THE WORLD FULL OF CONTRADICTIONS

The world is a funny place. Some say it is weird. Philosophers and kings have sought to understand how the world runs, all to no avail. It is full of contradictions and gaffes. There is an unseen force, beyond the management or manipulation of mankind, which apportions to every man or woman, a share of fortune or misfortune in a life time. That force is called fate. Theologians and present day preachers interpret it as God. But I don’t quite think it is God. Fate can be cruel, unfair and even punitive. Are those the attributes of God?

I will cite some instances that show the helplessness of man in the hands of fate. How many choices is man able to really make concerning himself or herself? The more defining issues of life are governed by the almighty sleight of fate. Beside the claims of science and the so-called breakthroughs of research findings, there are many issues that are beyond us. Take the few cases like our sex. How many of us chose to be men or women at birth? How many of us chose who should be our parents? How many of us chose where we should be born? And did we choose our complexion?

Did we choose what our size, frame (not outlook) should be? What about the innate skills we use today? How many talents did we choose to have?

What is more? How many times do we crave for things in life that will never come, try as we may?  How many couples, for instance, have been legally and properly married, and for years unend have remained childless. They have visited all the gynaecologists in town and even abroad, yet nothing has come forth, even when all the tests show that there is nothing wrong with their systems.

There is a particular hospital in Lagos that specializes in helping couples to make babies. Every car that goes there  gets a badge—a small square red sticker stuck on the car without permission. As I drive round town and see the little badge, I imagine the little agonies those couples go through in search of what ought not to be so elusive. How many secondary school or teenage girls, who out of waywardness or circumstantial occurrences get pregnant without ever preparing for motherhood? How come those who crave it won’t get it and those who don’t want it harvest them so effortlessly? And this is not a function of economic power or lack of it.  Already, there are ‘specialist’ churches with pastors who have “special anointing” for “fruit of the womb” ministration. And large is the congregation.

Yet, there are couples who crave to have male children (or even just one), but all they get each time they try is bouncing baby girls. I know of a family with eight girls and then a boy, who reluctantly came last.

Or what shall we say of even the issue of marriage? There are decent and comely ladies out there searching furtively for husbands, but won’t get. Yet, there are young ladies who are notorious for their Corinthian waywardness, who fetch their husbands with the ease hot knives run through butter paste.  It is all the handicraft of fate. So why is fate not fair and just?

Even our lots in career are largely a function of fate. There are those with high trainings and all the attributes that should take them to their career height. But they just don’t get there.

A clearer illustration is the fate of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who struggled almost all his adult life to become Nigeria’s President “even for one day”, but it remained an eternal dream. Yet, his kinsman,  Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, not only got it without asking for it, his benevolent fate twice threw it on his laps, just like that. Or how shall we explain an MKO Abiola who was just a breath away from the coveted presidential seat; yet not only lost it, but also lost his life in the process. But fate tossed it rather cheaply at late Shehu Musa YarÁdua, and even more benevolently to President Goodluck Jonathan, who was literally plucked from the creeks to the presidential palace. There are those who have made a career of presidential ambition, all to no avail.

Let’s pause and consider the issue of life itself? While some have such a long life that they even wish to die, others barely make it to the age of 30. Just check the obituary adverts in the papers. And even when the death itself comes, it hits most differently. While some have it as peacefully as in their sleep, others journey through excruciating regime of pain and agonising ailment, just as some others get it in one violent blast of tragedy, wherever.  Life is such a wild world of opposites. And the quest to understand why fate could be that unfair to mankind will forever remain a mystery. The only peep to its configuration is what God, in the Holy Scriptures said, when He declared that I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. So it is His mercy that defines our fate? Lord have mercy!