Time Is Fleeting

Mother Earth Is An Old Lady
Sometimes I get lost in the ever present nature of nature, the land, the water bodies, the trees, the pathways walked by people from the past. These things are eternal, some of them, like the trees and the water bodies were here before we came and they are gonna be here after we are gone.

I look around and I imagine people in the past, centuries before us who must have walked the same tiny pathways we currently walk, who must have gone to the streams we currently go to and who must have plucked fruits from the same trees we are currently plucking fruits from, and it hit me that in about 100 years time, there would be people who'd think this same thought after we are gone. It is all profound and can be an overwhelming feeling.

I went to my village few months ago and I had a quiet moment at the place where my grandfather's house used to stand. There's nothing there now, just patches of red mud here and there to signal where the house used to be. Then I was pointed to where my grandmother's house used to stand too, no longer there as well.

An uncle of mine was narrating an event he witnessed as a child and as he was pointing at the exact spot it happened, I felt chills on my body. Like, all those happened back then right there on that spot? The spot is still there, but the people that created memories on that spot no longer exist.

Make Your Mark On The Earth
Time is fleeting. My grandfather was my age one time, active and boisterous, I thought to myself, now he's no longer here. I didn't even meet him. My father, was also my age not long ago, now, he's no longer here, this would be the case for me too someday, yet, our environment persists, eternal.

The Iroko trees are still here, the streams are still here, the land and some of the old pathways are still here, because people keep walking through them. The lands are still here, while different houses rise and fall like empires upon them over multiple generations.

Human beings are the beauty of life, according to the Igbo translation of "human being" MMA - NDU. We are the beauty of life. Through our active living, lands and streams and trees and places come to have names, stories and legends attached to them. We become flavour upon the earth, a beautification upon an otherwise dormant surface.

But, are you contributing to this? Whats your role? What would you be remember for? Would you be remembered at all? Would there be story told about a piece of land, a tree or a stream in your name?