The Other Question:

I was listening to a very wise old man that said something that awakened my mind again. He said that we need to pay more attention to what our inner score card looks like as opposed to what the outer score card looks like. According to him, the decisions we make should be based on what we want and think is right first as opposed to what others think is right and want.

Question 1:

What is the place for community? Imagine a place where everyone did as they pleased and they never minded what the others would say about their actions, imagine a community where everyone sought first what makes them happy and then did it. My guess that is a very self centred and isolated society. I believe none of us wants to live in such a community and that is why society has determined that he decisions we make have got to be those that society in general will agree to. This imagination of course carries with it the assumption that we all have a measure of right and that each persons measure is different from any other.

Question 2:

What is the place for love? Love seeks the good of others and when love finds, loves seeks to share with others, the joy and even the experience. If we ask ourselves to entirely decide as we see right, we put love to an impossible test because none will then mind what the good of others is. We are loving beings and are expected to be as such, to focus only on the joy that we seek is to neglect so great a responsibility, is to narrow the scope and field of joy.

Question 3:

Then what? What will happen when we all consider our very joy above the joy of others, when we put ourselves first? We shall get away with doing as we pleased but while on the road to that, we shall find that we hurt so many and lost some. To realize that in a way we are all knit one to another is the very beginning of identifying ourselves as a people. We cannot always see ourselves apart because then we shall have denied the obvious, that we are human.

The community we come from is the very base of who we are , we have gathered beliefs and traditions from them and we cannot close them out of our decisions because they form them. But when it comes to making the decisions that will help us become better members of the community we need to stick to the most important basics and in so doing, decide not basing on what we find is in the best of the community or us, but what will facilitate our making such better contribution in a safer way. In this regard we esteem ourselves less important than the decision and the decision a gift to the community. When we finally determine what the most important questions for our decision are, then we can absorb all the other questions better and to the satisfaction of all involved.

Love seeks for the satisfaction of others. When we belong to loving communities we shall carry less the burden of having to answer all the other questions simply because every smile given will be an answer self given. When we love we support and the Greatest Love lays not weight nor burden but Help.

True, we cannot define ourselves apart from the communities we come from, but every community is defined by those that have come from it. In my opinion when we love, we are able to see the most important question and base upon that or those to make decisions. The ones that have loved have supported and forgiven when they felt offended.

How can we walk this road any way? Some times we shall make assumptions, but most times we shall rely on how well we know where we want to go and why we want to go there. In my opinion, forming the mind about these first will go a long way when the other question is asked.

The wise old man was not talking of selfishness, but of being aware of whom we are and seeking that self definition first every time we want to walk this road. We are indeed powerful beyond measure and every time we encounter another life, we interact with a set of decisions, the free spirited have known where they want to go, and not many have enjoyed that liberty.

Stepping:

The art of crossing roads, especially the busy roads of our big cities relates very much with many aspects of life as many of us experience it. And perhaps we could do better in life if we did better at that road or at the point when we are crossing roads. There is a world of wealth embedded in a moment, in a decision made in the right moment.

The Road:

We know that roads lead to a particular destination or any varies number of them. As such when we meet people on a certain road we narrow our assumptions of where they may be going to those few where the road leads, but then there are roads that lead to other roads and because of that, they make it hard for us to ascertain exactly where the people we find on them may be going. Such is life, we all have to choose our roads, and we each need to know at what exact destination we shall have to arrive from the many that the road offers. But even better still, we need to allow ourselves to be open to the fact that the road we have led can as well lead us to many other places. We each have a choice, even when we find ourselves on a road we did not choose, we still can determine when to get off of it, or what other roads to join. The mistake is to assume that we are limited by our circumstances and there by cripple ourselves. The other mistake is to assume that since the road is already chosen for us, we are to go the whole mile to where it leads. Those are mistakes we can all avoid by just reviewing something we do always. We are never completely deprived of the freedom to choose.

The Broken Road:

This is very hard to travel by night and tedious by day. We try to think that after all we have a road and that is better than nothing but that is not the whole deal. Some of our decisions will find us broken, some times the destination we want to arrive to may be with no connection with where we stand today. At all times we shall have this road and we shall expect to get to the desired destination. Some give up, some endure the road, the fact that it slows them down and the fact that they may suffer some sort of pain. The heroes for me are the people that get the aspiration to make the road better, not just for themselves but for those that will come after them. These have encountered brokenness and the pain that comes with it, and still they remain, or even regain the energy to move forward and make better.

