Everyone is born with a silver shovel and a gold plated
axe. This is equipment required for a life time of excavations into the terrain
of the mind to unearth artefacts of historical value which have long been
forgotten. Introducing the cycle of
life; events happens, you bury the event in the sands of time, the memories rot
away leaving a skeleton and you construct a kind of tombstone over the cerebral
grave and move on. It is normal for
people once in a while to return to the grave to lay flowers or spit, depending
on the kind of memory but very few go the full nail yards and do a CSI- Brain
type exhumation.
Say you lost a job a few years ago just before Christmas and
it was an awful experience since you had not bothered to save for a ‘harmattan
day’, your brain does you a big favour by burying the pain deep in your cortex
without the dignity of a tombstone. It is now up to you whether or not you
erect one. Going to exhume the memory
will meet you with a few problems however. Most of the facts would have rotted
away and all you are left with is bits of skeletons and artefacts. With
imagination you can reconstruct a whole new scenario which will be lob sided as
you might forget to factor in your poor performance on the job, your failure to
be polite to customers and colleagues and your silly habit of parking in the
slot allocated to your director. Bias
leads to the wrong re writing of history and next thing you are transformed
into a would be arsonist out to burn the company headquarters to the ground due
to your amateurish venture into archaeology.
Memories fade for good reason. Pain should be forgotten once
lessons are learnt. There are many who carry pain for years and still have not
picked out any lessons. These are the ones who just keep on digging unpleasant
memories from deep within their minds and then show case them in the museum of
their faces. One look and you know that the past is a problem for these
curators. All the museum pieces get in the way of the appreciation of the
present and the visualisation of the future. If anyone attempts to remove any
museum piece away, all hell breaks loose for there is no security like the
security given to a ‘treasured and mounted’ incident. You could just hear them
introduce the pottery of despair. ‘I call this piece- My useless ex-boyfriend’.
It is usually a piece so large it fills half the museum.
There is no one without a nasty past. Why analyse this past
daily? Why re explore the pain, how it made you feel, the tears, the despair
and agony? In the song Exodus Bob Marley sings – we know where we are going, we
know where we are from. We live in Babylon, we are going to the promised land.
Everyone with a nasty past needs to constantly plot an
exodus. Not a transient flight into the skies with the aid of recreational
drugs for you always have to land sooner or letter and the arrival airport
tends to be the one from which you took off. Nay, a permanent exodus is called
for.
A professional archaeologist seeks to learn from history
lessons that can enrich the present generation. The advances of the past help
to inspire present day students and helps us understand how things have evolved
from generation to generation. A personal study of one’s genealogy can be helpful
at times in boosting confident. You might find out that you hail from six
generations of successful civil leaders and suddenly find you have a reputation
to live up to.
Unfortunately you might find that you are the offspring of a
long line of village thieves and vagabonds. Hardly information worth sharing is
it?
We are who we are and we know our personal history well. If
one must study the past, why not dig into other people’s histories. There are
some many biographies out there and in them we can chronicle the struggles
people have had with rising to the top despite all kinds of baggage.
(Biographies tend to be about people who have made it as no one wishes to get
their silver shovel dirty on account of a non-achiever).
The forensic investigators also dig deep but they do it for
information to aid the prosecution of a criminal. They exhume corpses; looking for
DNA samples which helps build a case. They need evidence to nail the guilty
one.
Some mind archaeologists are really forensic investigators.
They look not to understand their histories and adopt changes but rather to
fish for someone in the past they can blame for an unhappy past, a miserable
present and a totally ‘nothing to look forward to’ future. Is anybody that
powerful to influence a life permanently?
Of course such people exist. While working in a prison a few years ago I
met a few dangerous guys who convinced me that the world has an ample supply of
psychopaths in circulation. However, these are in the minority. These are
people who will scar anyone they come into contact with permanently. However we
should remember that our skin abounds with scars, wounds though painful at the
time which have all healed; some with keloids. The last thing you need to do
each morning is going through all your scars.
For every atrocity under the heavens there is a survivor who
has written a book. These books help co- sufferers to see the light at the end
of the dark hellish tunnel. Those who
have lived through wars and oppressive regimes have a really hard time but
surprisingly there are many heroic survivors who make it through to the other
side and get on with life.
Bad things happen but good things also happen.
It would be nice for people to use their silver shovels and
gold platted axes to seek the pleasant things in the past. The good things,
those priceless moments, birthdays, weddings and achievements. One could
reconstruct the event in the mind’s eye and even reconstruct bits which have
been forgotten. The story line could be embellished a bit and the joy would fit
nicely on the museum of our faces which is then viewed by the public. That is
how our past can make the world a better place. The good times and the lessons
from the bad times are good for all.
Babawilly
Dr Wilson Orhiunu
8/9/2014
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