the musings of this nigerian gal

“Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.” – Simone Weil

Somehow I always find myself living with people who are crazy about movies. Maybe not crazy crazy, but you sha get the point.

They would sit down, watching series after series, standalone after standalone, while I stared at them in half disgust and half wonder at how they could enjoy a movie that was not animé so much.

I have gone through a Pride and Prejudice lover, and then to a GOT lover and then to a Queen of Tears lover — the only good thing that came out of living with the last one was Terius Behind Me.

Now I am stuck with a person that loves movies like Love in Every Word.

I admit that not all the movies she watch end up being as bad as I imagined them to be. However, I noticed that all the movies she watched possessed the dramatic flair that often characterize the Nollywood industry

A man finding out that none of his children are his.

A lady being dumped by her boyfriend two days to the day to meet her parents and now she has to hire a boyfriend.

A lady finding love with the guy that accused her of stealing his phone and as a result made her lose her job.

Sometimes I watch with my ears. Sometimes I block my ears, and the reason is simple.

In a bid to tell realistic stories, they often tell of broken stories. I’m talking about stories where the wife discovers that her husband has been cheating on her for five years or the one where the husband learns that none of his children actually belong to him or the one where the husband and wife engage in verbal fisticuffs almost everyday or the one where mother-in-law is giving the lady trouble.

On one hand, the industry tells you that you can find true love and on the other hand, their “realistic” depiction of this love often leaves much to be desired.

So the viewer is hoping for her fairytale while she is crippled with fear of what such experience in that fairytale would be.

She is hoping to find a man that would sweep in and sweep her off her feet while praying to God every night for the man to be faithful to her when he comes.

There is desire and there is fear.

And where there is fear, self-fulfilling prophecy is right at its heel.

Fear gives the devil a foothold. Fear chokes our faith and stops our prayers from getting answered. Fear makes us become exactly what we fear.

So the Bible says to guard our hearts with all diligence because it’s from there the issue of life flows.

In other words, if you want your life to be right, make your heart right.

It often sounds over the top to say things like, “I don’t watch movies where there’s domestic abuse in it” or “I don’t read books that has divorce in it.”

But like a very wise man once said, “the heart does not know the difference between fiction and nonfiction.