The common denominator

Make no mistake, I am the common denominator among my people. That is the identity I am built of, and I could not have qualified to use the tense, “my people” if I did not embody the sum total of what identifies them. They are everything I am and I am everything they are.   If […]

Make no mistake, I am the common denominator among my people. That is the identity I am built of, and I could not have qualified to use the tense, “my people” if I did not embody the sum total of what identifies them. They are everything I am and I am everything they are.  

If anyone that shares any of the identities I profess is ever guilty of any excess, in the demographic partition the offence took place, I also stand likewise convicted. I do this sometimes, but the fact that I pontificate on matters is a product of the kind of holier-than-thou/wiser-than-thou sanctimony that disqualifies me as a hypocrite – but because that is the image I want to see myself take, what I want for myself and thus want you to help me become just that. Do you know what? If you are that or become just that, then you would have enabled and encouraged me… and if that is the case for me it is also likely the case for others. Eventually, a critical mass that will obligate me to be that will be flipped and it will not only be a matter of principle for me to be that but will be an actual necessity.  

What I ask for is your suffrage, for I know that I cannot do it without you as easily, thus the self-serving sanctimony. I want to be rational about this… so with apologies to Ghandi, I must declare that I cannot be the change I want to see in this world. Well, I can, but only to the extent that others come with me on that journey. Human beings have a consciousness is much more easily programmed collectively… so it takes great discipline of spirit for one to go it alone. I have no illusions that I have what it takes.  

You see, everyone is such a great good person until you got to know them, until you get a good look up close. That is why they admonish you against getting close to even that human that is no less your hero. Because you will be massacred by a rude reality check – and that compromises the last flame of innocence in your humanity.  

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My go-to solace in the Qur’an, where I go to hide from that dark void of human helplessness, that frightful darkness of the human condition, whenever I contemplate the hair tingling dungeon I must survive to be able to go home to my mother is the last part of the last passage of “The House of Imran”. Here is how I read it: My Lord, do hold me not liable when I err by omission or by commission. Do not hold against me the strictures you held those long before me up to. My Lord, do not hold against me that which you have not provisioned me against. And suffer me. And forgive. And have mercy on because you are my solacer, my existential benefactor. Then redeem me from the darkness of my kind.  

For me, that is an escape as potent as death must be to an exile of Eden called back home. When I recite it in my head, and then hum it and live in it over and over until it is alive – I am overwhelmed by cathartic absolution. Cleansed of bitter mire, the sins that assail my conscience and deny me joy, I am home.  

This is where it gets dicey. Do you know what? A part of me reckons that my Lord made His vicegerent, His right hand on earth and the supplicative deference of the last part of the last passage of the House of Imran is by deductive implication addressed to me. A lost soul at my window, weeping for my kindness, and my forgiveness and my mercy. But unlike my infallible Master, the Almighty King I represent on earth, I know what that feels like – I know why this caged bird sings.  

The soul of a human being is caged from transcendence, and it is shamed over and over and over again everyday by the smallness of the human heart, its hatred, its fears, its innate carnal perversions as exiled specimen of a paradise lost. I know what that is, and I know that shame because I have felt it and will almost certainly be on its receiving end again today, tomorrow or before the light of my days fizzles out. 

But did I not accept the embassy of God for being born? Well I did. In full command of my faculties, without or let any duress. I did that even though the mountains cowered before the gravity of this embassy. I stepped up, now I must walk that talk. My Mallam told me this, but I taught myself the auxiliaries. And now, I think I see what that means. What my responsibilities are, Who’s will I have indentured my to. But I stand to be corrected. Because I am just human. 

Add that to the spirit of solidarity and obligation that catches fire in the presence of that fuel, it becomes a mere instinct extending the hand of unconditional fellowship you feel when accosted and reminded of this existential handicap in a fellow man, that of being in the same boat. There is no length I will not go. To forgive. To heal both myself and he who wronged me.  

If I am not guilty of the crime I charge you for, it is because I have not been caught. My humanity will one day be caught so long as I remain this human. If something can go wrong, it will. If you are human, a whole mess of crap can go so wrong – and just by the singular virtue of this humanity. So it will.  

If I am the convict when I convict you, I am also an ambassador of the Ultimate Master. But so are you. THAT now becomes our common denominator. So, take pity on and be kind to me, be kind to me in lenience, and be kind to me in clemency. Be my strength, and be my help in this war for my soul.