I watched a skit recently of a young woman who brought three men to her father, asking him to help her decide which one to marry. The father, with the aid of otumokpo, a charm meant to reveal hidden truths, discovered that only one of the men truly loved her. The other two were pretending.
It made me pause. What if the charm revealed that all three of them loved her? What if the charm was not available, who would she have chosen, and on what basis?
In the end, the story was just fiction, but it opened up real questions for me. Is there wisdom in letting our parents guide our choice of a partner? Or must the decision rest solely with us? After all said and one, yes our parents sometimes see what we cannot see but…they also come with their own biases, expectations, and histories.
Then there is the harder part about what gets us to a place where choosing among three suitors feels impossible? Is it the fear of making the wrong decision, or is it that love has become so tangled up with appearances, status, and performance that discernment becomes blurry?
The skit may have been scripted for laughs, but beneath it for me, was a mirror. Love, choice, family influence, all of this sits at the crossroads of who we are and who we hope to become. And sometimes, whether by charm, advice, or intuition, we are all just trying to find the one who is real and truly stays when the performance ends.