Unequal Lions But Equal Worms

Ha! My brother Zambo!

Someone, sometime, somewhere, once, inspirationally, wrote, ‘...all men are created equal...’

Isn’t that a great truth? Yes, it is! It is a truth that rolls off the tongue nicely, infused with noble thoughts; a truth that, intuitively, we know to be true since we would not like to be the unequal ones. Consequently, it is a truth that resonates within our hearts with tear-jerking, motivational notions; a truth that sinks deep into our souls and chastens us; a truth that we nod our heads to, realizing it to be irrefutable; a truth that is beautiful to behold...

...for a short while.

Alas! Though that someone said man was created equal, man does not get born equal nor does he live equal. Thus, it is a truth that is impractical as far as mankind is concerned. It is good only for spicing up the beautifully deceitful speeches of politicians and publicans and Pharisees with its judicious philosophy. It is a truth that gets written about in newspaper columns that people read and promptly forget. It is a truth that is championed by human rights organisations, big influential ones and ... small noise-making ones. It is good big business, that truth! Great for shouting out in crowds in the comfort and anonymity of a common cause but one that is best shoved aside, expediently, the moment we get to our private lives. It is a truth we really do not want to exercise because at the root of it all, it contradicts the visceral, practical rule of this World; survival of the fittest. It is a very inconvenient truth.

All men are created equal? Huh! That is for God only!

For us, you and me and them out there, all seven billion of us, Zambo, no two men are equal. How can we be? I am not equal to you, Zambo. You are my inferior! My wife is not equal to me; I am the head and she is the...uhm...tail. A tail is a tail; no one looks at it. On the other hand, a head is a head; everyone looks at it. But ... do I have it right? I see a lot of men (and envious women) looking at my wife while the women, much less the men, never look at me...

Ah! Never mind! You get my point. We are not equal. Not at all.

How can equality exist in the face of having and having not? When money is the language that the World understands and those that speak it are the ones who get served and those that fail to speak it are automatically disregarded? How can equality exist in the juxtaposition of the powerful and the powerless? When on one hand we have Kings and Queens, Presidents and Prime Ministers, CEOs and MDs, Generals and Commanders, Chiefs and Masters, tycoons and magnates and on the other hand we have indigents and paupers, gardeners and maids, tellers and receptionists, frontline soldiers and boot men, untouchables and outcasts, fake trinket vendors and banana hawkers? How can equality exist when all that our eyes see is what they see? When the wealth, the cars, the houses, the clothes, the gadgets or the absence of these and the presence of torn clothes, dirty shoes, bare feet and empty pockets form our judgements and prejudices?

How can equality exist in the face of fiery ambitious greed, self-absorbed conceit, haughty pride and debilitating racism? When our biases control us and our terror of not being affiliated to success, beauty and accomplishment rules us? How can equality exist when there are the beautiful and there are the ugly? When there are the perfumed and the stinking? When there are the boring (like you, Zambo) and the exciting (like me)? When there is Ronaldo and Messi and there is Zambo, who once tried to kick a rolling ball and missed three times eventually falling into a heap as the ball continued to roll happily away? Eish, my friend, you embarrassed me that day.

How can equality exist when one man sleeps on a bed that sucks them in and another sleeps on a mat that fights against their body, bruising their ribs? How can equality exist when we have these systems which divide us which we practice; class, race, status, caste, tribe, clan and nationality? How can equality exist when, in a queue, there are those that have come from electrified houses in sleek, air-conditioned cars and others that have come from mud thatched huts lighted by smelly paraffin lamps, on foot, shoes all dusty and worn out or on Humber bicycles with loose brakes? How can equality exist when one turns on a metal thing and safe chlorinated water gushes out and another wakes up at five in the morning to walk some miles to get a bucketful of untreated water?

