I welcome every day as the dawn of new
opportunities: new opportunities for self-advancement, self-appraisal, and to
reveal my innermost self unto my conscience.
Most importantly, a new opportunity to win the raging war against
passing judgement on the weak without trial. But even as I march forward in valour to
conquer this hydra-headed monster, the end is not in sight. The horizon is
indifferent and leaves me expressionless. And with the turn of every moment,
the trials are repeated and the weak are forged a new identity and destiny.
I remember my resolve to win with dramatic
finality, but in truth, I always end up adorned with that same garb of a
witness till the cock crows its’ third. I was fed from the cradle with the
litany of the evil of what the weak do wrong and why I should be strong. The strong whose beacon of strength is the eyes that
shut back tears even when they stand at their mother’s interment. It initiates me
into that old order of the strong whose birth-right is to judge the weak;
giving me the opportunity to judge he who cries for a lost fortune as a
weakling.
And for those who agitate for equal rights
and justice, I'm supposed to look them in the face and ask what happened to that saying that ‘all
animals are equal but some are more equal than the others.’ But then, there are
those whose right to judge the weak starts from my position of strength because
unlike me with but a fistful of Naira, they possess the power to say who lives
and who dies.
Then I ask myself "am I justified by
my awareness or should there be more concerted and sustained efforts to chart a
new route to my destination?" My destination, I am no longer too sure of,
but for certain and as judged by the higher and mightier, my strength
transmutes to weakness. And in my desperate grasp for self-assurance, I
condescend to calling others weak.
Maybe it soothes my ego: Maybe it makes me
feel free and better, but when the darkness of the night heeds the voice of morning, I
am once again faced with the opportunities that lie ahead. Hence I welcome
every morning as the dawn of new opportunities; to look into my
crystal ball with a view to influencing my perspective but all is futility.
Yes, I know and know very well that in
vanity, no one gains but everyone loses. On the altar of choice, a sacrifice
has to be made and if truth be told, my opaque or clear decision lies in my
innermost desire of what is to be perceived of the respected and revered strong
or the despised and down-trodden weak.
In the onward motion of irreversible
succession of days, I am time after time confronted with what choices I make of
my opportunities. Do I speak of equity when it is an entrenched worldview that
the weak do not dictate the pace of anything worthwhile or otherwise? He has
the right and wants to be heard but who wants to listen to the weak? And when again
the key of opportunity opens the door of my conscience, my strength is called
to question.
Is my strength strong enough to accept the
fact that my weakness is triumphant in my intra-personal war of what I make of
my daily opportunities? “Judge not and you shall not be judged,” but since I
cannot be the object of my self-advancement, my sin is not just that of a
witness but being adorned with the garb of a judge of the weak. Otherwise, how
would I know that I have arrived and how would they know that they are the
weak. Yet in my confusion, I still resolve to not judge.
I am man.
