The beautyful ones are not yet born.
It’s a book worth reading; here are incentives to motivate you.
It was written in 1968 by Ayi Kwei Armah, a Ghanaian. Writing books, they say, are the best way to immortalize oneself. A book like this immortalizes not only the writer, but the readers also. The words live through you and guides your thoughts and actions. Not much has changed in Africa since it was published, as a result, it’s narrative and descriptive. A great work of literature.
Excerpts, with commentaries in brackets:
The poor are rich in patience.
O you loved ones, spare your beloved the silent agony of your eyes.
Some kind of cleanliness has more rottenness in it than the slime at the bottom of a garbage dump.
(Honor, fame, power, money and respect gotten through dubious means, the bearer may look clean, but the soul is grimy)
The chichidodo is a bird. It hates excrement with all its soul. But the chichidodo only feeds on maggots, and you know the maggots grow best inside the lavatory.
(The chichidodo is used as a political term; refers to individuals that claim to hate corruption, yet, has their means of livelihood from it.)
There’s too much of the unnatural in any man who imagines he could escape the inevitable decay of life and not accept the decline into final disintegration. Against the all too natural, such struggles, could they be anything but the perverse attempts of desperate hedonists to perpetuate their youth against the impending rot of age?
(The aging, or rot is inevitable.)
Those who are blessed with the power And the soaring swiftness of the eagle And have flown before, Let them go. I will travel slowly, And I too will arrive.
(Always have reasonable patience.)
I know I have chosen something, but it is not something I would have chosen if I had the power to choose truly.
(Their is a crystal clear difference between choices and options, we mostly have options which we choose from, not limitless choices. The social order limits.)
When you can see the end of things even in their beginnings, there’s no more hope, unless you want to pretend, or forget, or get drunk or something.
(Death is a perfect example, we see the end of life in the beginning. We see reminders, yet we strive to live, to gain, to enjoy. By forgetting, we live.)
If we can’t consume ourselves for something we believe in, freedom makes no difference at all.
It is so surprising, is it not, how even the worst happenings of the past acquire a sweetness in the memory.
All through life, we protect ourselves in so many ways from so many hurtful truths just by managing to be a little blind here, a bit shortsighted there, and by squinting against the incoming light all the time. That is what the prudent call life.
(It is painful to admit all the truths of life. I understand those that choose blindness, I respect those that choose to see.)
We all said they were mad, of course, but if you stood with one of them and listened to his words without too much fear, towards the end, it would become very hard for you to tell on which point exactly the man was mad. And so people feared them, not only for the wild unaccustomed gentleness of the way they looked, but also for the disturbing, violent truth of some of the things they were so often saying.
(The insane ones are the sane ones. They have accepted the violent truths we’re too fearful to even perceive.)
Men would laugh with hate at the bringer if unwanted light if what they knew they needed was the dark.
How long will Africa be cursed with its leaders?
(For as long as we have cursed or no accountability systems. As long as we keep celebrating thieves with gratefulness at the crumbs they hand out, instead of the whole loaf which they have pocketed.)
It should be easy now to see there have never been people to save anybody but themselves, never in the past, never now, and there will never be any saviors if each will not save himself. No saviors. Only the hungry and the fed. Deceivers all.
How was it possible for a man to control himself, when the admiration of the world, the pride of his family and his own secret happiness, at least for the moment, all demanded that he lose control of himself and behave like someone he was not and would never be?
How can one see the rot clearly, yet live in it and against it?
(Through bravery)
And lastly,
“Life has not changed. Only some people have been growing, becoming different, that is all.”
This is my best quote from the book. You can read and learn so much, that you develop a bubble around yourself, thinking that everyone else is in there with you. Until you’re pricked with reality and the bubble is busted. Yes, few people have been growing, but there is comfort in knowing that you reject it, even if you can’t change it.
Thanks for reading!