How can equality exist when one man of one skin colour is shocked that another man of a different colour bleeds the same red colour of blood? Indeed, he is surprised that the other man has blood at all! Is the giver equal to the taker? Is the one who stomps this World with a sense of entitlement equal to the one who owns the state of need and desperation and destitution? Is the humble man equal to the proud man and can they be viewed equally by the World? If they were to enter a room and there were no free chairs, to whom would the World offer up its chair?

In short, Zambo, the king claims his throne and the pauper sits in the dust. That is the way of the World; it precludes equality. It always has, though we like to think not. The breast of man does a ying-yang on equality; accepting it with one hand full of hypocritical falseness and ashamedly rejecting it with the other, realising its inconvenience and problematic burden.

Equality does not exist. Or does it?

I had a dog, Zambo. I didn’t love the dog. Well, I did in the way Africans love their dogs, not like them western folks who show us what real dog love is. Never mind. He was my dog and he knew I was his master. I provided for him and he bit people for me. It was a mutually satisfying relationship, I believe. But his eleven years passed and he became old and one day, I noticed his belly had swollen. He started moving very slowly, so slowly that one afternoon, he failed to get out of the way of the car and I was obliged to run over his left hind leg. He yelped with pain and I yelped with fright. I apologized and chastised him and he nodded at me with the wisdom of Death coming and said it didn’t matter. Fortunately, he wasn’t very hurt but it was just another sign, indeed, that his days had run out.

Then one day he stopped eating and the following dawn, he lay down on a spot, an utterly unremarkable spot, and I found him still there at lunch time and at sunset. (Why he chose that spot, I do not know. But it was dreadfully sad to me that, that unexceptional spot was his last spot. I mean, die we must but can we not die in the most beautiful spots?) I knew then that this was it and that the night wouldn’t last. I came to him at around eight in the evening and stayed with him and watched him shudder his last breaths. I gazed, with sadness and horror, at him lying on his final inconspicuous spot above ground, yet oddly fascinated at his futile struggle to breathe. I saw in his fatigued eyes, eyes that had become mysteriously deep with unfathomable layers of dark wisdom, his fervent wish to still grasp at Life. But Life had become like a beautiful lady who has a foolish man in her claws of allure, enticing but ever elusive. Life for Spotty had become forever vague, ebbing away out of him with each convulsive exhale he took, speeding himself to nothingness. Would that he could hold his breath and not exhale! But exhale he must yet it was the exhales that took him closer and closer to the brink. A paradox, that one.

After watching him for some time, I couldn’t bear it any more. I said, ‘Spotty, I am going inside to philosophise about all this.’ And his trembling breath nodded, ‘Okay, master. I will be right here.’ And I philosophised about it all for the next two hours. After the two hours had elapsed, I went back outside, with my phone ready in hand. And sure enough, there I was calling the dog-dip guy. ‘Do you also dispose of dead pets?’

And the next morning, they came; two indifferent guys who uninterestedly knew they had come for a dead dog. They took a dirty abandoned sack that used to hold charcoal from the tool shed and expertly lifted up the late Spotty and proficiently placed him inside. Did they feel they were placing a result of time and a lifespan of memories into that cruel disagreeable sack? And that was the last I saw of my dog of eleven years with whom I had an understanding that he would scare the hide off people and I would supply him with bones and bits. One minute, his white and brown furry body, which I had seen for the past eleven years, was right there in front of me and the next he became something in a sack, a bundle that needed to be disposed of immediately before it became unpleasant and disgusting. Eleven years gone into the past and nevermore shall I ever set eyes on Spotty.

Before I continue, Zambo, let’s get this out of the way, lest you start thinking I am getting sentimental and soppy. Spotty was a dog and a dog is not a man. But here’s the thing.

As I looked at my dog of eleven years go through his scheduled exit from this world, I was horribly reminded of the ugliness of Death, the undignified nakedness of it. I was struck by the sheer absurdity of it, the shameful ineptitude of all living things against it. I saw what this horror called Death reduces Life to. Life succumbs to it like paper succumbs to the prick of a pen.

