Thoughts

BIAFRA IS A STATE OF BEING

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Biafra is a state of being.

Until we have achieved that state of being, the desired geopolitical region remains at risk. So we must pursue both tasks together.

And the State of Being is as follows:

We have to do as the Catalonians do in Spain.
When they realized that the Castelianos (Madrid) will never voluntarily or easily give them Independencia, the Catalonians (Barcelona) decided to turn inwards and develop their region Technologically, Economically and Infrastructurally – and now they are the economic powerhouse of Spain.

The same thing is with Bayern in Germany. When Germany was declaring itself as a nation, Bayern (Bavaria) had the choice to stay out and be a country on its own (like Austria did) . Instead it opted to stay within a greater Germany and become it’s best part. Today Bavaria is the most technologically and economically powerful region in Germany – and it has the whole of Germany now as its primary and biggest market.

The same thing is with California in the USA.
It’s not only the biggest economy WITHIN the US, it’s also the 6th largest economy in the World! However, this is only because it is within the US and can leverage on all the synergies that come with that, that it can be so powerful. If it were suddenly to try to break away overnight to stand alone, as a competitor against the rest of the US, things would not be so easy.

Nigeria does not fear IPOB as it is. In fact, they WANT IPOB to challenge them, so they can militarily wage war on the Igbos. IPOB at present is not the Biafra that Nigeria fears. They fear the Biafra that becomes like Catalonia, like Bavaria, like California. That’s the Biafra they fear. So they NEED this militant IPOB to give them an excuse to come and reduce Ala-Igbo to a wasteland again and turn back the hands of our clock once more to Zero, like they did in the last Civil War. Even if we don’t want and don’t start any hostilities, they will use the slightest excuse or provocation or accident to send in their troops. Britain will support them and in the end USA will establish a military base in Igbo Land, to keep the peace. And that is how we will become occupied territory.

We have to be smart, and shift the battle to the field where we can win.

What I am saying is this: yes we will continue to ask for Referendum, like Catalonia does in Spain, like Scotland does in Great Britain.
But it is not Referendum that will give us the Biafra we need. And of course It is not guns that will give us Biafra, that we know. As Igbos, we have to conquer our chronic INDIVIDUALISM – and we have to pool our wealth, intelligence and efforts together to turn Ala-Igbo into a First World region, right here and now. But this is the most difficult thing for us because we are individualists! It is easier to protest.

The second point is: Our Governors. As much as we don’t like them, we have to work on them and with them.

If IPOB mobilises the people against the Governors, the same way it is mobilising them against the Federal Govt, you will see how fast things will change. What will the governors do? Start shooting their own people? If any governor does that, where will that governor run to hide from the people’s revenge? They have nowhere to hide. Your State is your home – so they MUST listen to the people. If the people are united, (and IPOB can unite the people because IPOB is very powerful), they MUST start DEMANDING ACCOUNTABILITY from EVERY elected official in the South East.

Demand that they invest in INFRASTRUCTURES. Roads and transportation. Potable water. Drainage systems. Housing. Health. Education. Tax breaks for small businesses. Regional economic integration. Constitute expert groups accross every field from within and the diaspora to develop and advice on the framework for regional development.

Instead of going to Abuja, the Governors should come together, put money together from their budget and start building a second Niger Bridge. Start dredging the River Niger at Onitsha. Start developing the dry port at Abia. Start NOW and make it mandatory that EVERY South East governor prioritize regional integration. Taxes and tarrifs for business MUST come down to encourage investors.

Computer Village in Lagos is full of Igbos.
The governors and leadership should put their moneys together and build TECHNOLOGY TOWN in Aba. Follow up on the likes of the Geometrics power project in Aba, with a view to completely electrifying Ala-Igbo. And many more of such things.

Put their money together and elevate Enugu Airport to a level HIGHER than Lagos or Abuja airport. Things like that. Developing the Owerri Airport to a full international cargo airport and take advantage of the central location of Owerri in the South East.

Quality educational institutions are lacking in the East even though we constantly produce the highest number of applicants to universities. Let us build more by collaboration with our foreign diaspora. They’re the best in many parts of the world. Lets harness this advantage.

