Beloved reader,
Believe it or not, ravens can remember the faces of human beings who have wronged them. This curious fact got me thinking about what we choose to cling to and what we cast aside.
Every day is, for all of us, a tricksy tango where we're busy trying our best to not trip over and make a doofy display of ourselves. Vigorous self-mastery is the highest human endeavour — certainly to me — even though my short-term memory is woeful.
But this is a good thing, in my opinion. I don't want to recall my greatest fears and grievances with eidetic clarity. I want to always move with a modicum of supple intentionality.
This is purposive on my part. I actually have a tack-sharp long-term memory, but I have worked hard to coat the many injustices I've encountered in my life with a patina of goodwill as a survival mechanism. To repeatedly relive the worst episodes in one's life is to be stuck in a series of poorly-lit scenes in an interminable and claustrophobic play featuring bad faith actors who view you through a lens of emulousness and antipathy.
Grace is not so much in the forgetting or forgiving of foul encroachments, but rather resides in the fact that each new day is a silk-soft reset. You will always retain your essence, but how you approach said encroachments, of which there will be many in this mandazi-delicious lifetime, is the difference between heeding the call of your own emancipation or acceding to imprisonment.
Thus the raven, with its protracted recollections, can remain marooned in the land of resentment.
I want to fizz-fizz-fizz all the way into my resplendent future.
I hope you do too, beloved reader.
With love,
Diriye
Image by DIRIYE OSMAN.
Song of the moment: 'Rather Be' by BRANDY.