All living things know that the desire to live is the strongest instinct hard-wired into their fabric. I re-discover this, every time I have crazy nightmares of being chased by a hyena. Then, Usain Bolt cannot compete with me when my eagerness to live kicks in. Every living thing wants to live. Nothing wants to die. I find that, that is equality. Then there is no king, no pauper, no diva, no general, no banana hawker; all obey the commander hard-wired into us. All living things know this and never forget it. But ... man is different. He forgets. Maybe because he rarely gets the opportunity of discovering that he can run like Usain Bolt; that he can sweat and palpitate and tremble uncontrollably; that he can screamingly cry and embarrassingly spoil his underwear and whimper with terror. He forgets.

He places a veil over such thoughts and along the way, his tribe, his clothes, his food, his houses, his cars, his music, his skin, his face, his body, his accomplishments, his eloquence, his elegance, his teeth even, fool him into thinking he is not equal to anything else. Pride of Life, it is called, I think. It makes him think the World has never seen anything like him before. But the illusion shatters always ultimately when that thing that makes him equal to everyone surfaces in that final moment. Then he becomes keenly aware that it was always there in the background. He realises he is not special. He is just another unique bit of flesh and bone carrying Death. It comes, mocking him. It says, ‘So you thought you were special? That you were gold? Untarnishable? You were a lion. You chased gazelles and killed them. Now here I am. Where is your lion-ness? The gazelles you chased and made meals of, today you are equal to them!’ And it laughs! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! And it substitutes his Life by giving him Nothing. All living things get the Nothing in the end.

Life is fickle. Fragile. Flimsy. Delicate. Yes, Life is Everything but it yields so easily when Death comes and it is a wonder that the one thing that Life succumbs to is nothing in itself. You see, Death is Nothing; it is just the absence of Life. Think about it. Life is sound, sight, touch, taste, smell, thought, deed, word, love, hate, envy, affection, laughter, tears, pain, pleasure, Everything. All these submit when Death, which is the complete opposite, shows its nothingness. Death is no sound, no sight, no touch, no taste, no smell, no thought, no deed, no word, no love, no hate, no envy, no affection, no laughter, no tears, no pain, no pleasure, Nothing. Even the rotting that follows Death is not done by Death itself but by Life! How is it possible for Everything to be replaced by Nothing? It is absurd and puzzling. But there it is. It is how we all end up. The king and the pauper, the CEO and the teller, the lion and the gazelle. And all dead men do not know the value of their coffins, whether they be made of titanium and silk upholstery or pine planks with rusty nails.

Zambo, I remember one of the things you have relentlessly drummed into me. Some Teacher in your Bible said he pursued the world all his life, and that at a ripe old age, after becoming the richest man of his generation and marrying a mind boggling seven hundred women, (ooooh, I admire him!) he departed this World with none of it! He left it all behind and you can bet that none of the women were willing to depart with him! So naked he came from his mother’s womb and naked he departed (wrapped in grave clothes only, at least), and all the wealth he accumulated could do nothing for him. It disappeared back to the Earth from where he had gathered it. What makes us think it will be different for us?

This is what makes us equal; the inability to stay alive and arrest this thing called Death forever. Death insidiously begins ticking away, right at conception. By the time we are conscious of it, it has already had a head start, eating away at our lifespan. And though you may be a king in this world, Death is eating away at you just like it is eating away at the terrorist who is contemplating doing you harm, and at the woman who you secretly desire, and at the thief who will come one night to take what he wants, and at the banker who keeps your wealth. Death eats away our lifespans, all the time. And in that one respect, all men live equal.

Sigh! It is a terrible way to get equality in this World, Zambo. Terrible indeed. Not funny at all. I protest this to the powers that be. Of course, I do not want to be equal to you; I want to be equal to Them. But I will never be equal to Them, not in the way I want. But, at least, I am equal to Them knowing that Death is eating away at Them too. Of course, at me and you too! Sigh! Like I said, it is a terrible way to get equality.

All men are created equal. They are not born equal. They do not live equal. But they die equal! Sigh! Equality does exist.