What do we fear the most? Is it the dark for ghosts, or the silence that hums with possibilities or the coming of the grim reaper ? Maybe it’s the unseen, the things we can’t touch, name, or prepare for. The invisible threads that tie events together, the whispers we dismiss but later realize were warnings.
In life, we learn to trust our eyes. If we can’t see it, it’s easy to believe it doesn’t exist. But anyone who’s lived long enough knows better. The most dangerous things are often the ones you never saw coming. A sickness that creeps in quietly. A betrayal hidden behind smiles. The storm that gathers while the sky still looks clear. The existence of another supreme power.
But the unseen isn’t always bad. Sometimes, it’s where hope hides. Like seeds buried underground, invisible until they sprout. Or prayers spoken into the air, carried away by faith, waiting to return with answers. The unseen is where dreams live before they take shape - ideas too fragile to share until they grow strong enough to stand.
In Nigeria, we have a saying: "wetin eyes no see, e no fit fear". But maybe that’s the problem. What we don’t see, we don’t prepare for. We ignore cracks until the wall falls. We refuse to read signs until the road ends. Yet the unseen is never really absent; it’s just waiting - waiting for us to notice or waiting to reveal itself when it’s too late.
The question then is simple, how do we face what we can’t see? Some close their eyes and hope for the best. Others learn to feel their way through, trusting instincts instead of sight. And a few, the bravest ones, step into the dark with nothing but faith that the ground will hold.
Maybe that’s the lesson of the unseen. It teaches us to be watchful but also hopeful. To prepare without panic and to trust that even what we can’t see might still work in our favor. Because in the end, not everything unseen is a threat. Some things - like roots beneath a tree or the beating heart behind a ribcage, are unseen but vital. Unseen but alive.
And isn’t that what life is? Half of it lived in the open, the other half carried quietly beneath the surface, where no one but us can feel it.
