By Ezekiel Nabieu
It is a fact of life that no human being is perfect or without attributes objectionable to others even at family level between man and wife.
On that premise let us take it for granted that Solo B is good and bad.
I have absolutely no personal acquaintance with him. I am only performing a public service of elucidation.
Solo B. has been hit below the belt a couple of times but he seems to have maintained a certain degree of resilience. He must have felt deeply disappointed at losing the presidency which kind of left him feeling devastated. He must have felt like chucking it all in.
It would appear that Solomon Berewa has exhibited the spirit of forgiveness in the true Christian spirit. His main gripe must have been against Ahmad Tejan Kabbah as deduced from that poignant statement: “if he had not been a democrat I would have been president today.” And yet he could make all those salutary remarks about Tejan Kabbah. He might have been paying heed to the edicts of Jesus Christ in Matthew 6:14-15 “for if you forgive men their trespasses your father also will forgive you; but you do not forgive men their trespasses neither will your father forgive your trespasses.”
Francis Bacon in one of his essays wrote: “in taking revenge a man is but even with his enemy but in passing it over he is superior for it is a prince’s part to pardon.”
Though the word “enemy” could be substituted for perpetrator, Berewa was in this case using the alchemy of forgiveness towards Tejan Kabbah. He had burst out in a tirade against him earlier and many thought that the laying out provided the ideal opportunity to give final vent to his righteous umbrage.
This piece is accented on forgiveness as amply demonstrated by Solomon Berewa in spite of any of his human failings. In addition to the Lord’s prayer of forgiveness his act is in linewith Alexander Pope’s essay on criticism in which he says: “ to err is human , to forgive divine”.
If you live long enough chances are that you will be hurt by someone you counted to be your friend and/or your confidant.
You may either be indifferent to it or let it fester and grow in your mind until it stifles your joy. With the latter state of mind our wounds may look superficial to others , but it is we who are affected that know better because we are the ones that feel the pinches of our shoes.
All of us are pushed to this crucial stage when we feel that somebody has hurt us deeply. This is the time we should use the miracle of forgiveness to heal the hurt we didn’t deserve. Of course we suffer a lot of superficial pains that nobody really needs to be forgiven-mere indignities that we simply have to bear with a measure of grace.
When you forgive someone for hurting you, you perform spiritual surgery inside your soul; you cut away the wrong done to you so that you can see your “enemy” through the magic eyes that can heal your soul. Detach that person from the hurt and let it go the way a child opens his hand and lets a trapped butterfly go free.
When someone hurts us we want them to suffer too naturally. We want him/her to grovel a little. The old-fashioned word for what we want is repentance. Did Tejan Kabbah secretly repent to Berewa? Was that the reason for Berewa’s latter day frequent visits to Kabbah? It is not always possible to forgive and forget simply because remembrance cannot be ordered out of a person’s mind though a person may pronounce forgetfulness. It is in the behavior of the one who forgets that matters.
Berewa Disappointing
The choice of tribute-paying spokesman was for the government of the day whose programme it was. They could have chosen the incumbent leader of the SLPP or the Secretary General or some other official. I have a hunch that Solo B. was chosen owing to his previous tirades of betrayal against Kabbah but alas statesmanship and Christianity prevailed.
He disappointed those who thought that an attack on the late Tejan Kabbah would rub off some of the gloss of accolades poured on the late man.
A krio jester of politicians would have said: Babuyai oh! It was tantalizing. The Berewa bomb did not explode. Sorry about that!
Forgiving makes life fairer. Did shylock have a case? He was all villain haters know, the classic unforgiver. But who looks at the issue from Shylock’s point of view?
We find Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice having been kicked around, badly, and for no good reason, listen to his complaint. “Antonio” he said “hath disgraced me… laughed at my losses, mocked my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies”
And for what? Why did Antonio rub Shylock’s face in the muck? Had Shylock done him wrong? Were there scores to settle? No, Antonio was spurred only by the evil spirit of anti-Semitism. Shylock was brutalized only because he was a Jew. Was Berewa unsupported by Kabbah because of tribal differences?
I cite Shylock only to raise the question of fairness in forgiveness. These bring us to the need to avoid the streak of fratricidal strife that runs through all the nation’s political parties some engendered by the excessive love for transitory power and money.
(C) Politico 08/04/14
