Everyday Why? The Strange Business of Being Human

A new reader-powered series about the strange business of being human.

Not long ago, I was crawling through Lagos traffic when a man stepped off the median, walked slowly across the front of my car and looked straight through my windscreen. Not at the road. Not at the danfo bearing down from the next lane. At me. He held my gaze for a full second, then carried on, as though we had just concluded a small piece of business.

I have seen this a thousand times. So have you. Yet in all my years on Nigerian roads, I have never heard anyone ask the obvious question: why? Is he confirming that I have seen him? Is it an unwritten contract, “I have looked into your eyes, so now you cannot hit me”? Is it defiance? Or is it simply something we all learned and nobody ever explained?

That small, slightly absurd moment is the seed of a new series on this platform. It is called Everyday Why?

The idea

Everyday Why? is a recurring, reader-powered series about the strange, funny, contradictory and sometimes risky things we do in ordinary life. Each episode begins with one behaviour we have all witnessed or, let us be honest, committed, and asks one clear question about it. Then I hand the investigation over to you.

Across oil fields, banking halls, boardrooms and, these days, electric tricycles on Nigerian roads, I have learned something simple: the most revealing data about people is rarely in the report. It is in the small things they do when nobody is taking notes.

How it works: observe, ask, return.

We notice a behaviour people normally ignore. We turn it into one specific question. You supply the theories, confessions and counter-arguments. The strongest, funniest and most surprising answers return in the next episode, credited to you.

A few to get us started

• The phantom apology. Someone brushes past you in a corridor. You say “sorry.” They say “sorry.” Nobody is hurt, nobody has admitted fault, yet two adults have just exchanged apologies. What exactly were we apologising for?
• “I’m on my way.” Your friend sends it. You know, and they know that you know, that they are still looking for the other shoe. Is it a lie, a promise, or a social painkiller?
• The silent status viewer. We watch someone’s WhatsApp status every single day and never once reply. Interest? Avoidance? Or is viewing itself a kind of conversation?
• The traffic lament. We complain bitterly about the go-slow after leaving the house forty minutes late.
• The advice paradox. We ask a trusted friend for counsel, nod thoughtfully, then do the exact opposite.

The question is the content. But your answer is the product.

Why this deserves our attention

First, curiosity is a discipline we have quietly abandoned. In leadership work, I have watched organisations stumble not on grand strategy but on the unexamined habit, the meeting nobody questions, the “this is how we do it here.” A people who learn to ask why do we do this? about small things become far better at asking it about large ones.

Second, it is a mirror, not a microscope. The series will never ask, “Why are those people so foolish?” It will ask, “Why do we sometimes…?” The aim is that you laugh, argue, and then recognise yourself somewhere in the middle of the comments.

Third, small behaviours carry big costs. Crossing at the most dangerous point on the road. Pushing into the bus before passengers step out. Forwarding a message before checking whether it is true. These are not trivia; they cost time, trust and sometimes lives. We cannot change what we have never bothered to name.

Fourth, you are the investigator. This is not a lecture series. The questions will open on Instagram and Facebook, where the conversation lives, and the best of your thinking will be gathered here on the blog as a permanent archive of how we actually explain ourselves.

Our ground rules

The behaviour is the subject; the individual is never the target. No strangers’ faces, no number plates, no private messages, no armchair diagnoses. Curious, never contemptuous. Where a topic touches road safety, observation is not encouragement. Please use the safe crossing.

Your move

Episode one, “Why do we say ‘sorry’ when nobody is hurt?”, arrives this week. Bring your theory. Bring your confession. If there is something you have always wondered about but never said out loud, send it in. The best questions will become future episodes, with your name on them.

Because the most interesting question in any room is rarely “What happened?” It is “Why do we keep doing that?”