on ambition: part 2 : the answer: "reach of arm."

to say: "i want to change the world" is a wide and silly concept without the benefit of context. in this season of obama-love the idea of change can become the pseudo-quest for self-importance ( we are important intrinsically but not merely for ourselves). it is easy to set the task of saving the world in general and connect it to innate feelings of misapplied greatness. but life is not the united nations and the people who have had the most impact in shaping global right thinking have always sprung out of ethical-political campaigns situated in a local context. think: martin luther king and race relations in america or gandhi and indian independence or nelson mandela and the end of aparthied in south africa. saving the world begins, and may end, in the context of your own local setting.
your very own patch of the earth. true greatness is not manufactured it is merely lived up to. a thousand books on becoming will not change the silent call of your own heart, telling you to do that particular task and become a little more like yourself.

when i say i want to change the world i must begin with my own patch of earth. i do not know if the words i say or the acts i perform will have any effect on the street child in mumbai or the tortured woman in kabul. i know the troubles within my own family. i know when my friends are hurting. these are within the reach of my arm. this is where i begin to change the world one person at a time. the way i will deal with six billion is an extension of the way i have dealt with one. in our generation, private acts must match public conduct. i should not be uncaring to the people i spend most of my time with and speak love to the general peoples of the world. i should not seek to escape facing the real questions of my own corruption by subsuming them into a quest to end,say, economic corruption. i am more concerned today with living and loving within the reach of my own arm.

of course my arm will extend. there is a wife around the corner and children to be born, books to write, business, activism...my horizons will continually expand. and i will grow into all of it. i am in no hurry. i am not trying to meet up with some landmark set before me. the land that is my life is virgin territory. i walk alone, competing with no one. the reach of my arm is my own patch of earth.

so, for this weekend, this is how i intend to change the world: i am going home early today- to hang out with my sisters and sit with my mother(she has been a bit under the weather lately). i am going to call friends and brothers and just talk breeze. i am going to call the woman i am chasing and try to make her laugh. for somewhere between my lack of a funny bone, anywhere and her idea of laughter only in reaction to sarcasm we have not done that enough. tommorow i am going to the house of my brother to observe capentry and eat free food. on sunday me, that woman, my brother and his woman are going to see the nigeria-kenya game. we are going to sit in the stadium and scream for the great green white green. between screams i will be sipping on my first bottle of beer ever. the reach of my arm.

and everday i will wake up to find it again: the awareness that if i live the best life i know how, if i allow grace in, as an ocean, and let it carry me on its heady wave to island after island in need of a light houses for the soul- from shore to shore, person to person, living, breathing, becoming forri, then i will be changing the world.

on ambition: part 1 : the question: "reach of arm?"

i have a running lie i tell so i do not have to explain myself too much. anytime i am asked about my own ambition i usually say, by word and then by deed, "nothing". or i play to the specific gallery. to lawyers i make some broad statement about changing the practice of law in nigeria"( for isn't the word "change" the moniker of our present kairos). to writers and readers i want to write, write and only write. to christian's i am all for christ domination. they are all ready answers to make sure i am left alone as quickly as possible. the lie was initially intended to hide the fact that i had no idea what i was doing. now, i know perfectly well what my days will bring, who i am becoming, in all those general and specific colours of fate and faith. in one sense i have always known. in another sense i am discovering it day by day. but now i am ready to say it out. to put it in words and hope that, to the hearer, it all adds up to some sort of logic beyond me.



i have thought about a definition for what i consider a worthy life beyond the the general sound bite of a "discover your purpose" seminar or book or book from seminar or seminar from book. i woke up this morning with an old quote from an odd book of delights in my head. the book is "Hannibal" by that writer of outstanding thrillers Thomas Harris. in one bright scene our heroine, clarice starling, is deciding what to do about our villian-hero, hannibal lecter. lecter has been abducted by one of his earlier victims, the demented mason verger, and is sure to be killed if starling does not intervene. she weighs her choices. she is, by now, a suspended FBI agent, her career lies in ruins, she may be facing criminal indictments in the near future. and all of this in the line of duty, while struggling to do the right thing ina world of wrong motives. she does not need to save him. she is the only witness to his abduction and no one believes her or really cares if lecter lives or dies. she could go home and mourn her descending life rather than risk it all for a man who is dangerous and would kill her if she ever got boring. it makes no sense to face verger and his gang of goons backed by money and the government. it is not worth saving a monster. her final thought in making her decision is of her father. he is the highest ideal of the worthy life, to her. it is with this thought that she rises, holsters her gun, turns her car toward the lair of villians and arch-villians with the declaration: "the world will not be this way within the reach of my arm."



i am going to write books but that is not my end. it is merely a means.

i am going to practice law but that is not my destiny or destination. it is merely a path to take.

i believe that in jesus christ we encounter the light above all lights, the light by which we can truly observe other lights. i believe that in his life on earth he showed the way man and all men should live and love and die to live again, full. i believe that jesus is the way to see God and what He wants with us. it is in seeing God that we see ourselves alive and living, full. looking and living toward jesus is the means to an end in God. i am not to take that revelation and move into a jungle in vain pursuit of the "pure life". faith or real religion is not an escape from the problems of the world, it is an answer to the problem of the world.



so, now i have a new answer to that old question: "what are your ambitions? what are you on earth for?"

the answer: "the world will not be this way within the reach of my arm." my gun is packed, i am turning my car toward the storm and danger. i want to change the world.