We need a world class Stock Exchange in Ala-Igbo. We can achieve that without the Federal government, because we own trading. Encourage our diaspora to work with government to establish and run QUALITY WORLD CLASS HEALTH CARE institutions in Ala-Igbo.

IPOB has already come up with a blueprint for an Igbo-wide democratic customary government, the people’s government, very republican in nature, and this is good. THIS IS POWER. Ironically, it might even be in accordance with the Nigerian constitution. If peacefully achieved, this can be the leverage with which to control the elected executive and legislative levels, if Nigeria stays together. And if Nigeria falls apart, then automatically we already have a framework state in operation.

However, IPOB must win Igbo people over by championing their welfare with their own governors and officials. Threaten them with no re-election and criminal prosecution if they fail to serve their people. They must also encourage the training, standardization, integration and sharing of information by the different state security groups to stamp out crimes like robbery, kidnapping, human trafficking, etc. We are Igbo. We are in the communities and we know those who are into crime. People MUST start explaining their sources of wealth. IPOB can utilize its huge following to ensure crime is wiped out and good governance is entrenched in the South East.

Then IPOB and Nnamdi Kanu would forever be remembered kindly by history.

If we are doing things like all these, Arewa will not need to issue quit notice – NDIGBO will come back in droves to build up Ala-Igbo.

Is it beyond the Igbo to venture into modern and very lucrative cattle rearing and be the leaders in all of Africa? Are we not known to come late into any venture and excel beyond those in it for centuries?

The governors in Ala-Igbo should AS A MATTER OF URGENCY introduce RANCHING across Ala-Igbo for prospective and enterprising IGBO CATTLE FARMERS, after which they will enact, implement and execute ANTI OPEN-GRAZING LAWS in their States, then call on all indigenes and States security groups to participate in monitoring its implementation. This will empower all Igbos and we will rid ourselves of these gun-totting Fulani Herdsmen in no time.

*This is priority. Every passing day is too much.*

Ekiti State did it. Benue State has done it. It’s not impossible. Why cannot the States of the South-East ALL do it as ONE? *Anti Grazing Law.* This will shake the Nigerian Govt more than asking for referendum.

IPOB has power. If they use it wisely they can bring about tremendous change in Ala-Igbo without a single blood shed. They are uniquely positioned at this period in time to use their massive following and break the individualistic Igbo trait to bring about change that will positively shape Igbo history for generations. If they misuse it by going the route of war, that didnt work decades ago, then it would be a great loss indeed.

If Nigeria stays together, Ala-Igbo can become the most advanced region of Nigeria if we START NOW. If Nigeria breaks up, we have to be ready to survive on our own. And at this moment, we are not yet ready. This is where we need to put our eyes into. Because the ball is already rolling.

What we want is for people to come and start investing in Ala-Igbo, from all over the world. They will do this massively if they see the political will and infrastructures being laid down in Ala-Igbo. If that happens, everybody will protect Igbo land. Biafra will grow from within. Let Nnamdi Kanu, all Igbo leaders and thinkers read this and run with it.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije (Ogbuehi)
August 2017.

DO AFRICANS BELIEVE THAT AFRICANS CAN INVENT?

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We have to make our own world, because there is little space for us in the world others have created, out of their own ingenuity, for themselves.

So what we need is to create in Africa an African system that supports research and invention from Dream to Done Deed. What we need is to awaken the strong sense of the need to create our own world, a new world. A desire, the unquenchable thirst and unslackening desire to do this or perish. It becomes our racial focus, and the essence of the DNA we pass on, henceforth, from Generation to Generation. Our black spirits will come ready-made with the natural Urge to do this. We will be born differently from today. Born to invent.

But…: Do Africans believe that Africans can invent? Do Africans who feel the spirit of invention and innovation stirring within them have the guts to sacrifice their whole life to it? Are there financiers and patrons ready to support them to the bitter or sweet end?

If all you do is extract natural resources and minerals from the earth and the waters, and sell them unprocessed to others, then you are just a glorified miner. Now, today, as oil revenues dwindle, the call is sounded. Any mathematician can do the arithmetics and work backwards from the finish line. It is the point in time when our oil becomes worthless and our ability to invent and innovate becomes the only natural resource we have left. Untapped?

