In Memory of a Man

In this time I wonder, what is the most important message for writers to send to their readers? Is it logic, religious freedom, scientific innovation, morality or political theory. Or is it a simple message, a striking message of such basicity that it corrodes all impenetrable fields of suspicion and seeps into the mind invading all preconceptions, altering all former opinions. My questions continue: what message is this? What tale could be of such potency? In my humble opinion, it is one. It is the message that we are all the same, we are all human.

One man in his many writings did that, through poems, novels and essays he made it a mission to tell the cohabiters of this planet to remember their shared humanity, to treat all with the respect due them. He strived to make it known, our angelic good and our demonic evil, to accept our shortcomings and apply ourselves to better our characters as individuals and mostly as human beings. He was not a writer who surpassed all; he was a writer who understood all, a man who realised his role as a fellow creature of this planet and a man who found that he could only be human if he granted humanity to every single person in the world.

The greatest accomplishment of the late Chinua Achebe was him showing us with great flair how to be a man.

In memory of the late Chinua Achebe