The Yoruba concept of 'Ori' — your personal inner head, the divine essence you chose before birth — comes with an obligation most people miss: you must actively cultivate it, not merely receive it. The Ifá tradition of West Africa doesn't frame potential as something you either have or lack. It frames it as something you tend, like a fire that will dim if you stop feeding it. Paired with Donald Hebb's insight from neuroscience that neural pathways literally strengthen through repeated use and weaken through neglect, the picture becomes startling — your capacities are not fixed endowments but living systems that respond to your attention. What you practice, you become; what you ignore, you slowly cease to be. Today, notice one ability you've been coasting on rather than genuinely exercising — and give it something real to work with.

Name one skill or quality you were once actively developing that you now simply assume you still possess — what evidence do you actually have that it hasn't eroded?

Drawing from Yoruba Ifá / Neuroscience — Ifá oral corpus / Donald Hebb