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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Tue Oct 05 2010 - 17:57:30 EDT
All for One and One for All
Dr. Tesfa G. Gebremedhin
West Virginia University
05/10/2010
It is a pride to observe that many of our children are doing well in school
and in their professional careers. It is also depressing to observe that
many of our children took the wrong turn in their lives. If we make an
account in every city or town, we can definitely find some of our children
who make prison their home, some of our teenage girls who are pregnant, some
who run away from home, some who drop out of school, and some who abuse
illegal substances. All these situations are attributed to the malfunction
and disintegration of most of our communities which failed to nurture and
safeguard our progeny, as expected. As it is commonly said, "It takes the
whole village to raise a child," but this culture does not seem to be
happening here in our communities. Every Eritrean in every city or town is
supposed to take full responsibility of looking after every Eritrean child
because the problem of one Eritrean family is the problem of all of us. If
we fail to realize the consequences of our actions and attitudes, we will be
in serious trouble. In fact, we are already in trouble as a community by not
taking charge of our current situations. We have failed to learn from our
ancestors the simple art of working together as brothers and sisters in our
own communities and we have nobody to blame except ourselves. To understand
the magnitude of our negligence and failure in fulfilling our
responsibilities in our communities, please read below a tale from Burma,
retold by Margaret Read MacDonald.
Once upon a time there was one irresponsible and self-centered
king. One day the king sat at the top of his palace with his chief adviser
eating honey on puffed rice. As they ate they leaned from the palace window
and watched the people in the street below. They were talking about the
kingdom and its subjects. The king, not paying attention to what he was
doing, let a drop of honey fall onto the windowsill. "Oh sir, let me wipe
that up," offered the adviser. "Never mind that. It is not our problem. The
servants will clean it later," said the king. As the two continued to dine
on their honey and puffed rice, the drop of honey slowly began to drip down
the windowsill. At last it fell with a plop onto the street floor down
below. Soon a fly had landed on the drop of honey and begun to eat his own
meal. Immediately a lizard sprang from under the palace and with a flip of
its long tongue swallowed the fly. Right after a cat, so glad to see the
lizard, pounced to eat it. Then a dog sprang forward and attacked the cat.
"Sir, there seems to be a cat and dog fight in the street. Should we call
someone to stop it?" said the worried adviser. "Never mind that. It is not
our problem," said the king. So the two continued to eat their honey and
puffed rice. Meanwhile the cat's owner had arrived and was beating the dog.
The dog's owner ran up and began to beat the cat. Soon the two owners were
beating each other. "Sir, there are two people fighting in the street now.
Shouldn't we send someone to break this up?" said the adviser. The king
lazily looked from the window and said, "Never mind that. It is not our
problem." The friends of the cat's owner gathered and began to cheer him on.
The friends of the dog's owner began to cheer her on as well. Soon both
groups entered the fight and attacked each other. "Sir, a number of people
are fighting in the street now. Perhaps we should call someone to break this
up," said the adviser. The king was too lazy even to look. He said again,
"Never mind that It is not our problem." Now soldiers arrived on the scene.
At first, they tried to break up the fighting, but when they heard the cause
of the fight, some sided with the cat's owner and others sided with the
dog's owner. Soon the soldiers too had joined the fight. With the soldiers
involved, the fight erupted into civil war. Houses were burned down, people
were harmed and the palace itself was burned down to the ground. The king
and his adviser stood in despair surveying the ruins. "Perhaps," said the
king, "I was wrong? Perhaps the drop of honey was our problem." Indeed, the
drop of honey was the king's problem when it fell onto the windowsill.
The moral lesson of the story is that the next time we hear that someone, an
Eritrean, is facing a problem and think that it does not concern us, or say
that it is not our problem; we have to understand and remember that when the
least of us is threatened in any situation, we are all at risk. If the king
had admitted on time and the drop of honey was cleaned from the window of
his palace by his servants as the adviser warned, that drop of honey would
not have created all the problems thereafter. The houses of the town and the
king's palace could have been saved from the glaze of fire, if he had made a
simple gesture of admitting that the drop of honey was a problem. Likewise,
if we really admit that we have some problems in our communities and make a
little effort to come together, we could save many of our children from all
type of danger.
We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that we are all
different and act in different ways. We cannot change the inevitable things
that may happen in the future. There is nothing false in our motivation if
we are to fully awaken to our natural and integral state of unified
awareness to work together to rekindle the inner spirit of our children and
to look after ourselves by establishing a community based social services.
We have to realize that some of us are the first generation in the Diasporas
and that we have already started to age. I believe that the bodies of some
of us have aged and are no longer able to do what we were able to do, when
we came to our respective place of residence. We need our own communities
where we can take care of each other because we are human beings with lives
and who need each other to help share our problems and solutions. It is just
a matter of standing for one another with every one of us caring for all of
us because we have a collective belief that we are an extended family.
We need to understand that cooperation means the art of working together. We
need to be helpful to one another and move forward together. We need to
respect each other's point of view and especially learn to live together and
become more effective when we complement each other. Cooperation leads to
accord and brings in happiness
<http://www.rajputbrotherhood.com/articlelibrary/201009062377/descriptive-es
say-on-happiness.html> , peace, and harmony. On the other hand, lack of
cooperation leads to discord, disharmony, suffering, or ruin as told in the
story above. We must learn to live in perfect accord and harmony with our
family members in our own households and work with our fellow Eritreans in
our communities. The moment we break unity with each other, the flood of
problems engulfs us and the light of hope goes out and perishes. As Abraham
Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand anything else"
and of course, it soon falls apart. It takes no genius to observe that 'even
the weak become strong when they are united.' We all should know by now from
our daily life and experience that all of us exist for each other, despite
the fact that the unity of ideas or agreement has never relied on uniformity
of opinions. Obviously, we can be separated in our faith or divided in
politics, but we should stand together united when it comes to building our
communities and nurturing our children. The light of unity is very powerful;
it can illuminate all of us when we stand united. This adage, "United we
stand, divided we fall," has been with us for many generations. As
boundaries diffuse in this ever-shrinking world through modern technology
and global network, unity has become even more necessary. Only when we unite
in the spirit of cooperation and friendship, can we truly cope with the
challenges we face in our communities. Though everyone of us can make a
difference, those who can make a bigger difference in our communities are
the ordinary people who care deeply about others and do extra ordinary
things with love and integrity. We need to remember that several sticks tied
together are unbreakable because no single stick is as strong as all the
sticks put together. That means, in unity there is always strength. God
bless us to stand united all for one and one for all and to do the right
thing for our children in our own community.