Before You Were Told Who to Be

My Children, Seeds of My Seed,

I speak to you now from the long silence, my voice carried on the dust of the ages and the wind that whispers through the baobab. I have watched you. And my spirit, which once knew the rhythm of the drum and the purpose of the sun, is troubled.

There is a sickness in the way you walk. You have become a people in motion, yet going nowhere. You have mastered the art of the loud laugh, but I hear the quiet death rattle in your chest. You chase the flickering lights of distraction—the noise they call "clout," the winds they call "trends." You battle over shadows while the substance of your souls withers. You speak of change, but you wear it as a garment for a day, then hang it in a closet of forgotten promises.

The ones who stood and said, "Follow me, I will lead you to water," too often have come only to drink their fill from your hopes. Those who shouted "Activist!" found a new name for an old hunger—the hunger of the self. The conqueror no longer needs to build forts upon our shores. He need only watch as you build the walls of your own prisons. He no longer studies the maps of our lands, for you now walk the predictable paths he laid for you. He does not raise his sword, for you have sharpened the blade for your own undoing.

You still place your faith in the man who rides in the chariot of the empire, believing he will one day give you the reins. You still believe that the mark you make on a piece of paper is the summit of your power. You do not ask why you beg for a seat at a table that was built from the wood of your own sacred trees.

You do not seek to know your face. You do not ask, "Who was I before the world gave me a mirror that showed me a stranger?" You would rather squeeze your feet into a shoe that is not your size, because it is easier than carving your own path. It is easier to obey. It is easier to follow the well-trodden road to a small life.

But hear me, and hear the truth that does not rust: There is no neutral ground in this life. Every sunrise, you are either remembering your name or forgetting it. You are either building a legacy for your children or digging a grave for their future. You are either walking with purpose, or you are being walked by a hand you refuse to see. There is no middle path.

It brings a pain to my ancient heart to speak this, but a greater pain to watch you live a lie: Many of my children are lost. Not because they lack intelligence, but because they have traded the sharp sting of courage for the dull warmth of comfort. They have chosen the numbness of the spectacle over the clarity of vision. They are breathing, but their spirits are asleep.

I do not say this to shame you. I say this because when I look at you, I see the lineage of kings and queens. A royalty that needs no crown, only consciousness. A majesty that resonates in the bone, a memory of fire that they have tried to drown, but cannot extinguish.

But you must shake yourself awake. The first battle is not in the streets; it is in the silent territory of your mind. You must ask yourself: Why do I want what I want? Who taught me to want it? Why do I move to a rhythm I did not choose?

If I could, I would break your chains with these ghostly hands. If I could, I would wipe the sleep from your eyes with my breath. But I cannot. You must thirst for it. You must choose to be free. You must become so tired of the puppet strings that you finally, fiercely, cut them yourself.

This is the message I carve into the wind for you. Sit with it. Let it unsettle the dust in your spirit. Let it make the comforts you cling to feel like thorns. Let it challenge you to stop being a leaf blown by the wind, and to become the tree, rooted and reaching for the sun.

For the world does not pause for a sleeping people. And history, the great and unforgiving scribe, will write of this generation as the one that had everything to gain, and chose instead to dream.

Go now. And let your weekend be filled not with distraction, but with the great and troubling work of thought.

I am your Ancestor. I remember who you are, even when you forget.