There is a particular way the word Àṣà arrives in modern conversations. It is invoked, often, as a slogan — pinned to a wall in a corporate office, dropped into a leadership keynote, printed on a tote bag. Àṣà and Grief? The slogan version of Àṣà is easy to admire and easy to ignore. The actual concept, the one that has shaped Yoruba / Nigerian life for generations, is harder. It demands more. And it is, I think, more useful.
What Àṣà Actually Means
The most commonly cited definition: Àṣà is a Yoruba word for tradition, custom, or culture — but with a particular emphasis. Unlike a Western reading of 'tradition' as fixed inheritance, àṣà names tradition as practice — the continuous, adaptive doing of what has been found to work. It includes language, ritual, food, dress, courtesy, and the unspoken protocols of community life. It is the answer to the question: what do we keep doing, even as everything changes? That sentence is true, as far as it goes. It is also incomplete. Àṣà is held inside a wider Yoruba grammar — a set of related concepts, social practices, and proverbs — that the standalone definition cannot carry.
The river that forgets its source will dry up.Yoruba
The Question This Post Is About
How Àṣà reshapes the way a community walks with someone in loss. The question is worth taking seriously, because Àṣà is one of those concepts that loses its shape when handled carelessly — and recovers it as soon as the reader is willing to slow down and listen.
Outside the workplace, Àṣà reads differently — and harder. In a household, it is not a leadership philosophy; it is a daily, sometimes irritating, set of obligations. The phone call you owe. The message you have not answered. The relative whose problem is now your problem because no one else is closer. Team rituals are not abolished when they become inconvenient — they are revisited and renewed. Àṣà does not let you opt out of these.
A Second Angle
If you take Àṣà seriously at work, the first thing that has to change is the meeting. Not its agenda — its shape. Western meetings are optimised for speed and for the loudest contributor. Àṣà is optimised for something else: for the quality of decisions that hold. Team rituals are not abolished when they become inconvenient — they are revisited and renewed. The trade-off is real. Meetings under Àṣà take longer. The decisions also unstick less often.
Where the Concept Resists
It would be dishonest to pretend Àṣà is uncomplicated. The concept can be — and has been — used to suppress dissent in the name of harmony, to extract unpaid labour from women in the name of community, and to soften criticism that should have been sharper. Any serious reading of Àṣà has to hold these uses in view. The concept survives the criticism. But it is not innocent.
What to Do With This
What can you do with this? Begin small. Choose one place — one meeting, one relationship, one daily ritual — and run it through Àṣà for a month. Not as a project. As a quiet experiment. Notice what changes. Àṣà is not learned by reading; it is learned by repetition.