Gyre, cycles, circle of life...history was already written.

taken from: http://www.name-list.net/facebook/surname/Okonkwo

 Okonkwo was so concerned about being the exact opposite than his father – considered weak and lazy -  that since very young he began to build his own reputation as a strong, emotionless, hard-working man. However, as the the missionaries come to the village where he was exiliated because of a murder he committed, he began to show a strong rejection towards this new culture that was so different from the own one. He could not accept the fact that his clansmen where embracing this new concepts of  a new God, and all the things that came along the missionaires. Such was his opposition that he could not bear the fact that his people were not going to fight against this “intruders” so he decided to kill himself.

In words of a man of the tribe in the book:

 

 “It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offence against Earth, and a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansmen. His body is evil, and only strangers may touch it. That is why we ask your people to bring him down, because you are strangers”.

 So, an important matter can be deduced by this statement. Okonkwo’s eagerness to be entirely different from his father was pointless when he commited suicide because he was not brave enough to face the change - or fight against it - and he gave up the cause and also to his life, ending as coward as his father was or even worse. So Okonkwo, against his beliefs, fall into the truth that was written in the Bible paradoxically preached by the missionaries, to whom he resisted to accept. The history repeated itself no matter how hard Okonkwo tried to avoid it.

“Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account”

- Ecclesiastes 3:15 New International Version (NIV)

 

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre….”

- Extract from The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats

 

Life is a cycle. And it seems that Africa knows it well...and ironically,  The Walt Disney Company captured it in an animated film.

Now you should wonder, which part of history are we living again and is there something we can do to revive the positive aspects of it? If life is a cycle and we are inevitably in this "widening gyre" maybe is because we cannot avoid to look at the past, even if we do it to learn from it, the simple act of looking back sets the foregoing of what is about to happen.

Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Luke 9:62 English Standard Version (ESV)

But Lot's wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

 Genesis 19:26  English Standard Version (ESV)

Is it posible to do something about it? Not to look back in anger and learn to face the future looking forward? What do you think?