that room back. It was always yours.

All my love,

-DandelionPrecious from MANI