The Busy Road:

The road always clears. I was told by a wise friend of mine that the road no matter how busy will always clear and we all shall have a chance to cross over. Many will wait for the chance of clarity to visit while a minority will most likely force their way through, stealing moments of laziness on the side of the driver and taking advantage of the holes in the road to achieve their end. None of these is truly the better hero. To me, the ones that listen to their hearts, the people that know when to put themselves in trouble and when not to, are the ones that take the time to realise when there time is and then use the moment to benefit from it.

The Congestion:

Some times it seems like we have no where to place our feet, the people and the traffic are just too much. Then it occurs to some that instead of stepping in that heat and congestion, they would rather stay in the comfort of there homes. The truth is, we are all pilgrims, to a journey and until we step on the road, we shall never truly know which corners were worth it and which were not, we shall never discover what our journey was, and how many people had small destinations at the stretch of our hands, or sound of our voices. That is the road, it does not just lead to a destination, it leads to a journey and we are all being waited upon to step on the road to our journey. Only when we allow ourselves to be, shall we achieve this.

Reconciliation

Conflict (i.)

You are standing at the foot of a giant dark rock, thirsty and hurting. You remember that when you hit that rock once, it flows with dark water, salty too but at the same time, that water gives you the ability to live inside you, to live in the safety of your own self. The only reason it is dark is that the more you drink of it, the more closed in you become, and while you love being inside you, while you love hiding from everyone and things else, you are not sure you will enjoy being there for all eternity.

The temptation to partake of that spring is immense, you have stopped hating yourself for it, and frankly speaking you wish everyone would see you that way and that you would not have to explain every time you acted with in the best of your interest. This water gives you a special power to live in a place where you are neither interrupted nor demanded by any other being.

This is who you are when you hug and when you party, when you invite and when you respond to an invitation. Some would say you are selfish and others would say you are just self centred, but you will know that they are wrong. This is the only way you can truly evaluate what is important to you and when you are being real.

Conflict (ii)

You soon realise that across stands the same white rock with its sweet and clear water. You remember what it felt like to be able to want to have other people happy, to share all that you are with those others in the bid that you will perhaps make a difference in there lives. That is when it hits you that while you expected them to be transformed by your life, you expected very little from them and that was the limiting factor.

The desire to drink from its waters springs from a deeper inside of you; it almost makes you believe that you truly care about these people and their lives. That is such a sweet feeling.

Conflict (iii)

You are not sure which one of those rocks is your natural source of nourishment, which you are responding to because of cultural norms, and which attracts you because it identifies with you. You are asking questions and the answers, even though they are somewhere on the inside of you, are not forthcoming. Then you begin to realise the reality of the conflict, it’s not a question of what to do and what not to, it’s a question of who you are. The dark conceited individual or the bright joy giver. We have been offered many definitions of ourselves and still none definitely gives the answers that we can go to bed with and never question.

The Reconciliation;

Simply put blessed means that all things are going well with you and cursed means that all are going south. But is that true, is that how we feel, blessed in good and cursed in bad? I say that blessed is having the blessing and cursed is having the curse. The question then is what the curse is and what the blessing is. I say the blessing is having God in your life and the curse is having Him not.

The reality is that the spring is but a diversion, the real matter is who we really are and if we would love to continue that way. At the end of it all, we are to choose who we want to be and work towards being just that kind of person and that while we are at it, we shall take the time to weed all the pretence out and let those others whom we care about realise just who we are.

We are who we choose to be to other people but we are who we allow ourselves to be to ourselves, and therefore at the core of who we are. It follows therefore that the process of choosing should take second priority to the choice of allowing ourselves to be something. What we shall eventually choose to be to other people will depend on who we have allowed ourselves to be.

Traffic Jam:

There are days when we need an explanation as to why there are many cars on the roads and why they seem to be immobile.

Theory One:

The owners have returned from villages and the excitement to drive their cars has got a hold of them.

We all experience moments when everything seems to be out, out of line for us and no matter how much we try, we simply cannot push it through. During day light we fight with traffic that comes in against us, and when the night falls in, we fight the invisible traffic. Thoughts and memories, questions and experiences gone, the what should haves and what shouldn’t haves. When we look at where we are, the road is congested and we have no where to go even when we seem to have all it takes to get there, we are constrained by both what lies ahead of us and what lies before behind us.

Theory Two:

The people are scared of pre and post election violence so they run home quickly and then they all end up in one place.

