Leisure β’ Calm β’ African Philosophy β’ Serenity
How to Be Cool the Yoruba Way
Among the Yoruba people, an ethnic group of some 52 million spread between Nigeria, Togo and Benin, one of the most flattering ways to describe a person is to say they have much βitutu.β The word denotes a particular approach to life: unhurried, composed, assured and unflappable. If a bus is late, a person of βitutuβ wonβt shout or get in a dispute with a ticket vendor, theyβll let out a minor sigh and pull a weary smile. If the skies open just when theyβve laid out chairs in the garden for a party, they will β in their normal tranquil and unaffected way β simply take them all back in again. There isnβt much that should rattle a person of βitutu.β
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Crucially, βitutuβ isnβt any sort of divine gift or chance trait. Itβs a quality that can be cultivated and is the outcome of having absorbed a particular view of existence. For the Yoruba, agitation and anger flow from a mistaken and over-ambitious sense of what it lies in our power to alter. Itβs when we believe that we are more in command of external reality than we actually are that we respond to reversals and frustrations with rage. The calm person of βitutuβ may be every bit as sad as their hysterical counterpart about the delayed bus or torrential shower, but what underpins their equanimity is a sense that trouble could not be skirted and must be accepted as belonging to the order of things. In their noble resignation, a person of βitutuβ displays a grasp of another key term in Yoruba philosophy: βΓ αΉ£αΊΉβ which we might translate as destiny, existence, or the cosmic order. What lies in the province of βΓ αΉ£αΊΉβ canβt be altered by any human will but an enlightened person should understand the direction of βΓ αΉ£αΊΉβ and then adjust their desires and ambitions accordingly.
There is an important detail here: βitutuβ doesnβt only render a person wise. It additionally makes them attractive, including physically attractive, and what we might call βcoolβ β which is why any self-respecting young Yoruba will strive hard to adopt its outward signs, particularly when a distinguished local photographer like Rachidi Bissiriou has offered to take oneβs portrait.
Many cultures retain a lingering suspicion that being effective might rely on a capacity to be frantic and hot tempered. For the Yoruba, agitation isnβt merely an offence to a proper understanding of the universe; itβs also just horribly unfashionable.