RIP - Wakanda Forever

 

King #Wakandaforever. 

In today’s paper, Adrian Matejka wrote this about Chadwick Aaron Boseman: “In lead roles, (he) mostly played the outlier: the one with conviction, the one with enough crust and wherewithal to understand that everybody from the high steppers to the low downs is made of antiquity, sunlight and iron.”

Talking about sunlight, Chadwick, 43, who tweeted a photo of him announcing his passing and an earlier diagnosis of colon cancer, has gone viral. It has “more than 6.2 million likes and three million retweets.” 

God rest his good soul. A soul that has given hope and inspired many in their own struggles to overcome their own demons. He will always be a cinematic hero in our mind. 

FYI, Chadwick’s tweet tops the tweets of all time, to relegate Obama’s tweet to second place. Obama’s tweet was in Aug 2017 in the wake of the Charlottesville, Virginia, “car attack in which a man drove his car into a crowd of peaceful protesters who had been protesting against white supremacists.” 

This is Obama’s tweet, quoting the late Nelson Mandela: “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin or his background or his religion.”

I feel that in the wake of so many hate crimes, riots, pillages, shootings, and how divided our world is, the Mandela’s quote is a good reminder for us to think about the hate that has consumed the world. 

Indeed, none of us are born to hate. And if sunlight represents the good in us, iron represents the resolve in us, and antiquity represents the change in us, from our past to the present, then the hope is that we can be our own superhero, the princes (or princesses) of our world, holding the torch with resolve, to change the world from within before we take on the world we see. 

Alas, I like to believe that our birthright has never changed, for we have always been the overcomer of hate, and the embracer of love. 

My sister-in-law had recently given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Joelle, and when I carried her in my arms, what I see in her eyes is the soul to mingle, to discover and to connect. There was complete trust, complete abandonment, on both sides. 

I trust this is the same for anyone who carries her, whether kins or friends, or whether the one who cradles her is from a different race, religion or background. 

I always wonder when did the colour of our skin become the blackness in our heart? Or, for that matter, when did the innocence of our youth give way to the hatred in our soul? 

I think it goes without saying that along the way, Joelle will grow up to witness for herself the world that we live in. She will come in contact with people who love her unconditionally. She will also come to discover that there are people out there who befriends her with conditions. 

The beauty of humanity will soon unravel and Joelle will come to know the raw reality of that Mandela’s quote, where hatred is born from a soul that conscientiously nurtures it.

That is the thing about hate, we need to feed it. We give it life as we give it attention. It responds to how we respond to it. It grows as we grow. At some point, it grows from a child to adolescence, under our watch, and from adolescence to adulthood, under our torch. 

And because the nature of hate is to hate, the world it sees conditions the world we see. It in turns feeds us from its perspective, the lenses of what it sees. 

At some point, it becomes our adviser, our tutor. And we unwittingly allow it to because it promises us tantalising power. For to hate is to turn someone into an object, a target, with us holding the trigger. That power at some point is absolute. 

Indeed, a child embraces the world and all the beauty in it. The first sight most of them see is the face of their parents. Love always takes first priority, first sight, first connection. So in my arms is a newborn that will grow up to be who she wants to be. Her future is secure in the good hands of those who love her, unceasingly. 

Yes, Joelle will know about hate too, that is unavoidable. She will come in contact with people who will judge her by colour, race or religion. But as the late King T’Challa once said to the UN assembly: “"In times of crisis, the wise build bridges while the foolish build barriers."

I thus believe with all my heart that Joelle and many others her generation and beyond will lead the way here to be bridge builders, peacemaker and heart healers. 

For hate narrows everything. Paths cannot be shared. Happiness is only to those at the top. Scarcity abounds. Division like plague multiplies. And the world is constricted. But with love, with hope, with resolve, guided by the sunlight, we can all be cinematic heroes in the minds of other people. The world thus opens up, it becomes boundless, with our imagination as her architect. 

This I believe is the legacy people like Chadwick Aaron Boseman has left behind for all of us, especially for our children.