He Is Not A Spec

I remember how the girls almost burst into laughter when Antoinette introduced her new boyfriend to us. She had always had a certain spec—a particular kind of man we had come to expect from her —and this new person didn’t seem to fit the picture. 

When we were alone, the comments started. “He has a funny look,” Gifty said. Maya examined his face and joked about his nose and the symmetry of his features. There was really nothing unusual about him; perhaps he was simply the least handsome of the men Antoinette had ever introduced to us. 

Someone eventually asked her, half-jokingly, “What did he do to you?” Antoinette laughed and gave an answer that, at the time, seemed almost too simple: “He gives me so much peace.”

Think about her response in the context of her story.  Indirectly, society has trained us to pursue what looks expensive, impressive, desirable or enviable, sometimes at the expense of our peace. But guess what? Peace does not always arrive in a fine car, a prestigious job, a beautiful face or a relationship that makes everyone else jealous. 

Sometimes peace looks ordinary. Sometimes it is the person who does not give you butterflies but gives you room to breathe. Sometimes it is the job that pays less but leaves you with enough of yourself to live. Sometimes it is the decision to walk away from an argument you could win because winning would cost you your sanity. We can become so fascinated by what shines that we overlook what sustains us.

I have come to realise that peace is often most appreciated after we lose it. While we have it, we can mistake it for boredom. A calm relationship may feel less exciting than one filled with uncertainty and emotional highs and lows. A stable routine may seem unimpressive compared with a life that constantly demands attention. 

Many of us say we want peace, but our choices keep negotiating it away. We accept relationships that disturb us because we are afraid of being alone. We pursue money so aggressively that we have no energy left to enjoy what we earn. We say yes to every request because we fear disappointing people. 

We carry every argument into the night, every notification into our conversations and every workplace problem into our homes. We keep proving that we can endure more when perhaps the wiser question is whether everything deserves to be endured.

Antoinette saw something most people are too distracted to notice. She was not choosing a face for public approval; she was choosing an experience of life. She had discovered something that could not easily be photographed: what it felt like to be around someone and not have to defend herself, perform, compete or constantly wonder where she stood. Her friends were evaluating what the man looked like. She was evaluating what life felt like with him. That difference is profound.

Become more deliberate about protecting that kind of wealth. It means learning to distinguish an opportunity from an obligation, ambition from restlessness, and responsibility from self-neglect. It means refusing to let the fear of missing out make you miss your actual life.

I am beginning to understand why peace deserves to be treated as wealth rather than as a luxury reserved for people who have ‘made it.’ If anything, peace is part of what allows us to make it without losing ourselves along the way. What is the use of reaching a destination if the journey leaves us too broken to enjoy arriving? What is the value of gaining everything that impresses people while losing the things that make life inhabitable?

Antoinette’s answer was wiser than we realised that day. Her friends saw a man who did not meet the expected standard of appearance. She saw someone whose presence gave her peace. And maybe that is one of the hardest lessons about true wealth: some of the most valuable things in life are not the things that make other people admire you. They are the things that allow you to remain whole

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