I did not grow up knowing much about Igbo culture.

I knew I was Igbo. I knew where my family was from. I knew small things here and there. But if I am being honest, I did not really understand what it meant to be Igbo.

And that made me self conscious.

It made me question my identity. It made me feel like I was connected to something I did not fully understand. And in many ways that feeling still exists.

So I started searching.

There is something uncomfortable about searching for yourself and realizing you do not fully know who you are.

At some point I began to feel that there had to be more to life than making money and chasing the American dream. From the outside everything can look right. You are working. You are progressing. You are building. But something still feels incomplete.

That feeling pushed me to start searching.

Not for culture at first.
Not for history.
Not even for identity.

I was searching for myself.

Like many people, I found myself drawn to Eastern philosophies. Buddhism. Hinduism. Taoism. These were the places many people seemed to go when they were trying to understand life and find meaning.

But something about that never fully sat right with me.

It felt like I was traveling far away to find something that might have already been close to me.

At some point I began to wonder.

What if I do not need to go across the world to find meaning.
What if I do not need to borrow another culture’s philosophy.
What if the answers I am looking for already exist within my own culture.

That is when I started looking into pre colonial Igbo culture.

And what I discovered surprised me.

I discovered that Igbo culture had its own philosophy.
I discovered that it had its own understanding of purpose.
I discovered that it had its own view of balance and personal responsibility.
I discovered that it had a deep spiritual structure.

I also realized something else.

This was not just about learning history. This was about finding myself.

Because the more I learned the more I felt connected to something that had always been there.

It was not something new.
It was something remembered.

And the deeper I go the more I realize that pre colonial Igbo culture was not just a set of traditions. It was a way of understanding life.

A way of understanding identity.
A way of understanding purpose.
A way of understanding balance.

This series is my journey into that understanding.

I am not writing as an expert. I am writing as someone searching. Someone learning. Someone trying to reconnect.

If you have ever felt that there is more to life than success.
If you have ever searched for meaning beyond achievement.
If you have ever wondered who you are beneath everything you have built.

Then this journey may also be for you.

Because sometimes what we are looking for is not far away.

Sometimes it has been within us the whole time.

And this is where my journey begins.