Die Empty

Ayo arrived when Ogun’s air was thick with dust and silence.

He came quietly, too quietly, and for a breath the room tilted towards grief before his stubborn heartbeat brought him back.

Relief broke into praise, and his mother named him Ayo, Joy, because sorrow had almost won. Yet while the room rejoiced, he only stared with wide, searching eyes, as if he had returned with unfinished business.

By three, he was dismantling radios. By five, he corrected his teachers. By seven, he asked his Sunday school teacher why an all powerful God needed constant praise.

That was when the whispers began.

In his house, curiosity was not genius. It was rebellion. His mother called it stubbornness. His father called it pride. The church called it spiritual attack. They prayed over him. They fasted. They laid hands on his head as if intelligence or curiosity were a demon that could be cast out.

Ayo was bright. He was also neurodivergent. He did not sit still. He did not speak in expected tones. He obsessed over patterns. He hated small talk. He struggled to look elders in the eye when forced to apologize for asking questions that made them uncomfortable.

Nigeria does not know what to do with children like that.

In biology, a living thing must work to remain distinct from its environment. Your body fights to stay warmer than the air around it. Your cells fight to keep their water from leaking into the dry world outside. The moment that work stops, you reach equilibrium.

Essentially when you blend in. You die.

Nigeria loves equilibrium.

It loves the child who memorizes without asking why. The teenager who bows to his elders before knowing who they are. The adult who does not disturb the corporate or familial hierarchy. The citizen who mistakes their countrymen’s silence for national peace.

Ayo was not built for equilibrium.

School bored him. Not because he was lazy. Because he was ahead. He saw patterns before teachers finished writing equations. He built crude apps on borrowed computers in cybercafes. He read Dawkins in secret and hid the book inside his Bible when his mother entered the room.

But every time he tried to push forward, the system pushed back.

Teachers accused him of arrogance. Pastors accused him of doubt. Relatives warned him not to think too much. “You think life if by book,” they said, “you don’t know anything yet.”

To grow meant to shrink.

Shrink your voice. Shrink your ambition. Shrink your mind until it fits inside what already exists.

By sixteen, Ayo understood something brutal. His country was not designed to foster distinction. It was designed to reward conformity.

In other parts of the world, tyranny, in subtle forms, is the historical norm. Democracies require work. So does originality. So does genius.

But in Ayo’s country, no one wanted to do that work.

So Ayo learned to perform normalcy. He spoke less in church. He toned down his questions. He pretended not to notice inconsistencies in sermons. He smiled when elders were wrong.

But at night he built things.

Small programs. Sketches of business solutions for rural towns. Notes about educational reform. He carried ideas like a fever. The tragedy of the intelligent man who never creates anything haunted him. He refused to die an expert on other people’s lives.

University widened his world and broke his heart at the same time.

He met others like him. Brilliant. Restless. Frustrated. Software engineers who could build global products from their dorm rooms. Writers who understood politics better than the politicians. Designers who could rival Silicon Valley.

They talked. They debated. They dreamed.

Then graduation came.

And something quiet happened.

The software engineer never shipped his idea. His uncle said government work was safer. He joined a bank’s IT department and spent his days maintaining legacy systems that no one loved.

The writer never published her book. Her pastor warned her about pride and “worldly influence.” She started ghostwriting sermons instead.

The designer edited his vision until it looked like every other agency pitch deck. Clients did not like bold. Clients liked familiar.

Unused potential became the common language.

Ayo watched it happen in slow motion. Intelligent people dissolving into their surroundings. Like bodies losing heat. Like cells surrendering water to dry air. Equilibrium masquerading as maturity.

They were not stupid. They were tired.

Nigeria is exhausting to resist.

It tells you that questioning elders is disrespect. That faith without doubt is purity. That ambition beyond the border is betrayal. That survival is enough.

But survival is the minimum requirement for life. It is breath in and breath out. It is waking up, eating, enduring, repeating. It is the body maintaining its temperature against the cold, the heart continuing its rhythm against the odds. Survival keeps you here.

Creation is different.

Creation is evidence. It is the mark you leave on your environment instead of blending into it. It is the idea turned into code, the thought turned into structure, the protest turned into policy, the pain turned into product. Survival proves you are alive. Creation proves you lived.

Ayo felt the pull every day. The temptation to blend in. To take the stable job. To stop fighting systems older than him. To quiet his mind. To become typical. To survive

The world pulled at him in a thousand ways.

He understood now that distinctiveness is not romantic. It is labor. Continuous, draining labor. To maintain your difference in an environment that rewards sameness requires energy most people do not have.

He did not blame his friends. He saw their burdens. Family expectations. Church pressure. Economic instability. The constant background noise of a country struggling with itself.

But he also saw the cost.

A generation fluent in global ideas but silent in local execution. Experts on other people’s revolutions. Architects who never build.

He refused to die that way.

He began shipping.

Small at first. An educational platform for rural students. A software prototype built with night data bundles. Articles under a pen name. Each project imperfect. Each one real.

The church still prayed for him. Some relatives still whispered. But something shifted.

He stopped trying to be understood.

He focused on being distinct.

In a country that confuses meekness with virtue, his resistance looked like arrogance. In a system that rewards subordination, his autonomy looked like rebellion.

So be it.

Life is differentiation. Death is equilibrium.

Ayo chose creation as resistance. He chose to die empty, so the future would not have to beg the past for permission.