By
Obododimma
Oha
Earlier
today, I felt inspired and posted a message on my Facebook wall: “Learn from
others, even from your enemies.” I remember that this derives somehow from an
indigenous Igbo mind and that it is even indirectly enshrined in some Igbo
names: "Ibezim," "Ibenezim," "Ibenezimako," etc. The other, the Ibe, is one’s teacher
indirectly, even if this other is one’s mortal enemy! Is it not ironical that
the other that may want one dead is indirectly teaching one how to be cautious,
that this other is counselling one on important life skills without knowing it?
But for it to work as a useful counsel, one needs to see the opportunity; one
needs to see it as a learning opportunity and to cooperate to benefit. Yes,
cooperation. Just as one’s hurt or sadness is one’s cooperation with a jerk
looking for an opportunity to shoot one down.
Now that
modern technology has created playgrounds that are also learning grounds (for
those who know), we have a greater opportunity to use various social media
platforms as classrooms where we can learn – from our betters, from those who
attack us or try to hurt us, from bullies of the playground, etc. Yes, social
media can be an important learning context, not just a place for entertainment,
a place where we share photographs and our nice new clothes, our ceremonies,
our itinerary, a place where we argue and show off our learning and try to win
for its own sake, etc. But where the efulefu is arguing to win or looking for
whom to fight, clever forumites are watching and learning.
One can even
learn to avoid behaving in a disgraceful way. One is shown bad behaviour and would
not want to act like that or to submit one’s integrity to that shame. One can
see gross disrespect on this playground and avoid such. One can even see rough
play and out of shock resolve not to play like that. One can also see good and
enviable life and seek to emulate it. Indeed, we learn (if we are careful and
observant as human beings) from the bad
or good life of the other. That is one reason why our roads cross in life.
Orita!
Yes; there
may be some efulefu, trolls of the jungle, who follow us from one forum to the
other, instigating, doing what they know how to do best. They may just pick holes in what
you say or watch your lips for the wrong
expression to issue forth. It is wise not to help them. Helping them means cooperating
with them. It means stopping to reply and then they have got you at last. If it
is your desire to be in that meaningless wrestling match, go on. But I don’t
think that that is what you have set out to achieve with your life. So, leave
the trolls and pursue your noble dream.
There is one
essential other I would recommend for
you. Do you see that elderly person, that library of libraries, that huge
volume of volumes on culture? If she or he dies now, that is a huge loss. You
can't exhume the body and learn from the corpse’s mouth! The undertaker would
think you are trying to decapitate the body to do a ritual! That elderly
institution of knowledge should not just die with the huge knowledge! If you do
not retrieve part of it before it is midnight, now that the elderly knower is
in the departure lounge, you would only be scratching your head trying to
remember things later. Remember, we are not here only for fiction; we are also here
for facts. The closer to the source, the better! Even if there has been a fabrication dying out, you need to know about
it.
Ibenezimako!
The other teaches me caution. The other is the my supplement. Doesn’t that show
that I need the other still? If I were to be alone on the playground, it would
have been very dull and dreary. But the other is here with me to make it
interesting.
The other is
my other. I am the essential component of the other. Even if the other does not
accept it. It is beneficial if the other learns from me, that other. And,
indeed, some wise other do set out to learn.
Learning from
the other has been our way, and we have been following it by knowing the
usefulness of community. Anybody in isolation, anybody without the other, is a
corpse. But our way has been to seek out the other, to learn from the other.
The wife who has not mastered the art of preparing a particular dish learns from
the other how to do it. Men learn from their mothers, and vice versa. Daughters
also learn from their fathers, and vice versa. That man who does not know how
to make a yam barn learns from the other who knows. The elite person also
learns from the person who has not got certificates, and vice versa. Those who
do not try to learn are a great affliction. They are already dead!
Ibezimako!
That is the way
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