First Gentleman with Wilson Orhiunu
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Something is lost in all sacrificial transactions. So why do people sacrifice anything? Why lose valuable things when they can be kept safe? The young ones at the peak of their powers are encouraged to invest their time and youth in study. Time goes and so does youth. Young adults sacrifice their strength and drive for a job and that might pay little. The money goes quickly at the end of the month as does the youthful strength at the end of the decade.
Everyone is letting go of something and those who hold onto everything they can see it either rot away in their hands or they die and leave the valuables to others. Everything of value is destined to leave us ultimately. Those whose sacrifice just let these things go earlier.
The one with the opened hands has nothing but is in the best possible position to gain new things. Therein lies the risk. What if nothing comes and the palms stay empty forever?
But there is a hope that what is let go will come back. It is this crazy thought that fuels the belief that the time killed in university with heads buried in books will one day return reincarnated as time spent in a good and well-paid jobs where cash buys back all the pleasures denied in previous years (Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days).
The word sacrifice is used for when an animal is killed on the altar to a deity. The belief is that the life of the animal goes on to influence the actions of the deity for the benefit of the ones giving the sacrifice.
Usually, there is no proof of the existence of the said deity. But people believe that putting a knife to the throat of an animal could influence distant places such as winds far away or the clouds thousands of feet up in the air.
People only sacrifice when they believe that there will be a ‘return to sender’ day when like a boomerang the life inherent in the sacrifice makes an appearance for the benefit of all.
That the dead or lost thing makes a comeback is the hope for all investors. Farming is an occupation where seeds are buried in the ground with the harvest day in mind. The seed is watered and pests are kept at bay but no one is sure about the outcome with a hundred per cent degree of certainty. There is a risk taken in planting season.
All this talk about Black Panther, which is incidentally in a harvest season, has made me begin to view the movie industry as one of the riskiest ventures ever made. While everything looks glamorous in harvest, the planting season is pure agony. Who invests two hundred million dollars in a storyline that involves a country no one knows about that is powered by an element that is not in our periodic table. Aluminium we know. Potassium we also know, but what is Vibranium?
Once the money is thrown into building the sets, paying for costumes and a thousand more things shooting starts. All that money is gone forever. A great big sacrifice on the altar of trust in the actors and director’s abilities to bring that money back.
Then comes the editing, marketing, advertising and merchandising. It is only when it works well in the end that people pay to watch the spectacle. What kind of people put up $200million to have people dance and fight on film? It’s the Disney kind of people. The makers of Snow White, Lion King and Pirates of the Caribbean. They have experience in sacrificing all their cash and good name on the altar of a storyline. I wouldn’t call them brave or audacious but simply crazy.
Anyone who puts out a movie about sailing the high seas with Jack Sparrow as captain of the ship must be crazy. And those of us who flocked to this movie need our heads examined.
Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel (Seal) put it well in his song ‘Crazy’ – “but we are never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy”.
It appears that only the crazy will see their sacrifices resurrected before their very eyes in this life that we live.
The normal people will pay to be part of other people’s harvest time but will never know the joys of a true and personal harvest.
