Turns out “personalized news” isn’t good for democracy, our communities and our health. At all. Echo chambers hollow out the human mind and deprive us of one of our most treasured possessions- the ability to create a variety of thought, particularly original thought. If we all think alike, then after a while, we’ll only be recycling our old, stale ideas amongst ourselves, without even realizing that we’ve stopped thinking altogether.
Thinking ceases when the mind is unchallenged. Brain activity may be a sign of life, but it is hardly indubitable evidence of mental inventiveness and renewal. We’re quick to throw out stale food because we wisely deduce that it’s unconducive for good bodily health. If only we were this conscientious about discarding stale and moldy mental cuisine that can augur illness in the most malleable and impressionable part of the human person- our minds.
And this disease of a deadened mind can metastasize to the soul, whereby every waking thought is a selfish one, where the narcissists among us are counted as wise, and the greedy seen as smart role models. Nary a thought is proffered for others if it won’t garner us some equitable tangible material gain. Thus, we place our hearts and souls on the sales block, transacting them for the flimsiest gain, while professing ourselves to be clever.
People are never so deceived than when they’re wholly convinced of how infallibly clever they are.
We forget that our greatest thoughts and noblest acts are conceived when the object of our focus in not the self. Alas, our basest thoughts are often found when self is the center of our every endeavor and imagining. Then, we re-ingest what was regurgitated, because our unbothered minds lost the ability to distinguish one from the other.
And so, to rob us, the world hides the scheme of its robbery in the most obvious, yet least-detectable place: the self. They make everything about you, to make you feel “special”, albeit like the fattened calf just before it’s slaughtered. Tell them the world is all about them and you can rob them as easily as you please. Tell them everything must be sacrificed for them and they will sell themselves to you for pittance, and be none the wiser. Tell them “all for one, and one for one” is the newer, better motto. All is to be sacrificed for one, the same one whose every exhaustive thought is ever only on one, the one: self. Narcissism is the new virtue.
But a small heart makes for a small world.
Strip him dry by promising him all, all for him, aught for others. Occupy him with small thoughts of himself and his world will shrink in accordance with the shrinkage in his mind. And before long, he would have lost all, because he was lost himself. The weightiest part of him drowned in the shallowest water. No wonder our children are drowning in puddles of scanty waters, the roiling pungent sewage from a self-absorbed, self-exalting society.
So no, I want no uniformity of company or thought. I’d rather diversify my world, most of all, my thoughts. For as surely as I may loose my way from time to time, it’ll be easy to find my way if everything didn’t look, sound, taste or feel the same. How could I tell if I’m on mile one or mile ten thousand when all is same? Surely, men have perished from fewer ailments than when they mistake sameness for oneness. Oneness is unity, sameness is loss of humanity.
The eclecticism will help me point my way back, may be not necessarily to the old and familiar yesterday, but to a new, uncertain, and unsettling tomorrow. I’ll take it. Gladly. For as good as yesterday might have been, I’d rather wager for an even better tomorrow. Nothing is ever as good as it could ever possibly be, hence my wager. I’d rather be the brave, starry-eyed adventurer who sought new worlds and found none, than the fearful fragile fool who stayed home, and is guaranteed to discover nothing.
Turns out, we’re called to be different, but to find our collective homogeneity in the person of our Creator. That is the only place where it is safe to be homogeneous.
Africa’s leaders do not lack knowledge, or money, or technology, or the people with the right skills. What they lack is even the smallest compassion and love for their people.
All the money, all the knowledge, and all the technology in the world will not build Africa. People will. People who care, and leaders who love their people will do in a short time, what their predecessors haven’t seemed to be able to do for decades. And we must start by building the people, for humans are the most crucial building block in our societies.
If you are not building people, you are not building anything!
