Dozie Anyaegbunam: Forget the story (the title is everything)

Once upon a time there was a...

Marketer Under The Influence

So I get this thing a lot where they say I'm an old soul.

I guess what I maybe it comes from being the first kid in an Igbo family — and I maybe I guess that's what all first kids deal with also — but Igbo is the southeastern part of Nigeria.

Being the first kid means that early on in your life, you're literally just you're told that you need to take care of your siblings. You need to, you know, you're like you just have this emotional burden that is put on you and so.

I think, I think my parents, my siblings, my friends would say, this is also, it's like the one who you would call for advice, and he would say something, and you'd be like ... "how the hell did you come up with that?"

Maybe that also comes from reading too many books, even the ones that I'm not, I shouldn't read.

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That's Dozie Anyaegbunam.

Dozie is the senior editor for CMO.com. But it doesn't matter what he does or where he works.

Because this story is about a curious young man living in Southeastern Nigeria with an unusual habit of stealing books from his father's library and an unhealthy case of shiny object syndrome.

Because, once upon a time, he was a young boy living in Southeastern Nigeria who had a nasty habit of stealing then losing books from his father's extensive library of academic research and modern philosophy.

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Dozie Anyaegbunam

So as a kid, I was a really curious kid.

My father used to crack a joke that I was the one kid that lost all his books. Because I read everything — like right from when I was like seven or eight, I was already reading I read books on communism. I read the Karl Marx. He had all the Karl Marxes.

I burned through half of it before he said “stop doing that!”

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Dozie confesses his father will always and forever be cooler than him.

His dad was mass comms lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University and was the senior editor for the university's magazine.

Dozie says his father's cigarette moments capture his essence best — a silhouette standing outside the family home against the setting Nigerian sun after returning from work, smoke billowing out and surrounding him as he enjoys a moment of solitude before clocking into this primary job as a husband and father.

Dozie believes this ritualistic buffer was a necessary step for his father, giving him the strength and patience to deal with the dark side of unbridled, youthful curiosity.

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Dozie Anyaegbunam

The thing about being curious is it also means that you're pretty impatient.

Like so, just looking back at my 6 to 10 year old self, I think Game Boy had just showed up in Nigeria. And then SNES, which is Super Nintendo Entertainment System, had also shown up at that point in time.

And ...ha ha... I had gone to friends houses, I had seen the SNES and wanted to play Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter at home, like, I wanted it badly.

Pops, he couldn't afford it at that point in time. He was like, "No, that's not a priority for you right now, there are other things we have to do with money."

And I just kept asking. You know how kids can be when they want stuff. I mean, I have a kid now, like, when they want stuff, like it's... I really admire my father's patience at that point in time. He's like, "I can't, I just can't get it for you right now."

"Okay, no, can I just get the Game Boy?"

He just keeps going on and on, "You can't get that."

Then I cry. Throw a tantrum. I do all that.

And then for the first time, my father says to me, "You know what? I'm going to give you a book to read."

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LOL. This is starting to sound like a scene from of a Wes Anderson film.

We have a way-too-mature-for-his-age kid who with a habit of losing his father's communist literature, throwing a tantrum because his parents won't buy him the latest, greatest video game system.

The father responds like all fathers do — by handing him a copy of Ayi Kwei's 1968 debut novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, a satirical story about Ghanian corruption, poverty, and social inequality ... because this is a normal way to handle the situation /s.

But as Dozie continued to tell the story, it became less and less absurd and seemingly profound.

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Dozie Anyaegbunam

He says the book has two lessons in it.

There’s the book itself and all the things it talks about: corruption — you know, it's satire. It's a satirical book itself and all that stuff. It talks about the Ghanian independence, Kwame Nkrumah and all those things. He says, that's going to be a bit hard for you to carry in your head.

The second lesson is the title itself. The title… you can relate it to the book or you can relate it to life in general.

I'm like, “Okay.” I said, “Dad, you're giving me a book when you know I lose your books. Like, that's weird.”

He's like, “Yeah, because this book is pretty important.” And he gives me the book and he says to me, “Why I give you this book is I'm going to let you keep it because the name, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born, is an ode to your impatience in the sense that you need to take it easy. Because things, like, you all, like, things are, what you have now, the world as you see it now. We'll always keep changing because literally the most beautiful things that are not, they're not yet born at all.”

At first I was wondering why the hell did they not spell beautiful properly.

And he goes, ”Forget all that. I just want you to take this lesson here as you go forward in life. Because I see you're a curious child. You're pretty impatient. You want things now. Everything, everything you see right now with the way the world is going, it's going to get better. It's going to keep changing. And so if, or if you're struggling for this one, now what are you going to do when you struggle for something right now? And then tomorrow it changes into something else. What are you going to do?

I took, I picked up the book and I ran, I ran off with it.

It was still a bit confusing to me at that point in time. And I think that, to be honest, I think it probably took a while for that lesson to settle in.

I think for me, the beauty about that lesson for me was the lesson was a lesson that happened over time because, as you grow older and engage with the world and how the world interacts and how everything that goes on, then you start to see these things and then you kind of get to the point where you're like, “Oh. Yeah, this is what dad meant when he said, the beautiful is not yet born. This is what he meant. Cause everything is constantly changing.

I think about this thing sometimes. I'm just like…

Especially now that he's passed and i'm just going through memories we have with him and all the things that you've done with him and you're just thinking. You know?

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A few months before recording for this episode, Dozie's father died unexpectedly.

It made sense he'd chose a memory connected to his father for this episode. But I kept wondering why, out of all memories of his father, was this book and the wild interpretation of its title the dominant one?

Dozie Anyaegbunam

I'm going home for his funeral, and when I go, part of my job is I'm going to ship the book back here and I want to give it to my son.

I want to take The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born and say to him, “So this book is from grandpa Ben. Grandpa Ben gave it to me and I'm giving it to you. Yeah. It's like handing it down. But again, like for me, to him… I'm just going to probably say the same as my dad said to me.

“The story is not the book.”

He's just seven.

“I'm not sure you can understand the book yet, but I want you to keep it in your room on every single time. I want you to read the title, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, and kind of understand that everything you see in our home, the TV, the Nintendo Switch that you have, your phone, all those things, there's going to be better ones.

“So you need to learn early on enough to know there's no need holding on to something so hard because like, Oh, if I don't get this, then the world is over. No, the world isn't over. Tomorrow, you're going to see much finer, much better, much interesting, much more colorful one, much more useful one, and you're still going to want it.

“So the issue is not the theme, it's the wanting, it's the emotion that you're dealing with.”

You know, and I probably think also that it's going to take him a while to understand. but I'm willing to go on that journey with him and say:

“Hey. It's not the book, it's the title. The title is everything here. The book itself, oh, it's very complex. But the title, it'll stay with you forever.”

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As marketers, we want to believe our messages never get lost in translation, that everything we say is heard and understood exactly as it was intended.

Dozie's story teaches that people will interpret any part of our work however they damn well please.

But I hope Dozie’s story also teaches us to appreciate what’s possible.

Because, if a story's title can teach a lesson outside the context of its content and become a family heirloom, then I say anything goes.

Until next time…

♥️ Ronnie

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