If you have spent more than five minutes on Nigerian motivational social media, you must have bumped into this very deep-sounding, highly emotional quote:
"My dear, take it easy. If you die today, your
employer will replace you before your obituary poster is out. And at home, they
will cry, but life will go on. You are 100% replaceable everywhere. Take care
of yourself!"
The first time you read it, you probably nodded your head so
hard your neck almost snapped. "True! Real wisdom!" you
shouted, quickly reposting it to five different WhatsApp status updates. It
sounds like the ultimate form of self-care. It feels like something a
motivational speaker would say after collecting his appearance fee.
But if we are being completely honest with ourselves,
this "wisdom" is actually one of the biggest scams of the Gen-Z generation.
It takes a reasonable message about self-preservation and stretches it into a
slow-poisoning excuse for mediocrity. It confuses the ability to fill a vacant
position with the ability to replace the person who occupied it.
The truth is far more complicated—and a lot less
replaceable.
Part 1: The Myth of the "Replaceable" Home
Let us start with the most painful part of this lie: that
you are replaceable at home. Whoever wrote that obviously did not grow up in a
real human family. Yes, if a person passes away, the family will eventually
find a way to survive. Responsibilities are redistributed and life goes on - they
have to eat, go to work, and pay bills - but "surviving" is not the
same as "replacing."
Take Mama Tunde, for example. When she suddenly passed away
after years of being the heartbeat of her household, her husband and three
children did not just "replace" her. The home was never the same. Who
was going to replicate Mama Tunde’s magic Sunday Jollof? Who would sit on the
veranda at night, listening to Tunde’s endless complaints about his boss,
offering the kind of prayer that only a mother can brew?
Think of the indispensable mechanics of a home. Who will
replace the father who wakes up early, pays school fees, and never forgets to
call and ask, "Have you people reached home?" Who replaces the
mother whose voice echoes from the kitchen, shouting, "Who left this
light on? Is it NEPA that is supplying us free electricity?!"
What if you lose the youngest child in a family? The one
whose little arguments, funny questions, and constant demands for attention
made the house lively. The family may eventually laugh again. They may
celebrate birthdays and carry on. But that empty room, that missing voice, and
those little things the child used to do will remain a permanent shape that no
one else can fit into.
You can hire a housekeeper. You can order fast food. You can
even remarry or find guardians. But you can never, ever replace the unique, irreplaceable
soul of a mother, a father, a child, or a sibling. Ask anyone who has lost a
loved one: the hole they leave behind is a permanent shape that no one else can
fit into. The idea that a family just "replaces" you is an insult to
the deep, messy, beautiful ties that bind us. When you tell
yourself you are "replaceable" at home, you give yourself permission
to disconnect and pretend your presence doesn’t matter. But it does. You are
the only "you" your family has.
Part 2: The Truth About the "Irreplaceable"
Employee
Now, let’s go to the office.
We’ve all heard stories of companies posting job vacancies
before the funeral arrangements are even finalized. On paper, an organization
can replace an employee in its structure. It can recruit someone else, issue a
new ID card, assign a laptop, and hand over an official email address.
But here is what the internet philosophers conveniently
ignore: not all employees are created equal, and some positions are
incredibly difficult to fill.
Take Adesua, a Lead Developer at a tech-logistics firm in
Yaba. Adesua does not just "do her job." She knows the company's
legacy systems inside and out. She is the one who saved the entire operations
team when the server crashed on Black Friday by staying up all night, eating
cold chin-chin, and coding a miracle bypass.
Then there is Chuka, who has been with his organization for
twelve years. He isn’t the loudest person in the room, but he carries the
institutional knowledge. He knows why certain decisions were taken years ago,
anticipates problems before they become full-blown crises, and explains the
unwritten culture to new interns that nobody thought to include in the staff
handbook.
