You never know...

I hate prison stories, especially one being told by another Nigerian because it always sounds so real and like it could happen to anyone at anytime.

_{photo by Emiliano Bar}

For a while now the algorithm on tiktok has been showing me videos of this particular guy who's doing a series, talking about his experience in prison. Apparently he had been arrested for having some drugs on him and had spent about eight months in prison before he eventually got out, and now all he does is preach to us, telling us about his experience in prison and why it should be the last place we'd want to be.

Watching that guy's videos always gets me scared because I feel like with the corruption in this country, the only thing keeping me out of prison right now, aside from being a good citizen and not doing anything stupid, is staying indoors at home where I can't randomly run into any crooked officers who's desperately searching for anyone to arrest just so that they could get some bail money out of them, after they've been put behind bars for some few days.

Anyways, every time I watch that guys videos, he always emphasises on how important freedom is, but also how many of us wouldn't know it until we find ourselves in a situation where that freedom is taken away from us.

Luckily for me, I do understand him perfectly and have had this conversation a billion times with my friends. I randomly would just remind them about how free we are right now and how we literally could do anything we wanted to do. But whenever I say that, they always look at me like am crazy, or like someone saying something meaningless.

But then I came to realize that just like the guy on tiktok, most people wouldn't realize how important freedom is and the many things they can do now that they're free, until they find themselves in a situation where they no longer have control over their freedom and can no longer do what they want, when they want... Then they will be forced to acknowledge it's importance.

Also, this doesn't only applies to freedom but to every other thing in life.

Most people with an old mobile phone would look at it like it's trash, but the moment that phone gets bad and they find themselves without a phone for a week or a month, they will find themselves missing that phone that they used to call old, wishing they could have it back.

Which is probably why the saying "You never know what you have until you lose it" is probably one of the truest sayings out there.