Yes I made the the jump from oil to inventions; whereby the popular wisdom proclaims that the alternative to oil bears another name: Diversification. But… Diversification Alone Is Not The Answer! It is only an interim puffer, but not the guarantor of survival. Only the fit survive. The fit are those who have trained the power and ability to create the future.

But…: Are African governments, think tanks, traditional institutions and financial institutes really ready to chart and push this course and pour all their resources into creating a new world, their own future? Do Africans believe that Africans can invent?

If we simply diversify from Oil to Solid Minerals, we will make the same mistakes again because not only are the underlying methodologies unaddressed and unchanged; nor the corruption issues in terms of persons, institutions and systems unammended; but, most importantly, the fundamentally flawed ideology that drives and guides our concept of nation-building, people-building, capacity-building – whatever you want to call it – remains the most entrenched and in-built weakness that we carry with us from generation to generation, from century to century. It is an ideology that supports a taker-mentality as opposed to a giver-mentality; it remains a receiver-mentality as against a creator-mentality; it stays a past-deifying and present-indulging mentality instead of a future-engineering one.

But it is better to produce the future than to reproduce the past. What our so-called education so far has not done for us is trigger the creator-gene. Systemically, deeply and deliberately. En Masse. The discoverer-Complex has yet to be activated within the context of African Culture, Upbringing, Orientation, Foundational Thinking that later guides investors, policy-makers, entrepreneurs and every citizen. We are talking about the Survival of the Species here.

The human being, in the end, respects only intelligence. Not just articulated intelligence, but intelligence that has yielded action and tangible form. The human species‘ only hope for survival and expansion, right from time, and for escaping extinction, has always been innovation and invention, i.e. the practical application of intuitive perception and intelligence. Thus, humans finally only respect those persons and groups whose ingenuity or depth of perception leads to discoveries and inventions that continue to move humankind forward. The urge to move, physically, mentally and spiritually, and to defend gained territories, is a deep evolutionary expression of primal survival instinct.

Therefore: Africans had better start believing that Africans can invent and that Africans SHOULD invent. And start pouring all their resources into making this a reality. Otherwise, the future which is being currently invented and designed by Non-Africans, for Non-Africans, will have no place in it for Africa and Africans. Or the place that will be reserved for us, we will not like it, nor possess the power and ability to change it. It will be worse that the days of Slavery and Colonisation. It will be a depth of systemic powerlessness and denigration not yet seen in the history of humankind. Because, if you don‘t make anything, you‘ll never own a thing.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Thoughts on Africa

INVISIBLE GARDEN

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Creation is soft and beautiful. But it is also meticulous and thorough, such that in all its softness it is also very hard, merciless and adamantine. Because everything comes back.

And in all it’s beauty, it is also very terrible and gruesome and unsmiling, because EVERYTHING is absorbed, tended, grown, prepared, strengthened and returned back to its originator. It is beautiful perfection.

You feel it but you don‘t realise it. All the time.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

THE INNER NATION

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What really runs a country is a system of thought, habits and behaviour to which a group of people subscribes. Not politicians. Not civil servants. Not a constitution. But simply an inner life in which all participate, and from which an intangible system of thinking arises that unites everybody who ascribes to it. It unites them and “runs” them according to a set of core rules which these people, in their inner being, unthinkingly believe to be the true reality.

This hidden level of surrender to their version of reality lies deeper that what is generally called culture and tradition. On the contrary, culture and tradition arise gradually from this foundation, simultaneously influencing its further development reciprocally – positively or negatively – even as it itself continues to reinforce the culture and tradition it birthed.

And then, after the level of “culture and tradition” has been formed, they in turn midwife the mentality that thinks out not just the surface laws and constitution of a country, but also the understanding of whether these laws are to be obeyed at all or in what way they are to be interpreted, implemented or circumvented. A recognizable national “way” comes to life which becomes attributable to that nation by everyone who visits it or lives in it. You just know: this is the way these people are.

Thus to influence or direct the path of a nation, you have to have power of this hidden level of reality, power over the nation’s inner life. You have to understand it, be homogeneous with it, so that you understand it and it understands you. You have to know it’s fears and hopes, the sources of its joy, and what is “real” to it. Only when you have mastered it on this inner level, will it follow you when you pull. You have to be it, but the better version of it. Sometimes, though, unfortunately those who grasp this are also the worst version of a nation’s inner life.

