THE TRUE LIFE IS NOT FOUND IN MATERIAL WEALTH BUT IN ONE BEING CONTENDED WITH WHO HE OR SHE IS
7 min readBy Gabriel Kucdit Kachuol, Panakar, Yirol
January 23, 2017 (SSB) — Meaningful life is beyond the life of this world as the bible says. Besides, there is a common saying that ‘riches cannot buy happiness’. This means that happiness is the real life, which is found in one being contended with what he or she is. The amount of destructiveness found in the individual citizen of a country is proportionate to the amount which the expansiveness of life is curtailed. By this, I do not mean the desire of individual for good life may sometime causes frustration.
The implication is that sometime some people resort to the guide of their instinctive desire of one thing or the other but which may prove to be the thwarting of life itself. That is to say, it is blockage of spontaneity of not only individual citizen’s growth and expression of his or her sensuous, emotional and intellectual capacities but also the prosperity and political stability of his or her nation.
In that respect, for life, it has its own inner dynamism that tends to grow, to be expressed and to be lived. It appears that if this tendency of human being to express him or herself is hindered, the forward moving force towards life undergoes a process of decomposition and changes towards destruction.
Thus, the expression becomes a safety valve that works as a source of relief to the individual inner feeling that may decay into dead mature if tightly controlled. The reason is that human beings must at least have an outlet to pour out grievance that internally accumulates.
Therefore, the driving forces of these two aspects of inner and outer are not mutually independent but are in a reversed interdependence of which the more the drive towards life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive towards destruction the weaker external expression.
However, as seen in the case of South Sudan, the thwarting political atmosphere is a driving force towards destruction of our promising youthful future. When I talk of youths, I am talking without knot of disparity about both genders: male and female young people of South Sudan whose trek towards a better future has been threatened and continues to be threatened by the ragging rivalry between the government and the insurgencies, whose cause is ‘politics of from hand to mouth.
For instance, those who have been or are still living in Central Equatoria, Juba, or Yei or anywhere in Upper Nile, Western Equatoria , they may have noticed life; how life has tremendously changed within the past few years.
If we were to ask ourselves this question as to: how many people we see or cross ways with everyday talking aloud to themselves alone, or calculating the situations with fingers while walking on the roads? We might conclude that such people who talk alone on the roads are insane hence misdiagnosing the disease. Accurately, the cause of talking to oneself irrespective of those around us is trauma.
As seen above, when one thinks about what is going on in South Sudan, several questions come into one’s mind. These questions are: how many people, especially young people, have turned into gangsters, armed robbers, at night on the roads or residential areas?
How many young people deprived of privilege to study because of displacements? Or how many parents are incapacitated by the situation of the country to keep their children in school or even caters for the entire family? How many of close relatives, friends and acquaintances did not escape the wart?
Answering the above questions may, apparently, make you to agree with me that the longest life most of the people born and live is South Sudan may not exceed seventy (70) years. For example, a male may live up to about fifty five (55) years and women may go up to sixty (60) years or so.
Looking at the life expectancy of adults of South Sudan in the above paragraph, it brings into our mind the question: what does it mean to young people whose future and that of nation depend? In my opinion, it means that we must reconsider our way of looking at things this time.
In other words, we must change our attitudes towards life, for example, if we are powerless to change the past or the present, then, we must live to change the future meaning we must identify ourselves more with our local communities and boycott all the evil ways our big uncles try to push us into.
The language to be adopted should be to stop supporting those big uncles who instigate the war but retreat. As youth, we should instead peacefully support our rural people in the countryside to help them improve their lives.
Hence, my appeal to all youths of South Sudan is to change our attitudes as we need to count ourselves not only lucky but consider ourselves saints who still have a mission to accomplish by means of the gift of our lives.
As young people, we have to wise-up, brace up as patriots and nationalists and peacefully disown our modern masters – the politicians who are enslaving us in disguise.
We ought to make efforts to disengage ourselves from being massive blind followers of our uncles in public offices. We have to show transparency and fairness, and more so, justice, to ourselves, our people and nation by delving into the faculties of our intellect to investigate critically our conscience what make us believe life is anywhere near our “big belly uncles.”
The honey and milk in their political rhetoric and party slogans, which are nothing but luring, misleading and destructive statements to our future, people and nation, for that reason we need to come to our senses and acknowledge the fact that real life is beyond material wealth rather in one being contended in his or her way of life.
Our “big uncles” have their future in satisfying ‘icebreaking in hotels and political banquets.’ The proof of this fact is that when you endeavour to leave the main towns and go back to your own Payam or village, you will immediately realize that life is quite different in the countryside.
In country side, it is more basic, authentic and refreshening unlike in Juba or Yei, where one feels like he or she is in a “big sophisticated, stingy, chaotic, outlandish and irksome confine of prison cell.”
Unlike in big towns as mentioned above, life at the countryside is not like a funeral procession. It has a colour of joy and the sound of celebration. It is punctuated by music and poetry, which is audible enough for everyone’s hearing.
In country side at least, one can smell the fragrance of each new day and taste the deliciousness of every moment. Of course, life in our peaceful villages and Payams must not be misconstrued as a proverbial “bowl of cherries”: people in the countryside are free and open to their simple life style and are obviously marked by the experiences of ups and downs.
What makes their lives wonderful is the fact that they cry and laugh. Their senses are also insulted by ugliness and offended by odors. The only thing that remains alien to their experiences of life is passivity and apathy. They say a strong “yes” to their original life and a resounding “amen” to solidarity with one another as opposed to frantic life in the ‘cities/towns by names’ whereby everybody looks up to the pockets of ‘big uncle.’
My advice to all youth is that the country is built through individual’s contributions. If you are the architect of your future and you can be whatever you want to be without your “big belly uncle” in Juba or in the IO or all affiliates of the two camps then work for it.
In summary, I would like to conclude by saying that as youths, we need to be independent because the more we identify ourselves with politicians, the more we are diminishing our chances of attaining a better future. We have to identify a common cause and course with our impoverished local communities who are exploited by the politicians.
The author is a student and can be reached via kucdid@gmail
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That’s great advice to us as youth brother and keep going with this good beginning. Youth should wake up the lethargy of our tradition of being fooled by politicians of s.sudan without future.