No one is born without a purpose; nothing comes to being for nothing. Everything is incorporated in the eternal plan of the creator. Dynamism reigns; an infant grows to adulthood. One small phenomenon multiplies into milliards of events. A man is born unintentionally and insignificantly and yet through growth reaches the right stage to duplicate through the siblings who in turn follow suit to take up the banners that they received from their ancestors to make history and the process goes on and on.
Time factor counts; seconds hasten to a minute, minutes to an hour and hours to a day, days to a month and months to a year and so on; and the time that proceeds to posterities is nonstop as long as man exists on our planet. That is the truth taken for granted; it goes without saying. How lowly the origin of the person may seem to be, how long ago he/she lived, that happening deserves the due notice.
In principle, inhabitants of a country produce off-springs. The off springs of different parents genuinely relate to one another without any sense of partiality due to their innocence. They share common values and languages spoken in their area without being much concerned about their origins. Their parents might favor a certain values of life and language, perhaps it could be only their own while despising that of the other’s.
Yet, the children do not have the capacity or the desire to arrive at such state of corrupted mind which harbors strong feeling of opposition, hatred toward fellow peers. They are innocent. After all innocence is belief and experience is doubt. The irony of it is that the more a person gains experience the more he ought to be more enlightened able to handle complicated life issues. Broad mindedness ought to have guided the life of an individual particularly in relation to others.
The introversion, the sentiment of being more interested in one’s own thoughts and feelings than entertaining the feelings of others emanates from the grownups, which the off springs have little share in it. In view of these off springs, humans are believed to be equal, harmony, the concept where things go well altogether to produce good result is all the off springs aspire to achieve. Creating a united front, disregarding the egocentric approach of the one-sided elites is the dream of the off springs.
They are empty slates, good and big enough to write anything on them; the writer should be ultra-careful of what he writes on them, the engrained thoughts and habits determine what the child will be in his adulthood. Obviously, one reaps what one sows; it is rather absurd to expect orange from an apple tree. The type of mold used matters a lot in creating behaviorally and physically able or disabled person in the society.
Parents are entrusted with the task of shaping the life of their children. They are creators of their children next to God. They are always accountable for everything, good or bad, related to their children. Of course, the society, too, as a stakeholder, is equally accountable. Apparently, in the old Ethiopian culture, of which the trace is now fast disappearing, people in the neighborhood and even beyond were equally concerned about the behavior of any child regardless of whom he or she belongs to.
If a child is seen misbehaving in the streets, the warning I will tell your father was seriously considered and had a deterring effect on the bad activities of the child; the child automatically refrains from repeating the mistake he has made whatsoever. The good thing was that the child on his or her part fully submitted to the disciplinary measures of the day and received abundant blessings both from parents and the society at large.
The commandment in the Bible that says, Honor thy father and mother was strictly adhered to and solemnly upheld. For that matter, to a certain degree, Ethiopia is noted for its underlying Christian principles that emphasize respect, obedience and love, the core of peace and unity. The unity that does not hoard partiality but that embraces all, despite personal differences, has now prevailed as the motto of the present time and the fever of nationalism.
Peace augments the harmoniously living while love enhances selflessness, one living for the other. Forfeiting personal interest for the wellbeing and benefit of the neighbor is the binding cord in any society. Such cord is unbreakable no matter what happens to it. Taking advantage of the other and vengeance are little mentioned. All are guided by the golden rule, do unto others what you want them to do unto you.
Respect and care for one another and being concerned about the wellbeing of a fellow man are some of the principles that are hung on this law. It is the eradication of egocentrism; is all reaching out to others. Such law is the means for the realization of utopianism. It is creating a perfect world if the law is strictly obeyed. However, as we all live in a corrupted world, such system is utterly impossible to materialize.
Therefore, if our desire is to create a better world, we should not give up whatsoever but gradually grow towards it without halting at any cost. Nevertheless, to achieve this, the greater burden falls on the parents who take the initiative to bring the child into the world. Thus, they are obliged to adequately equip him to face the realities of life that exists in the society.
