The Curse of the Sweet and Shallow: On the Dangers of Low-Hanging Fruit

Letter No. 12

Dear Bata,

Your Ma does protest too much. She thinks my last letter was too dark. Too melancholy—laden with despair. Full of “big words and big thinkers”—Dawkins. Lenin. Lennox. “What does she know about all that?” she asked, aghast.

She asked me to keep the intellectual wahala for when you’re eighteen—twenty-one, maybe. “She’s just too young,” she said, “not yet equipped to handle such weighty matters.”

Your Ma is doing what good mothers do: guarding the gate, shielding the tender from the terrible. Doing her best to ensure that the precariousness of life doesn’t come and swallow her little girl whole.

But here’s the part she’s missed—the things you already know.

You already know:

That people die—even the ones who aren’t supposed to.

That grief doesn’t ask your age before it enters.

That sometimes your prayers feel like they hit the ceiling and fall flat.

That some adults lie.

That sometimes you want to disappear, or scream, or break something.

That you already carry things in your body you’ve long forgotten how to name.

Bata, your Ma is wrestling with the age-old temptation of escapism: the urge to run away from the realities of a wicked world and go somewhere bright and wonderful, like The Amazing World of Gumball, with its golden sunshine and endless jokes—or to live in the sparkling, never-dangerous terrain of Dora the Explorer, where the only thing that matters is a cheerful map and your next exciting journey.

In her mind, you’re still a baby. A Peter Pan character. Locked in a cocoon of comfort. Never growing up. Never facing the dark. But to avoid hard truths is to live off low truths.

My dear Bata, low truths are like low-hanging fruit—easy to grab, sweet at first bite, but mostly insufficient in producing nourishment that lasts the long haul of life.

I often tell my students about Simba in The Lion King. At first, he’s carefree—singing Hakuna Matata, chasing butterflies, eating bugs, running from grief. But the story shifts when he learns something important: escape isn’t healing. The absence of trouble isn’t peace.

Simba has to return. He must face the father he lost. The kingdom he abandoned. The fear that paralysed him.

Low fruits flatter. High fruits form.

Long ago, Democritus said the world was made of “atoms and void.” Matter and space. Today, we think of “stuff” as measurable, ownable, buildable things: houses, degrees, jobs, status. Useful, very. But still—low-hanging fruit. Wealth is good, but the high fruit is to know, like Abraham did: we are blessed to become blessings. The high fruit is not status. It’s not GPA, beauty, or earning potential. Otherwise, life becomes atoms and résumé lines. Quantified. Monetised.
Your worth? Measured.
Your soul? Fragmented.

If your “stuff” doesn’t engage with what Plato called the Supreme Good—what we know to be God—then it becomes a collection of lesser truths. It doesn’t elevate you; it leaves you earthbound.

What elevates is the source. The fruit at the top of the tree—the one you climb for, sweat for, stretch your soul toward. That’s where Truth lives.

Michelangelo once said:

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

Just as the high fruits hides high in the tree, and you must wade through branches, branches thick with stems and insects and leaves that scratch your face and enters your eyes. The high truth sits at the highest point of reality—just like high-hanging fruit. It’s difficult to reach. It requires effort, discipline, contemplation, and a willingness to go beyond the surface. But once grasped, it illuminates everything else. It is the source of true nourishment—of wisdom, purpose, and moral clarity.

Aim for the higher fruit. Even if it’s hard to chew. Even if it leaves your jaw sore.

Greet your Ma.

With love always,
Auntie Bassey

Thank you for reading!
And if this letter stirred something in you—if it reminded you of the climb, the ache, the hunger for more—then share it.