Empathy

A sense of empathy is something that I find myself appreciating more and more as I get older. It is at the heart of my moral code, and it is how I understand the Golden Rule - not simply as a call to sympathy or charity, but as something more demanding, a call to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes.
I disdain any kind of cruelty or thoughtlessness or abuse of power, whether it'd be expressed in the form of social stratification, tribalism, religious extremism or even racism. I wonder how many of us care about the feelings of others, how many of us look in the mirror and ask ourselves, "How would that make me feel?"
It's not a question we ask ourselves enough, I think; as a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit. The government wouldn't tolerate schools that lack the prerequisites and the facilities to compare favourably to what is obtainable in the Western world, that are chronically underfunded, understaffed and uninspired, if they thought that the students in them were like their own children. It's hard to imagine the CEO of a company giving himself a multi-million naira bonus while cutting salary bonus and health care coverage for his workers if he thought they were in some sense his equals. And it is safe to assume that those in power would think longer and harder about launching political attacks if they envisioned their own sons and daughters in harm's way.
I often wonder what makes it so difficult for our politicians to talk about values in ways that don't appear calculated or phony. Perhaps this explains why we long for that elusive quality in our leaders - the quality of authenticity, of being who you say you are, of possessing a truthfulness that goes beyond words. Leaders who lived out their values, honest, and that they stood up for what they believed in, and perhaps most of all that they cared about us and what we are going through. That, my friends, is what I know we all crave for.
Maybe, just maybe I'm asking for too much. All in due time, all in due time.

Power and Guilt

POWER - The word is fixed in my mind like a poisoned chalice. Down here, power is undisguised, indiscriminate, naked, and always fresh in the memory.

Every corner I turn, I see the blatant display of power. It had taken me and yanked me backed into line just when I thought I'd escaped, making me feel its weight - like I've never felt, letting me know that my life isn't really mine.

That's how things are down here; you can't change it, you can just live by the rules (just as everyone around here does), so simple once you learned them.

So I have made my peace with power, learned the wisdom of forgetting, and never attempting to revisit or reminisce.

GUILT - On the other hand is a luxury only the 'poor' can afford, the knowledge that things are not just right, the reality of what it is like to lose almost everything, the awkward feeling of waking up to the creaking of your bones and the twitching of your nerves, and to go to bed later without promises for tomorrow. A regular cycle of uninspiring events, a shallow life of unfulfilled promises.

Better not to think about it. Better to be strong. If you can't be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who's strong.

But always better to be strong yourself. Always.