Broad Way, Narrow gate

With a cup of coffee still sizzling hot on the workbench that shares space with the kitchen, I pick up a bestseller, bought from the streets some time back to read. Halfway through the first chapter and this feeling that has been gnawing at my very soul for quite a time reaches its conclusion. Thrust into a state of deep thought, the notepad on the shelf behind the fruit basket calls for me. With a pen in hand, I unburden myself in its pristine, snow-like pages.

We travail in vain because we ride on the easiest of paths. We have been deceived! We have found ourselves stuck in a cyclical era of deceit and lies peddled as “my truth” and the only way back looks mudded. It has thorns and thistles growing on its footpath because a generation has deemed it unjust, false and dare I say truthfully scathing. 

Our dispensation has radicalised the teachings from apocryphal texts as the order of the day. 
The tenor of the times paints a sad picture of “Broad Way, Narrow Gate” with a teeming number plying its road.  A lot of us today are obeying what is wrong because of ignorance and shaking our fists in the face of truth just so we can spite it. Well, you might ask why would anyone perform an act very characteristically contrarian to the whole essence of truth? The reason for that is plain and simple, it hums a tune that grates the soul, that is disciplinary. Alas, there are neutrals. There are always neutrals who have come into the knowledge of truth yet falter to esteem its sanctity. These same lots have always eaten from the cauldron of fear and thus refuse to nibble even at the fingers of their master. The present-day predicament is championed by the current embodiment of fear, a fiend called “cancel culture”; the warring hammer of postmodernism.

In our bid to belong, we have relinquished what is right and true, sequestered and ostracized what is just and pure. The painstaking truth has been rationalized as a falsehood for some in our bid to belong.
Remember, the sun does not stop being the sun just because another heavenly body in the galaxy imitates its function. The purpose of the sun is its peculiar feature, its raison d’être as such nothing can replicate its purpose even if it does its function.

Todd Friel asserts that ” …the intensity of one’s beliefs does not equate to whether said beliefs are true or not…”.  In other words, if you believe strongly in a lie, it does not change the state of the lie and make it true no matter how you represent it and vice versa.

What we see now in a post-modern world is this. 

For example, given ample time, it is not unimaginable for YOU to wholly convince yourself that the chemical formula for water is H2O2 and sincerely believe it. Then again should you in a lab try to produce water, you will soon realise that what you initially perceived as the chemical formula of water is so off the charts. Present in your test tube will be Hydrogen Peroxide which is not water as a matter of fact but rather a mild antiseptic you can use to sanitise cuts or cleanse wounds to prevent infection. 

What is the pith of the argument you would ask? 

Well, it is that established truth is one and encompassing.

What we have now is a rave to be heard, a craze to be seen. I can understand the need to be a satellite, the need to be the next big thing, to be the ‘ IT ‘ girl or boy but at what cost? Ever wondered or taken the time to weigh the consequences that come with chasing after your feelings? Can you say for certain that your feelings have never left you down in a trench you never imagined finding yourself in? 

Hedonism, another provocateur that goes unchecked, dictating and feeding into this necrosis awash in our societies. 

We have become lovers of our flesh.

Now to the issue of being heard, to put out a disclaimer, this is in no way a smear campaign against ambition. Neither is it my holy crusade or jihad against the pleasures of life and its fullness. 

For we are naturally predisposed to be greater than our current state because we come from an intricately contrived and designed set of rules unique in every process. Our very origin demands that we always elevate. 

The same predisposition requires that we seek out and provide comfort and that we survive. However, the infinite one, believe Him or not, who designed this complex system, made for us a subset of rules, legalities, moralities or whatever they are, to measure our ways. In all your search and pursuit for happiness, I beseech you to find for yourself and stem in your ways these laid down manuals to guide you.

Remember, the only way to be heard in this time is if you sell your soul to the beckoning hands of the devil of the limelight.

It is transactional however the price it demands is so great hence my questions to you.

Is it worth it?

Have you considered the merits of not being heard?

Do you also have a rapacious appetite to not be heard? Have we as a generation individually practised enough the act of silence? 

How many times do we listen even especially to ourselves to warrant being heard? 

To paraphrase an adage from my father told to him years ago by his grandfather,

 ” There is power in numbers. You were created, crafted purposefully, with two ears to listen more and one mouth to speak less”. 

Ponder over these while you desire to be heard.

Another sound of the alarm, to borrow a word of wisdom from the Christian text, Proverbs 14:12, in its King James rendition, it reads as follows

 “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, But the end thereof is the ways of death.”

Oh, man! I scoff at the despotic nature of a species with an average lifespan of 70 years, bathed in the smell of braggadocio and whose speech is soured, saturated in abject self-delusion and hubris. His shortfalls are glaring for all to see. 

The inadequacies of man and his philosophies are aplenty. Even a litany scribbled on a piece of paper the length of Tisdrin Pass, a winding road that links southeast of Marrakesh to the city of Ouarzazat, would do it no justice. 
I can point you in the direction of his yore to aid in your endeavours to comprehend the indication of man and his unrighteousness to put it biblically.  

History is a litterbox of all the skulduggery, of all the unwholesomeness of man trying to be and do what he deigns as right and true.
So many instances support this one of which is the holocaust otherwise known as the shoah. An event hugely inspired by hate, racism, and antisemitism that resulted in the loss of the lives of approximately 6 million European Jews because a man believed wholeheartedly that his mission of culling is true.
We can also talk about the transatlantic slave trade. Another evil episode that also culminated in the loss and displacement of so many lives because they had dark skin as such they were deemed inferior. The height of man’s Pride rears its head again. Should I go on?
What that journey will only prove is that the supposed right intentions of man are very despicable. This is not to say we are incapable of good but to highlight that we are not seemingly infallible as we have hoodwinked ourselves into believing. That the likelihood of our “my truth” being true could be so off the mark and very costly. 

Now I sit behind this book hoping to resume reading with a renewed gusto and once again fail. I stare blankly at the pages as I contemplatively weigh the matter. In my conscious brooding, the broad path looks really appealing right at this moment when placed in juxtaposition to the proverbial narrow way and the sacrifices it requires. This brings revelation to truly some of the reasons why we have people walking that road. 
The recurring profile for the diverse people is oddly the same. Pick out anyone on that road and you have the description of a post-modern man or woman who is epicurean, has prided self and all its extremities over everything and everyone, a true lover of oneself. From what I have gathered, I think no one who finds himself on this broad way with a narrow gate, ever makes it or comes even a metre close to the threshold of this way.

There is a sense of foreboding so strong in the air that it is almost palpable. We, as a collective and also individually, must respond swiftly to the exigencies of the present situation. I shudder at the thought of the after-effects should we fail to do so. I am loudly unapologetic if peradventure I come across as didactic. Someone has to say it because we can not afford to keep up the facade that this is not happening. The times are really fraught with dread.

The book has lost its appeal to me now. I will struggle to keep up even when I persist. I pick up my cup of coffee and walk away with the page folded into two to remind for later.