If your dad had a farm and worked
hard in his youth and planted many crops, and no calamities came to him or his
farm, you would grow up with a full belly.
If my dad had a farm and didn't
work hard, or fulani herdsmen destroyed everythin' on it, I would grow up
hungry.
Either way, you and I didn't earn
our beginnings. You didn't earn a successful father any more than I earned an
unsuccessful one. We were fated to them.
You, the well fed child, would be
strong and perhaps with enough leisure time to develop other skills, ones that
make you competitive. You would assume your childhood is what all childhood is
like.
I on the other hand would be
frail and lookin' for food. My dad may be frail too. I may have to look after
him. I may be hardened by the meanness of my fate. I may distrust and therefore
refuse to develop any skills.
You may meet me on the playground
(though unlikely because we wouldn't go to the same school) and ask why my
clothes are dirty. I would be ashamed. You may be kind and successful. I would
most likely be hard and sad. Both are a self-affirmin' spiral.
Now imagine this cycle over ten
generations. It just repeats itself.
There is a paradox in our
thinking: to believe that the efforts or misfortunes of our parents greatly
determine our lives (this is logically true), while simultaneously believin'
that we come into life on equal footin' and that our successes are ours to
boast about.
This seems responsible for the
tension in the air. The sins and efforts of the father, the abuse and wealth
and crookedness and goodness, all commingled into history. We wake up into life
profitin' by, or disadvantaged by, the events of our ancestors. We're proud of
some of the things, we ignore others. We stand on the shoulders of great humans
and the backs of the enslaved or cheated and yet, here we are, responsible for
our own lives, takin' credit for our hard work and our careers, blamin' the
junky for his weakness, praisin' the entrepreneur for his work ethic. Ignorin'
the puppeteer of history and consequence.
You see, someone once said: when
you are born, you look like your parents. When you are old, you really only
look like your decisions. Make the right decisions if you wanna bloom.