They have come to grasp that it is not really they themselves personally that rule the country – all they do is guide and manipulate an animal that already exists. Their job is simply to understand and feed the animal, by swinging in unison with the nation’s inner life. Because it is this hidden inner mentality that really runs a country, chaperoning it from generation to generation, reacting or not reacting to globalization and digitalization, focusing on the issues it focuses on, condoning the things it condones, evolving in its own way, determining its place on the global theater of nations and peoples, characterizing it as either a pawn, a puppet or a captain of its own ship.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

GO FOR IT

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The Quandary

To plant your feet on the ground or to reach for a higher branch and risk losing your feet?

No risk, no fun.

My take? If you feel the itch, if you feel the urge,… go for it.

Always go for it.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

STOP KILLING THEM BEFORE THEY GROW

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Nobody is born thinking he or she has less dignity or less worth than another human being. No child thinks it has less dignity or less worth – or more dignity or worth – than another child. These things are trained, instilled, indoctrinated and socialized into them in the process of growing up. By the time they become adults, they „accept“ their position, their place and their role.

Teach and train your children, above all, to be confident and self-confident. Self-confidence is the most powerful weapon in the soul‘s arsenal. It is what makes people cross boundaries and borders, break barriers, and open up new vistas of experiencing as well as make new discoveries for themselves, their environment and even for humankind. Self-confidence is the original character and prime characteristic of the Spirit.

When the spirit opens its eyes for the first time in the world of matter, it just finds itself confronted by this gigantic unknown world around it. But it is not intimidated, it is curious and full of the urge to adventure and discover. It is self-confidence that makes it set forth, intuitively certain that it will overcome all obstacles and challenges, thirsty for experiencing and knowledge, and wanting to forge its destiny, and find itself.

Children carry a deep sense of worth, of „I-am-somebody-ness“ inside of them. Of „I deserve whatever another child deserves“. They have a sensitive inner antenna against discrimination, and an instinctive feeling of having the same rights as very other child. Strengthen and preserve this intuition within them, so that they will never ever surrender their dignity and equality without a fight all through their life. And they will always win the fight.

But teach them too that in addition to their rights, as payment and balance for their rights, that they also have equal responsibilities as everybody else too. The responsibility to enact and uphold and obey fair and just laws. The responsibility to create and maintain and constantly improve a system that helps the disadvantaged without unfairly suppressing and disempowering the talented. The responsibility to not only preserve every good thing already achieved by humankind, but to be untiringly innovative and to invent and constantly re-invent the future. The responsibility to never stop seeking the truth, seeking to understand life, seeking to know what makes us human, what links us as humans, and how to become better humans. The responsibility to listen to their conscience.

This is a responsibility we all share – old and young. We pass on the torch endlessly to the next generation. We do this by igniting the flame within the young souls of children. Even if we are all reincarnated souls, Every Childhood is a new chance to re-engineer humanity, correct or discontinue the past, and save the future of humankind. Every child is worth the effort. Never stop trying. Never give up on a child.

Seek always to bring out the best in your child, in a child, in every child.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

NEO-AFRICANISM

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Nigeria has not yet had a Nigerian President. South Africa has had many Presidents, but only Nelson Mandela was a South African President. The others, before and after him, white and black, have all been just sectional leaders. Africa has had very very few AFRICAN leaders-of-state, Pan-African heads of government. Selfless father-figures and servants who are a father to all and a mother to all, regardless of ethnic or religious affiliation.

Why? Because it is not easy. It is not easy to place loyalty to high ideals above loyalty to tribe, religion, family and every thing else. When people come campaigning for votes and popularity, and they claim they will be „President of everybody“, „there will be no sacred cows“, they will be „everybody‘s friend and nobody‘s friend“, „everybody will be equal under the law“, they will rise above „tribalism and religious chauvinism“, they will not favour „their side above any other side“, etc etc etc…

Look at them carefully or just wait for it. In time, they have almost always turned out to be just a Big Fraud.
Why? Because it is not easy. Deep in their heart, everyone loves their ethnic nationality, their religion, their spiritual philosophy, their origin. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. It is normal and healthy. The question is: WHO loves the Truth and Justice MORE than he or she loves ANY OTHER THING? That is the Point. Who, above loving his tribe or faith, loves the progress of the Whole more than any other thing.