Any edifice built on anything less than on people, will crumble. Humans are the most enduring materials in existence. Invest in a human, and you’ve made the most profitable and sensible investment possible. People are your safest bet. But fools discard and destroy people, only to eventually bankrupt themselves, their organizations, and nations in the long run. Love comes first. Love is first and last. Love will not just build, it will nurture and sustain. Love is what is going to make any edifice last, whether it’s a marriage, a family, an institution, or a nation. Knowledge and skill are commendable and invaluable. But love is above them all, for where love is, we can build and craft something workable, even with the rudimentary skills we have. But where love and care are absent, nothing good grows, nothing worthwhile is created, regardless of how smart, talented, knowledgeable, or even how wise the people are.
Give me love and I’ll give you the world!
Love lends us courage to face the giant on behalf of the people. Love is the caring shepherd that protects the sheep from the wolves. Love is the slave mother who dares to stand up to the king than let anything happen to her precious child. Love will make the untrained pauper braver than the five-star general who has no love for his battalion.
This article is not a feel-good piece that we can forget as soon as we are done reading it. No. It is meant to be a hard-hitting piece, comparable to any such piece you’ve ever read. I know, I didn’t include any fancy graphs or impressive statistics from the foremost educational institutions or experts du jour. What I have is the truth, and any heart that is tired of being lied to and misled, a soul that is truly hungry for the saving truth, will recognize the value of this article. Any worthwhile thing that we do in this life starts from the heart; if we don’t care enough, we won’t lift a finger, no matter how large or small the problem is, or how great or small our resources are. Other resources can run out or become obsolete. Love never runs out, and love will always remain a vital and inestimable currency. Whatever country or era you live in, love is always going to be needed. And this is true for man or beast.
If we are truly tired of talking about the issues and want to change things for the better, we must start selecting leaders who truly care, not the flashy ones who tell us what we want to hear, and then leave us worse off than we were before our encounter with them. This is true for individuals in a relationship, or for an electorate seeking to elect a new leader. If love doesn’t lead us, we’re all lost. Love is the way, the only way. Love lends us courage and enables us to do things that our normal selfish human nature would hinder us from doing. When we love, we operate in the best mental and spiritual state. We are at our best when we walk in love, for when we love, we are being godlike, for God is love. And we can build everything anew- our marriages, friendships, careers, communities, and even nations- when we love and care for each other.
Love will unleash the best in all of us, for the betterment of all of us. Love is our saving grace. Love ennobles us.
Love makes us immortal, for immortality lives in the hearts and souls of men. Therefore, with love, let us build one another.
You are never more lost than when you are running from yourself. You will never wear another man’s face, and yet know your own. Your heart cannot despise you yet love you at the same time.
Know you. Accept you. Love yourself, strengths, flaws, warts, and all. Then you can show up right in the world and do the amazing things that you’ve been called to do.
God created you in His image. Being the apex of creation, you too will, and must create your world after your own image. If you do not embrace your image, and yourself, how can you create anything worthwhile? How’s that even impossible? It’ll be like a nonpregnant chicken trying to give birth to a goat. She’s trying to accomplish two immutable impossibilities: bring forth from nothing, and bring forth a kind that’s different and apart from herself. Impossible!
If you don’t like who you are, that’s isn’t the end of the world! There’s a cure for that! Learn, grow, change, be better, and do better! Thankfully this is entirely possible! Humans, we are nothing if not a learning and growing species! Think of the way in which we arrive in this world as helpless, clueless babies, and how we grow and change the world.
Any perceived weaknesses in you is simply an invitation to be better, to push and attain a better you. It isn’t a death sentence. Nothing is more attractive and inspiring as a person who works to improve themselves. I think it’s almost godlike!
So here’s to you. To you being fully you. To examining yourself and doing an honest stocking-taking. To you loving yourself, to you fully embracing yourself, to you having the courage to change that which needs changing, to you shining brightly in the full plumage of your glory as you were meant to.
Here’s to you, my dear friend. All my love and best wishes, always.
