WHO ARE YOU?
Some weeks ago, on my way to fill my gas cylinder with gas, I came across a passenger and a bikeman having an argument. It seemed the passenger had told the bikeman that he would pay a certain amount of money to be carried to the express way but the bikeman, it seemed, had not heard him correctly.
As I walked passed the arguing men, the passenger said something that stuck me. He asked the bikeman;
"Do you know who I am?"
The question made me stop to take a look at him.
It was not the first time I am hearing those words. They are quite popular around my community. It is the pompous stupidity that lie behind those words that made me stop and stare. Anyways, I moved on and let it slip my mind.
Today, as I pored through different posts, as is my norm, I came across two that, though dissimilar in content, actually spoke of the same thing; the illusion of freedom that we have, that we are in charge of how our lives turn out, and I remembered the above incident and I wondered.
There are men who see another man and say to them;
Do you know who I am? Do you know who my father is? Do you know the people I know? One call from me and you will get locked up forever. Do you know the people I mingle with on a daily basis, the men of timbre and caliber on my speed dial? Do you know how many people call me boss? I can make you lose your job with just a word.
Have you ever been to the government house? I go there for lunch anytime I feel like it. I have the governor’s personal line. How many millionaires do you know? Can you raise ten million naira with just one call? Look at this broke rat. You who have not eaten a good meal in weeks; you dare to open your mouth to talk to me? Don’t! Don’t stain me with your smelly saliva, with your dirty hands. Look at his shifty eyes.
I have heard girls say;
What has this world become? You looked at me, me, as beautiful and classy as I am, and you open that gutter mouth of yours to tell me that you love me, you want to marry me. You are not afraid? How much is your salary? Do you even have a job? When did you last had a bath or brush your teeth? Look at this thing, look at this microbe! I have indeed suffered. I do not blame you. If not for my father who asked me to return to this godforsaken country, I won’t see this rubbish.
But my friend, I ask you now;
who are you? If we remove all the gold, the elocution, the perfume and the sparkle, is it not then that we will see you? Is it not then that you will truly step into the light for us to see? And then when all the covering is gone, who do you become? Without the wealth, the accent, the clothes, who are you?
Are you not mud like us, rubbing dust into your towel every time you clean up? Do you not hunger for food like us and thirst for water too? Are you not going to die and become food for worms like us? So why do you ask if we know who you are?
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You call us names as if you were an angel or saintfallen from heaven but you are not. You act as if you were free and we are in chains. You speak as if your lips were made of light but it is just blood, mud and saliva like ours. Do you not fart when no one is watching? Do you not groan sometimes in the toilet, when you have had something that did not agree with your stomach like we sometimes do? So why do you ask us if we know who you are?
When did you become this broken? When did you start ascribing value to humanity in terms of wealth, in terms of worth? When did being rich or powerful become the only synonym of success or of a life well lived? What happened to love and charity, to knowledge, to experiencing life in one’s own terms?
You have forgotten how to live life. You have turned a journey into a battle, an experience into a contest. You have turned a paradise into a prison and you are your own goaler. You have forgotten who you are. The animals in the forests,they still remember the face of their fathers, let us borrow an analogy from The Gunslinger, the classic novel by Stephen King.
You have forgotten what it means to be alive; the beauty, the enjoyment, the satisfaction. You have become sick with the poison of gold, narcissism, pride and power. Like Gollum, like Saruman, like Bilbo Baggins, you have let wealth poison your spirits and now you see nothing except ashes if you do not have it. Is that not enslavement?
You brag and strut about with the fever of money in your pockets and you forget that life is not a stop but a pause if which,
you do not know what is on the next turn. You forget that you were made to tarnish, to fade, to end.
Whatever freedom that you have is an illusion. You are a slave to something, to everything. Your wealth is your master, all else, why call on it to defend your person? Your beauty, your pedigree, your scholastic excellence are a crutch which you lean on and without it you are nothing, right?
Because you depend on these things to give your life meaning, to give you respect or fear, you have chained yourself, yet you prance and prattle in your chains.
Who are you? When you are alone with your thoughts, when there is no one to impress with all that you have amassed, who do you become? Do you carry your true face about or do you hide or have you forgotten who you are? Who are you?
When you take off your clothes and jewelry, when you lose the accent and speak to yourself in your mother tongue, who are you then? What do you become?
Is it your wealth that defines you? If the wealth is stripped from you today, what will be left? If you lose the knowledge you acquired through learning today, what will be left? Are you just a shiny piece of rock or are you dust waiting to be watered and moulded into something beautiful?
For I tell you, all is nothing at the end of the day. Death does not care about your pedigree, time does not care about your ancestry, the fates do not want to know about your deep pockets. In the grand scheme of things, those things that truly matter, that truly make life beautiful and grand cost nothing. But because you have forgotten who you are, you do not know this, so you think life has a price and you can pay it, and in the paying, you enslave yourself.
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I am the eyes that witness the birth of the sun,
And the lips that sings the moon to sleep.
I am the hands that cradles the hungry chick
And feeds the earth with seeds of huge trees.
I am the old man at the corner,
With a begging bowl, a smile and a blessing.
I am the weary woman at the market,
Peeling plantain to roast to feed all of us.
I am human, I am the world
In the paused breath of the newborn morning.
I am everything that is true in this world.
The question is who are you?
You can aspire to greatness. You can leave the value you have placed on material things behind and look within you to find a better version of yourself. You could be free if you want but you don't want to be free do you? You have stayed a prisoner for too long that it is now beginning to feel like home.
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All of the division is just a distraction from the fact that we are all the same deep down.
No matter how different we wish to be.
Yes... @kryptik. We tend to forget that, in all the glitter we cover ourselves with.
what good content, I entertained reading.