The Three Things That Belong to Man

Sizenjani!

I am thinking. Are the adjectives horrible and terrifying able to convey the most gruesome kind of things that Man does to his fellow Man in this World? How about monstrous, ghastly, scary, horrid, shocking? I say, brain matter and blood are not meant to be seen. If you see them, something is wrong. And these are the adjectives you would be at pains to use to describe the spine-chilling things we do to each other.

Sizenjani, picture a killing. Now, picture a man recording it. It is daylight; looks like mid-day. The man is speaking some ominous words, weighted with dangerous threat. We don’t see him but he speaks with pride and ease, without remorse and not the least shred of compassionate pity. He warns that such a killing awaits anyone who disagrees with his kind and dares to support the enemy. He advises all people not to be unwise and to make the right choice. His camera is panning over a nondescript part of a road. It pans over soldiers walking by, with deadly guns in their arms. It pans over a grey Nissan pickup riddled with bullet holes, tyres flat, windows shattered.  It pans over a fallen bicycle with a load that looks like a rolled-up mattress still tied to its carrier. It pans over the soldiers’ cars as they edge past the carnage in the middle of the road. And all the while, bodies are strewn about, haplessly lying however they fell in the last throes of Life. Rivulets of congealed dark red blood from head shots and deep gushes streak the asphalt surface into the grass on either side of the road. Several bodies’ heads are severely smashed, their brain matter scattered about. A baby cries in the background, not seen by the camera. And the narrator keeps reiterating how comfortable he and his comrades are to take Life in such a manner. He says they will kill like this and eat food with a happy, clear heart.

Oh, my heart, Sizenjani! We are horrible indeed. Are we worthy of this World? Such a beautiful World made for us, and what do we do in it? Such things…

To think, those bodies were once people who smiled and gossiped and greeted neighbours and cheated on their spouses… or not… as the case may be. They look to have been all men; sons, brothers, boyfriends, husbands or fathers. Now they are gruesome remnants lying grotesquely on a nondescript part of a road in some part of the Earth. Corpses, that is what we call lifeless people. What a horrible word, corpses.

They may feel justified in what they did, those soldiers. Indeed, it could be that some of those killed were not angels. I don’t know. I just feel shivers when I remember what I watched. Surely, it is just plain counterproductive, is it not? 

Look down the lane of our imperfect remembrance of History. The killing I have described is a miniscule drop in an entire ocean of horrendous acts by Man against Man. It is true, Sizenjani. Violence begets violence, and there’s no end to it. Violence may seem like a solution that can achieve an equilibrium we desire; a satisfying shut up to stupid people; an expeditious way to grab what we do not have; a just eye for an eye to a rapist or thief or murderer; a corporate solution to conquest and dominion. But whatever violent solution you think you may have, down the lane of Memory and Emotion in our twisted sinful selves, a violent reaction awaits which will beget another violence begets violence. It may take generations and may come in a very different context, but it will erupt. Now, in the cycle of violence, who is the perpetrator and who is the victim? The line between the two is very thin, is it not? Very porous, I say. One generation, you are victims. Seven generations later, you are perpetrators. Who is right?

Sigh!

But let’s think about it all, Sizenjani. Why are we fighting and killing each other so horribly? Why? Over what? The land? The air? The water? The soil? Women? Do they belong to us? Don’t they belong to the Creator? Has He not just lent them to us to use during the seventy years on Earth He has gifted us? Really, Sizenjani, can Man point at anything in the World and say, ‘This is mine?’ I have come to see clearly that I can claim nothing in this World. I wish I could, but. . .nothing belongs to me. Look, I had a head full of hair in my bouncy youth; now, see my hairless head. Did I get to keep any of it when it rejected me one by one? Look at the food I eat and the drink I swallow. After some time, they all eject out of me. The fingernails that grow out of me, break off of me. Where do they all go? Back where they belong: Earth, which belongs to the Creator!

As for the things that I acquire, much less be said about that. If I cannot keep the things that emanate in and on my body, what more the things that accumulate to me outside my body? Job, the patriarch, said it well. Naked he came, naked he went!

Yes, in this entire World, there’s nothing that belongs to me. Nothing. Or… is there?

Late one seventh night, I woke up with a sudden revelation that there are three things that belong to me and will belong to me for all eternity: my thoughts, my words and my deeds. I saw that God has given me these three things 100% ownership, title deed and all. I am to use everything else, which He has lent me, to create these things for myself. So I do, for better or worse. And once I create them, I cannot disclaim them, I cannot sell them, I cannot gift them away. Irrevocably, they are mine for all Time printed in Space and Matter.

And the same goes for all mankind, does it not?

So I ask you again, Sizenjani. Why are we doing evil, terrifying things to each other? What is the purpose? Do we want to own such things? Why don’t we realize that owning thoughts, words and deeds that are the opposite might just be our wisest act in this short Life?

Sigh! 

Sizenjani, I bleed for us. Such a loving God that I know. He loves these guys who expose brain matter and blood and laugh as they record it all. Does He not still cause His suns to rise and shine on them and His winds to gladden their bodies as they go about raping and pillaging villages in the countryside? Does He not still decorate this World with this wonderous, calming beauty we see in the trees and beasts around us? Does He not still command His rains to fall on the ground, and out of this mushy substance we call soil, miraculously, food grows for them? The next meal that they eat, with such vehement gusto, after the exhilaration of bashing in heads and riddling people with bullets, comes from His bounty! Such a loving God.

But, Sizenjani, remember! When He created this World, such acts were not meant to be. Remember also that He is also the Creator of Justice. When Man has finished creating the three things that belong to him, thoughts, words and deeds, God’s clock will wind down and He will call for an accounting from Man.

Well, enough said, Sizenjani. I judge not what Man does to his fellow Man. After all, I have my own darkness, don’t I? I have my own thoughts, words and deeds that I should take inventory of and consider what to say to Him when He asks me,

‘My child, why do you own these?’