Adesua and Chuka belong to a rare category: people whose
presence makes the work of everyone else easier. When both firms faced massive
financial downturns and had to downsize, HR drew up long lists of people to let
go. But Adesua and Chuka’s names were conspicuously absent.
Why? Because management is terrified of losing them. They
aren't just occupying seats; they are anchors. To keep them happy, executives
gave them flexible working hours, remote options, and bonuses that make their
peers jealous. They earned a different level of consideration not because they
are the boss's favourites, but because their value is undeniable.
On the other hand, we have Emeka, the ultimate Apostle of
the "I am 100% Replaceable" philosophy.
Emeka reads the social media quote and interprets it
literally. He arrives at 9:00 AM on the dot and leaves at 4:59 PM, even if the
building is on fire. If a colleague needs assistance, he politely declines. If
an urgent deadline hits, he completes his bare-minimum portion and disappears.
His favourite expression is a dismissive, "Abeg, I can't come and kill myself," and he has perfected the art of looking extremely busy whenever
extra responsibility is discussed.
When the company decided to downsize, guess whose name was
at the very top of the list? Emeka. He was replaced within forty-eight hours,
and nobody missed him. Emeka proved the quote right - but only because he chose
to make himself that way.
Yet, when annual bonuses are announced or promotion
opportunities arise, Emeka expects to be considered alongside the Adesuas and
Chukas of the firm. When productivity declines, he is the first to complain
about poor leadership, never considering that his own attitude is part of the
problem. If you challenge him, he will smugly remind you that nobody is
indispensable.
Fair enough, Emeka. But if everybody in that organization
adopts your philosophy, who exactly will be left to build anything meaningful?
Part 3: The Hidden Trap of the "Self-Care"
Excuse
The problem with the "you are replaceable" mindset
is that it acts as a cultural permission slip to be lazy, selfish, and
disconnected. A slow-poisoning excuse for mediocrity.
Imagine if every member of a family decided they were 100%
replaceable. Nobody wants to make sacrifices. Nobody wants to take
responsibility or inconvenience themselves for another person. Everyone wants
their needs prioritized, everyone wants to receive love, but nobody wants to
give it. Who then takes care of the family when things become difficult? Who
supports a sibling going through a dark season?
A rich, meaningful life is built on being needed - on
contributing so much love, effort, and value that your absence would actually
matter. You cannot build lasting relationships, strong marriages, or thriving
businesses with a mindset that says your only responsibility is to yourself.
Let us make one thing completely clear: this is not an
argument for becoming a slave to your employer or destroying your health to
prove you are hardworking. It is not an invitation to become the family
member who pays everybody's bills while neglecting your own needs. It is not a
suggestion that you should tolerate exploitation, remain in toxic environments,
or allow people to take advantage of your kindness.
Take care of yourself. Rest when you are tired. Set firm
boundaries. Demand fair treatment. Know exactly when to walk away.
But please, do not confuse self-care with selfishness. There
is a massive difference between protecting your well-being and deliberately
refusing to contribute to the people and institutions that depend on you. There
is a difference between being replaceable in a corporate directory and being
irreplaceable as a human being. Your employer may eventually fill your vacant
seat, but that does not mean the value you left behind was insignificant. Life
goes on, yes, but life going on does not erase the importance of those who made
it beautiful.
You don't have to be indispensable to the entire world, but
you should strive to be valuable to the people and places that matter to you.
The next time somebody tells you, "You are 100%
replaceable at home and at work. Take care of yourself first," smile
and remind them:
"Taking care of myself is important. But making
myself useful, adding real value, and being there for the people who matter are
exactly what make life worth living."
At the end of the day, nobody is asking you to die for an
organization or lose your identity in a relationship. But while you are alive,
healthy, and capable, don't live as though your only assignment on earth is to
collect benefits, avoid responsibilities, and look after number one.
That is not wisdom. That is selfishness dressed up in the
language of healing. If we all adopt that philosophy, we may discover that we
have become very good at protecting ourselves, but very poor at building
anything together.