Owing to this fact, paying attention to the details in the process of rearing the child is of paramount importance to the holistic (mental, physical, spiritual and emotional) development of the child. Anything short of this, results in creating the future adult atrophy, the root cause of juvenile delinquency, the factor that destabilizes the social order. It is a timeless truth! The off springs, now, in this twenty-first century, despite more than half a century of ill confrontations and setbacks, have to rise to the higher stage of realizing their dreams of unity once again.
Despite the presence of ethnic differences, they are on the verge of singing a harmonized music of oneness, to do away with the note of national discord that is surfaced once and for all. The strength of firmly planting the feet on the solid ground and walking is possible only when the muscles work together. The muscles on different part of the lower and upper limbs should work in harmony; the analogy is that even though the people who happen to live and work together come from different backgrounds, the thread of humanity that runs through all persons remains unchangeably the same.
Ethnicity, color of skin, or economic status does not create differences whatsoever. That is universal truth! Defying the law of nature entails nothing but chaos and anarchy that precede national destruction. Rational beings, at all cost, have to keep guard over such catastrophe. In the process, the coming and sticking together of the ethnically different people lays a firm foundation for the nation building. As an illustration, a work of art appeals to human emotions depending on the balanced combination of colors by noble touch of the painter.
The painter choses the right colors and evenly pastes them on the canvas and in their proper places and discards the wrong ones to make the art meaningful and worthwhile. Likewise, people dwelling under the same umbrella should be able to share the virtues and mutually avoid the vices by uprooting the causes together. This creates a common understanding between them and to remain vigilant to anything and everything that appears to work contrary to the good will of all.
Pursuing this path, leads to a viable end. Thus, all other groups should follow suite if they are intent on creating safe and vibrant social and political environment in which everyone lives happily and without fear. To arrive at this situation, it takes relentlessly laboring dayin and day-out no matter what. Exhaustion and contempt have no room in this realm. Everyone, by contributing his/her share, should tenaciously cling to the nationbuilding endeavors until the desired objective is achieved. Once a nation is built, each person in his environment should be entitled to benefit from the resources in his immediate vicinity; he or she should not sit back and watch while others are engaged in lucrative business or denied the right to partake while others coming from distant places take advantage.
In the same way those coming from outside should not be barred from the benefits nor should they intend to take over by displacing the indigenous people. This very essence, in both the incoming and the indigenous, has been a big problem and has set a stumbling block for the realization of high human ideals of sharing and tolerating – willingly accepting the people and their behavior who seemingly appear different from you as long as they conform to the norms of the society; there should be a combination and intermingling of the norms of the indigenous and the incoming to create a new one that both parties commonly claim and safeguard it against external disruptive influence.
In the process, the concept of diversity in unity needs to be thoroughly addressed. The concept nation reflects a corporate image. It is the major representative of the whole setup that embraces all the comprising groups with their medley of cultures and values. Evidently, no culture is superior or inferior to any other culture. The customs and beliefs, as long as they serve as the way of life and the social organization of a certain group, they have to be accepted and preserved and developed.
In this manner, having granted equal and fair recognition and incorporating all the existing cultures and values into the whole setup, the feeling of belongingness can be ensured. Elements that can be shared by all groups should be identified to create a ground for common understanding. The beauty existing in each culture and value, when put together, becomes a common property and is enjoyed by all. This paves the way to coexistence where respect for one another becomes indispensible.
No dead-sea principle is condoned but reciprocity, the core of give-and-take belief, prevails. All other contrary principles will be done away with. Apparently, the country is undergoing fast development transformation; this in turn calls for trained workers to employ their expertise to realize the goals set, the goal of forming a nation. Gone are the days when things were done randomly. Everything takes skills and adherence to the manual’s dictates. In unity or oneness, all march forward singing the catchy tune of love, peace and unity while dispelling the dark cloud that is cast over the preferred bright future.
The Ethiopian Herald, Sunday Edition May 12/2019
BY JOSEPH SOBOKA
