Leaves never fall into a boat that is always moving.
Another Krio proverb: wakabͻt bif, na-in kin bring swit frut. An animal that roams can find the best fruit.
If you discount two frenetic months in Juba, I’ve been itinerant, living out of a suitcase and flitting between worlds for a year now. I’ve just got back from Sierra Leone; I’ve spent weeks in Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia, Ethiopia, Israel. There’s no moss on this rolling stone.
And I have found many, so many sweet fruits whilst I have roamed. Delightful moments, gems of life. Instants when I am struck by the insane privilege of where I am and what I’m doing. Bearing witness to 30 members of a community engage in impassioned debate on the future of their country in a sweaty district council hall in Kabala, north-eastern Sierra Leone. Sweeping on the back of a motorbike around the arc of Wilberforce, Freetown laid out below and the Atlantic gleaming before and warmth on my skin and reggae music in my heart. Sharing who I am with people I meet who light up my life.
But at times I feel, these sweet fruits, they do not endure. I relish them, I devour them; they make me feel complete and whole – a fully realized human being. And then I am gone, and I worry that they are gone too. Transient flashes of my life, rather than abiding additions to it. No leaves in my boat, no moss on my stone.
Generally speaking, I can do whatever I want, and I can go wherever I want. I am blessed with a wonderful rich life, but its a fragmented one. And herein lies my firstworldproblem. Warning: I'm going to start talking about postmodernity now.
Postmodernists argue that a fragmented life means a fragmented self. That our multi-dimensional lives give us multiple and changing identities. That the various relationships we have and the various roles we play pull us in different directions and that as a result we end up with ever-changing personalities that needn’t overlap or even necessarily be congruent with each other.
So here I am, wondering who I am; if I am indeed a chameleon. Wondering if the life that I’ve chosen costs me my wholeness as well as making me lose the sweet fruits that I gather along the way. Wondering, if the only thing that is consistent across my life is me, how I can develop a cohesive self: neither fragmented nor rigid, balancing aspects of multiplicity with a core of just one. Because I don’t fully agree with those postmodernists: I do believe that there is such a thing as a true and stable self, and I'd like to get to know mine better.
If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can feel what it felt like to be all the different people that I have been. In all of the many different lives that it feels I am collecting, stacking up one on top of the other. The girl with long knotted hair who was always outdoors, the hardworking wrangler in the Rockies, the nightclub barmaid in Sheffield, the woman in suit and heels grabbing coffee on the way from St James’ Park tube. But I don’t feel particularly connected to these previous versions of myself.
I am still learning who I am, but I am also starting to ask: when will I just know? And can this only be when my boat stops moving, my stone stops rolling?
Another Krio proverb: wakabͻt bif, na-in kin bring swit frut. An animal that roams can find the best fruit.
If you discount two frenetic months in Juba, I’ve been itinerant, living out of a suitcase and flitting between worlds for a year now. I’ve just got back from Sierra Leone; I’ve spent weeks in Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia, Ethiopia, Israel. There’s no moss on this rolling stone.
And I have found many, so many sweet fruits whilst I have roamed. Delightful moments, gems of life. Instants when I am struck by the insane privilege of where I am and what I’m doing. Bearing witness to 30 members of a community engage in impassioned debate on the future of their country in a sweaty district council hall in Kabala, north-eastern Sierra Leone. Sweeping on the back of a motorbike around the arc of Wilberforce, Freetown laid out below and the Atlantic gleaming before and warmth on my skin and reggae music in my heart. Sharing who I am with people I meet who light up my life.
But at times I feel, these sweet fruits, they do not endure. I relish them, I devour them; they make me feel complete and whole – a fully realized human being. And then I am gone, and I worry that they are gone too. Transient flashes of my life, rather than abiding additions to it. No leaves in my boat, no moss on my stone.
Generally speaking, I can do whatever I want, and I can go wherever I want. I am blessed with a wonderful rich life, but its a fragmented one. And herein lies my firstworldproblem. Warning: I'm going to start talking about postmodernity now.
Postmodernists argue that a fragmented life means a fragmented self. That our multi-dimensional lives give us multiple and changing identities. That the various relationships we have and the various roles we play pull us in different directions and that as a result we end up with ever-changing personalities that needn’t overlap or even necessarily be congruent with each other.
So here I am, wondering who I am; if I am indeed a chameleon. Wondering if the life that I’ve chosen costs me my wholeness as well as making me lose the sweet fruits that I gather along the way. Wondering, if the only thing that is consistent across my life is me, how I can develop a cohesive self: neither fragmented nor rigid, balancing aspects of multiplicity with a core of just one. Because I don’t fully agree with those postmodernists: I do believe that there is such a thing as a true and stable self, and I'd like to get to know mine better.
If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can feel what it felt like to be all the different people that I have been. In all of the many different lives that it feels I am collecting, stacking up one on top of the other. The girl with long knotted hair who was always outdoors, the hardworking wrangler in the Rockies, the nightclub barmaid in Sheffield, the woman in suit and heels grabbing coffee on the way from St James’ Park tube. But I don’t feel particularly connected to these previous versions of myself.
I am still learning who I am, but I am also starting to ask: when will I just know? And can this only be when my boat stops moving, my stone stops rolling?