Love has been defined in different ways throughout time.
Mahatma Gandhi to me described it as "My imperfections and failures are as
much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents and I lay them both at
his feet.” Maya Angelou simply describes it as "HATE, it has caused a lot
of problems in this world, but it has not solved one yet." The Apostle
Paul’s poetic expression 'If I could speak in any language in heaven or on
earth but didn't love others, I would only be making meaningless noise like a
loud gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I knew
all the mysteries of the future and knew everything but didn't love others,
what good would I be? And if I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a
mountain and make it move, without love I would be no good to anybody. If I
gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast
about it but if I didn't love others, I would be of no value whatsoever.' to me
describes love at its perfection. As an activist love to me is manifested
through the bravery of a small but powerful movement, consisting of activists
and mothers of political prisoners that began at Freedom Corner in Uhuru Park,
Nairobi, Kenya. The mothers would be continually clobbered by riot police,
rushed to All Saints Cathedral for shelter and then back to Freedom Corner.
They put everything at risk for the freedom of their children, including their
nudity.
See, love is beautiful and amazing! It gives us security in
the midst of insecurities, ill emotions, bad health and in our darkest and
scariest moments. Love is powerful, whether we want to admit this or not. We
are created by and with love because God is love. But then it's hard just to
give love without something in return. We manifest this in our work, in our
relationships, in friendships and even amid our families. We leave by the
motto 'nipe ni kupe' (give me some to get some) and we are die hard
believers of this. I mean, even in religion the word grace has been made
impossible to understand. Brennan Manning in his book the Ragamuffin Gospel
describes today's society pretty well, he calls it one that resonates on
slogans such as 'There is no free lunch', 'You get what you deserve', 'You want
money? Work for it.', 'Do unto others before they do it unto you.', 'Watch out
for welfare lines, the shiftless street people, free hot dogs at school,
affluent students with federal loans: it's a con game.' and then there is this
one 'By all means give others what they deserve- but not one penny more.' We
tend to forget that our lives are centered on love, from family to friends to leadership
and even to how we need to relate and treat our environment. We also tend to forget we survive on
self- love, which we translate as good self- esteem.
The world, my continent and my country today resembles the
leading character in Eugene O'Neill's play The Great God Brown: 'Why
am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and
laughter? Why I'm I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and
the living colours of the earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid to love, I who
love love?’ Lack of empathy has given us an unsatisfactory society with an
empty quality. It has blinded us and has pushed us into a deep state of
loneliness. In my country for instance, the lack of empathy has made us fail
both as humanity and as nationalist, we have forgotten where we came from,
where we are today and where we are heading. It has cost us our self- esteem and just like
a post I once read on Facebook 'we end up voting for a politician simply because
of small temporary handouts, because they are from our tribes or because they
are good at making jokes at rallies. We end up forgetting year in year out that
we, our country and our families still remain at the same position or worse,
while they and their families seem to unscrupulously gain more handouts to give
us again when they need us. We seem to think in this small box that we also seem
to leave in that leads us to become political tissue papers.’ We end up making
this seem as our new normal. Carl Sagan in his book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a
Candle in the Dark says: ‘One of the saddest lessons of history
is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence
of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle
has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves,
that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost
never get it back.’ We end up fearing the word ‘NO’ and are afraid to say no to
tribalism, to corruption and to vices.
The church today has also been affected by this and has
forgotten that its foundations are based on the golden rule principle. It
preaches of ‘moralistic religiosity’
and forgets of the answer Jesus gave to the rich man who inquired what needs to
be done to receive eternal life, ‘that there is nothing that any of us can do
to inherit the Kingdom but simply receive it like little children.’ (Luke 18).
Little children do nothing to receive love from their parents, families and the
community they simply get it. Today’s church decries the loudest on how homosexuality
is undermining traditional values of society but yet shows less enthusiasm
towards the economically crippled African youth- who in 2010, 70 percent of the region’s population
was under the age of 30- due to soaring unemployment and corruption or South
Korea’s elderly who have been neglected by family and end up in sex work to
meet ends meet. Or even the 43.7 million people forcibly displaced worldwide (the
highest number in 15 years and equals the entire populations of Colombia or
South Korea, or of Scandinavia and Sri Lanka combined) because of climate
change, war or persecution. Today’s evangelical faith has been bartered for
cozy, comfortable piety. And has been deprived of love based on the golden rule
principle.
Leadership on the other hand has turned into a capitalist
venture and not love for humanity or even the popular slogan ‘comrades’ power!’ It has become individualistic in nature
with a greed that has fashioned a need to accumulate more profit. It has made
public and political interests individualistic rather than a collectivist
(community) concern and costs Arica an estimated US$ 10 billion every year
through corruption (estimates from the World Bank)- this is roughly half of
Africa’s 2003 aid receipts. In my country for instance leadership tends to run into
the cocoon of ethnicity that has resulted to distrust between different groups,
making collective governance and public service provision difficult. It has
limited economic, social, cultural and moral growth that has
resulted to poverty. It has slowed the implementation of key policies that could
spur economic growth in investments and entrepreneurship. Lack of empathy has
made the African leadership forget proverbs from our ancestors and even sayings
from contemporary African scholars such as Chinua Achebe who in his essay, The
Education of a British Protected Child says: ‘We cannot trample upon
the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo always practical put
it concretely in their proverb- ‘Onye ji,
onye n’ani ji onwe ya’- He who will hold another down in the mud must stay
in the mud to keep him down.’ But then as it is said the dumb politicians are not
the problem. The problem is the dumb people that keep voting for them. So if
the ‘Kenyan Project’ is failing, it
is we who are failing it and not the other way round.
PJ O’Rourke in his book Parliament
of Whores says: ‘it isn’t drugs, not even alcohol that causes fundamentals
ills of society. If we are looking for the source of our trouble, we shouldn’t
test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and
love of power and money.’ We are not getting younger, or are you? So why not
try to give love to yourself, to your community, to your nation and to humanity. Why not take that risk? Hate has costed us many lives and
many years that could have been used to promote development and just like Maya
Angelou said "HATE, it has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it
has not solved one yet." Let us not allow it to rob us our inner child,
our capability to imagine, to dream, to believe, to hope and to grow. I guess I’m
that fool who believes that love will give us the freedom that we’ve desired as
humanity, as a continent and as a nation. This is my religion.
