There are four birds circling the sky. Now, they are on the short wall segregating the grass from the cemented part of the ground. They land in four and pair off, as though playing, as though trying to figure some difficult situation out. Above them, three more birds of a different kind fly in their own directions, or so it seems and then there’s a butterfly. It seems the four birds are on a kind of double date. It seems. Isn’t the world rotating on a whole lot of assumptions? Isn’t our thriving mostly based on what we make out of things? I look up again at the sky and wonder at all the space up there and all that accommodates it. The truth to hold on to at this moment is that there is space for us all in what looks to us like a crowded world. Soon, a plane flies by and there is space for us all to fly, whoever wants to, whatever wants to.
How did it occur to us that to thrive means to undo another’s existence? In some way, in whatever way we can? I do not want to blame it all on the evolution assumptions. But I’ve always found the notion of the survival of the fittest odd. And for a large part of my time in my final year and most of the second years after that, it haunted me, subdued me, made me afraid. What is the measure of how fit I am? And how soon was I going to be taken out of the line? And who was going to take me out of the line? To make space for him or herself? Who was going to ultimately be better than I am because of all the inherent and also adaptive reasons that gave them an edge over me?
I lose sight of the four birds. Or to put it more honestly, I stop watching them, stop trying to decipher what is going on with their grand double date. I take my thoughts of when we will realize that perhaps the earth is large enough for all of us with me to my office space. I carry it with me home. I eat with it, bathe with it, chat with my family with it and type it out mulling on it. I tell myself to carry out research on how much of the earth-space which is land is not inhabited by humans. And how much of it is crowded because that is where all the resources are.
Before all of it ends, and my new friends slip out of my mind, I look at the big blue sky and the woman throwing her wash water on the dusty road behind the building my work is done in and I wonder if this woman will ever believe there is enough sky on this earth for her too.
©Awo Twumwaah 2019.
Afua Awo Twumwa 