The Three Stages of Man
THE RESTLESS MIND
When I was in Njiiri's High School, I met an Englishman who changed my life for ever. His name was William Shakespeare who became famous at a place called Trafford in the southern part of a tiny but now well-known country called England.
You might ask how a man who died in 1612 aged 52 years could affect the life of a 15-year old village boy from Ndakaini so much. The truth is that most human beings have their “Road to Damascus Moment”. If you have read the Jewish bible, you must have learnt of a man called Saul of Tarsus, a Judaist priest, who was a fanatic follower of Judaism.
When a new order led by another Jew named Jesus Christ were trying to overturn that holy order, he decided to “fight them unto death”, if necessary. Their leader had already been crucified in a place called Golgotha.
As he was on the road to Damascus in Syria, he was hit by a bolt of lightning that almost killed him. And that was the moment his life changed for ever after he converted to Christianity. You, dear reader, must know that story.
My Damscus Moment
When I first read a play by this English dramatist titled “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar”, I was amazed just like Paul. I hit that new road running so much that when we did our famous Cambridge School Certificate, I was the best student in Kenya. My prize: “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare”, a massive 1,443 pages book. By the time I did my A-Levels, I had read everything that the great man had written. My favourite was Sonnet No. 116 which I gifted my new bride on 28th July 1973. You can read it on Google.
According to WS, man’s life can be divided into seven ages. Read the details in the full poem in Google.
My view is different. The life of man can be divided into three phases. The first is pre-birth when you land on earth via two familiar sources and is then sent into a cooking pot called the “womb”. Very comfortable and effortless. The second and the most dramatic starts the day the baby lands on Planet Earth. Totally unprepared, traumatised and almost a parasite “whining and puking into the nurse’s arms”. If lucky, like the Bible says, that baby will live for the next 70 years, after which it will be, like Shakespeare said “ the second childishness .... sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything”. Just waiting to meet his maker.
The final phase is perhaps the luckiest because man will not bother anybody, even himself, as he floats endlessly into space after abandoning his earthly castle. Unknowable and unfathomable and, if he lived well, a mere memory to the some of the living.
In honour of WS, I wrote a humble poem to a Kenyan Olympic marathon champion called Sammy Kamau Wanjiru, titled: “Will You Remember Me After I Die?”. Google it._
How about your good self?
JH Kimura
30.11.2024