KJ

Everything comes to an end, eventually.

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Empires, big and small have come and gone; The Holy Roman Empire, The Vast Ottoman Empire and even the Great British Empire are all but done and dusted. A figment of the past. Sheer memory, a distant one even. At their peak, they seemed invisible. Vast and powerful, they seemed destined to last forever. Well they didn’t, they weren’t meant to. Everything comes to an end, as they should. Where there is life, there shall be death. I don’t know what it is you are going through in your life right now, whatever it is, it shall come to pass. It might not seem so now, be patient.

The brother you love so much, the wife you think you can’t do without and the friend(s) you’ve known for years, it’s all temporary.

Relationships, friendships and families come and go. Most while we watch. The love will fade, wounds will heal, we’ll adjust to our sorrows and accept our losses. Heartbreaks too will come and go, don’t you scare us with heartbreaks. Again, it might not seem so now, be patient. The world has seen great families; like Julio-Claudian dynasty and The House of Medici; love stories that span seas and oceans like that of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony or Romeo and Juliet; great friendships like that of Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla. Relationships, friendships and families that changed the world. All came and went. The brother you love so much, the wife you think you can’t do without and the friend(s) you’ve known for years, it’s all temporary. Their time will come. Everything is for the moment. Just for now.

We’ve grown so cheap that we think a bigger TV means we are more blessed ?

Wealth comes and goes. Don’t let it, or lack of, define you. Rich men like Mansa Musa who owned vast mines of Gold died. Poor men, like my forefathers, came and went. My favourite book in the Bible, Ecclesiastes, says “all is utter meaningless.. a chase after the wind.” No matter how many zeros you have in your account, they will drain or worse you’ll die and live them behind. To die rich at old age is one of the most stupidest things, we’ll need a new article for that. And your car, no matter how expensive it is, one day it will rot. In the world today, you are defined by what you have or lack. We’ve grown so cheap that we think a bigger TV means we are more blessed ?.

Our identity has been narrowed to what somebody does. The first question people will ask you is what you do. So they can rank you. Use it as a guide on how they should treat you as though anything is permanent. Throughout history, great men and women have walked the face of this earth. Men of valor, like Napoleon Bonaparte; great poets like William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon; wise men like Marcus Aurelius; good women like Mother Teresa including Tyrants like Adolf Hitler and Amin Dada were once a reality. My people have a song they sing in funerals that says, we are but guests on earth, and when the time comes, we’ll leave for the heavens. Like these great men and women, nothing and no one is permanent, stop acting like anything or anyone is.

A lesson that even though all are temporary, some are priceless

This article is not a history lesson, it’s a life lesson. It is a lesson that we shouldn’t take anything seriously. A lesson that eventually we lose it all. EVERYTHING. It’s not meant to make you sad or feel defeated, it is a call to live life fully. To love fearlessly. To laugh out loudly, lol. To value our friends while we still have them and thank our parents while they are still alive. To have sex. Lots of it, while we still can. It’s a call to place value where there is real value. A lesson that even though all are temporary, some are priceless. Like the smile of your baby, the hug from your husband or the prayers from your mother. When we accept our mortality, when it doesn’t scare us anymore, that’s when we start living. When we learn that the opinions of others are temporary and won’t kill us, when we learn that people are more than what they own or lack, when we learn that there were people before us and there will be people after us, we are being liberated. That’s the point, liberation.

About the author

Ken Juma

Thinker of thoughts, lover of life.. and death too.

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By Ken Juma
KJ

Ken Juma

Thinker of thoughts, lover of life.. and death too.

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