Then we try to take initiative, we make a move to rid ourselves of this ugliness in which we find ourselves. We realise that we can do something and so we step out of line only to discover that many more have thought as we, they have set their hearts to doing something about it. The result, is a sort of new jam, we are not necessarily moving in the desired direction even when we thought that with our new move we would. We may console ourselves with the fact that we did something about our situation that we did not wait like everyone else, but then where did it lead us? Our fight for our rights, our endeavour to be the change and everything that we believed in, kept us in the same place if not worse.

Theory Three:

An important dignitary is visiting the country and all roads are blocked.

So, frustrated by everything, we decide to blame it on a matter beyond our control. We believe that in this case all we should do is wait till the higher power should help us move. In the meantime we can all wait in our cars and watch time pass by. Other people may at this point just go home and totally abandon the whole journey. Isn’t such the nature of life, we are baffled by something and we are not really to blame. We made the most perfect plan with the best of intentions and then look, some thing happened and we have nothing to do about it.

Theory Four:

We can take a walk to our destination and call a loved one to keep us company as we walk.

When you think about this, it’s not really a theory, it’s an option and we all have many of these. When we are surrounded by what has hindered us, we could chose to realise that we shall not arrive at the desired destination as and when we wanted, but that with us lies a solution that may seem slower under normal circumstances but fast enough, considering the prevailing ones.

The journey through life to the many desired destinations was not meant to be walked a lone. The challenge is to realise that we can have the wisdom to make slow but sure progress, to realise that many times the resources we need are the people we already have and that all it takes is calling them to your journey and the support needed is with us.

To have the wisdom to realise that it’s not only the first vow, but all the subsequent vows combined that will keep us committed to the journey we set out to. That we are never too weak to hold a moment if only we know exactly where we are going, and that attention is not held by beauty or strength but by presence, as the presence of a baby, so fragile and yet totally felt.

At the end of it, we shall realise that the fight for our rights, the excitement without reason and the party of pity with no analysis all fall short of both truth and wisdom and that God is both, to present our plans to Him, is to have both.

The Old Kiss

Stories are told of men that once walked long journeys of varied adventures and that the end of those adventures was not really victory but Love. It would shock many of us that the road to love was war, violent war. We are beings of varied writings, our best scriptures on in the hearts of men, lives. We embark on this journey with nothing but our hearts and limbs. The man that has learnt to see and hear with his heart has mastered living.

There will be days when the writing will be painful, moments when what we held and adored has turned against us, but when we have learnt to see and heart from the heart, we have taught ourselves to kiss both last and always. There is purity in the eye that loves certain gentleness in the hug of affection. It makes shame, necessary and without embarrassment.

This is living, to commit, to tell ourselves that there is a road worth embarking on and that even when our strength is weak and our focus is lost, we reserve ourselves for such a time when we shall rightly embark on that journey. When we start off on a task, when we start a new relationship, when we encourage a friendship or partnership to form, do we realise the amount of responsibility we heave upon ourselves, do we realise the beauty with which we cover ourselves, do we realise the beauty, the purity on the inside of us flowing to the outside?

I have learnt that when we make these new journeys we make very little notice of the fact that soon and almost always we shall be swayed away. We rarely realise that while standing here, the beauty with which we have covered ourselves requires us to look into the distant future and organise today to fit into not only that distant future, but even a desired distant future. We rarely realise that there will be days of great company, and many of thin loneliness and that in both days our character and quality will be both weighed and tested.

In our hands lies not the energy ,but its ability to hold today’s affairs and tomorrows ambitions. In our hearts lies the wisdom that the most valuable matters will be added to us in this course and that while we desire to be understood, we shall not always both by them and us. That each life is a measure of another, both its glory and imperfection should always serve to make us more forgiving and loving. We have seen that like time, life grows, and that as time has passed all its age into the objects it covers, life has transferred its responsibility to grow into us. We are the reason for a better life, and yet many times we chose worse. That while we have placed laws to protect unborn elephants, we need to have a bit of more regard for ourselves.

To the ones we have committed, we should make this journey a memorable one. If we ever find ourselves alone we should realise that we have left some cold and in need of our covering. And now as I conclude this I realise how random my thoughts have been today. In us lies all the world and the power to create it is at hand. We shall kiss life again, and life will kiss us back, we are the ones doing it for the first time, and my guess is that we better learn from the old kissing of life. To live perfectly is far from living without mistakes, it’s more to live while learning, to stay in will and purposes of God. The mistakes ought not to get to your hearts and when they do; we need to have them cleansed. That is not a natural act and the grace to have it done, is always at hand.