Title: Bursting Our Bubbles
(BOB 1.0: Self Discovery)
Author: Shola Akinyemi
Publisher: Greenlife Publishers UK, 2019
Pages: 80
Reviewer: Faith Moyosore Agboola
Bursting Our Bubbles is a dive into self-discovery with the author’s thoughts, experiences and beliefs as a launchpad.
Shola Akinyemi shares in simple words the intricacies of life and how readers can manoeuvre through life with his words as an armour. Whether you’re seeking for a daily devotional or a book of wisdom to prepare you for the complexities of life, BOB has the water to your parched desires.
The author states that this is wisdom literature and as a result, he uses parables in some pieces to offer relevant advice.
In The dog and a God, he writes, “The dog does not learn to bark /He barks because he is a dog/A god does not learn to be godly/He is godly because he is a god/Even if a god puts himself in the cage/And starts barking like a dog/A god would not become a dog/Why/ We may ask…/Because, we don’t do to become/We are/ Then we do.”
From this piece, we can understand that life isn’t about trying to be something – we are already that thing and the real task is manifesting what that entails.
Some pieces read like stories, intriguing the readers who lose themselves in the ride down the end of the page.
In A Little Experiment Might Be Needed, we see the world through the eyes of Tom, a young child whose teacher takes him on a ride that rewards him with beauty and important discoveries.
By the end of this piece, we are taught that: To find the truth/A little playing around/And experiment would be needed/Just like in Tom’s case/It might lead to somewhere beautiful.
Some pieces read like poetry and they make you ponder on the words long after you’ve closed the book. With It Is Not The Mirror, Akinyemi teaches salient points about how humans are quick to point fingers to everything else but themselves.
With subtle and immersive lines we are bared open and forced to question our preconceived ideologies about the world and ourselves.
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He writes, “He looked into the mirror/He did not like what he saw/He became very angry/He ran away from the mirror/He came back after many days/He looked into the mirror/His face had marks and scars/He became very furious/He broke the mirror/Without realizing that/It is not the mirror.”
Others read like advice from a wise old man, in Only You Is Advising You, the author tells a story of a young man who was caught burgling a shop and tried to excuse himself with the words “it was my cousin who advised me to do this”.
He uses this young man’s experience to teach about choices and advice. He writes, “Life makes itself clear that/We are responsible/For our inputs and outputs/For our seeds and harvests/For our actions and inactions/So, we can then say that/You know exactly what you are doing/No one can advise you/And no one is advising you/Only you is allowed to advise yourself/Only you is advising you.”
In all, Bursting Our Bubbles is a memoir, a marking of maturity and a mission of the author to try to use his journey to be a light on the dark alleys of his reader’s minds.
He writes in the concluding piece, “And there was a time, I had to unbecome all that I had become”, showing his vulnerability as an author and willingness to use himself bare and exposed on the operating table to be a voice of reason, a manual for understanding and a compass for finding the road to becoming.
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