Not everybody is born to be a leader at the highest levels. Many are good enough to be administrators or guides or governors at lower- and mid-levels of groupings. But at the highest levels, only those human beings should qualify who have made the transition from healthy love of self to healthy love for all.

It is not easy. It requires honest and painful soul-searching. It requires self-unmasking experiencing. It requires self-conquest. It requires, not self-abnegation (for you cannot deny who you are, and anyone who denies who he or she is, is a liar or is still in the process of finding himself). It requires Ennoblement and Maturity. It requires elevation into Selfless Love.

These are the new kinds of leaders we need in Africa now and in the future. These are the people we should look for and encourage, instead of discouraging them. These are the people we should begin to awaken within our own souls. These are the Neo-Africans.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

THE CHANGING JOURNEY

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I know how it feels to die, having done so twice in this earthlife. The third time, I guess, will be the last.

In everything, I’ve learned that life comes and goes, like the leaves of a tree, like the steps of a journey, like the chapters of a book, in phases, steps and stages. And the most important recognition of all was this: Don‘t live in the past.

You can never be again the person you once were, nor do you need to. When you wonder – „What happened to me?“ – you miss the point. You are on a journey, a journey of inner development; a journey of character and personality growth; a journey of spiritual maturing. This is the real journey of life.

On this journey, you will pass through many phases of personality, different characteristics of character, you will be different people at different times.

Have the courage to become the new – and when it has grown old, have the courage again to shed it, leave it behind and move seekingly towards the new New. Do not be enticed by outward gains to stay in the old; nor pressured by difficulties to abandon the present or the New. Go your way with integrity, dignity and trust, because Vanity and Indolence are the true enemies on the journey of life.

You will be born many times, and die many times. And the past will be as a Dream. Just like a new born baby cannot remember it’s former earth-lives, so will you even within one earth-life sometimes die and wonder „What happened to me?“

Life happened to you, my friend. Like a train going from station to station, you are journeying from one state of being to another. It might be an upward journey or a downward journey – the choice is yours.

Just remember, what ever you do: Do not live in the past – no matter how good or bad it was. Like a boxer in a fight, sitting in the corner between rounds, you cannot go back and correct a bad round, but you can get up and fight the next one better.

Like a boxer in a fight, sitting in the corner between rounds, you cannot go back and hold on to the last good round you fought. Then you were fresh, now you‘re tired. Then you were strong, now you‘re injured. But you‘ve grown too, in knowledge and experience. So, get up and go into the next round – and give your best.

One good thing about life: it is not boxing. It is greater. Your best rounds are the rounds in which you give not darkness, but Love.

Che Chi-di Chukwu-meri-je.

HOLDING YOURSELF BACK

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Holding yourself back because you think that by acting freely in the fullness of your power and ability, you might sin against the laws of God and bind yourself to the earth or even to the lower planes. Fear of sinning and falling makes you afraid to spread your wings and fly to the heights, afraid to do anything apart from what seems safely and totally within the sphere of activity of Light-seeking and Light-serving. Thereby you bottle up and suppress everything within you which could make you happy, and which is urging for expression through you and out of you. Thus you step out of yourself and begin to look at yourself as the enemy of your own Light-salvation. You consider yourself the enemy and fight against yourself. You thereby fight against everything that can help you develop to the fullest the fullness of what you could or should be and make you happy. You become a prisoner of self, someone who has enchained and imprisoned himself or herself by himself or herself.

This is a terrible condition of consciousness, because the only thing that can free the prisoner is a change of consciousness, a new thought, a new consideration about how to live one’s life, be one’s self and go one’s path. But JUST THIS VERY new thought cannot break through within the consciousness of the prisoner of self, because the very basis of this consciousness is the suppression of such a thought. This bound consciousness IS the living expression of the fear of this thought; it is the living expression of the urge to prevent just this very thought from breaking through from the depths of the sub-conscious and becoming the new consciousness, greater SELF-consciousness.

The only thing that can help one out of this condition is the severe Love of the Light, the Grace which reaches one upon the bridge of one’s longing for true living. This Grace however manifests usually not in indulgent divine caresses, ironically, but as a gridlock of painful experiences which drive one to the end of the self-chosen path, at which end-point one finds – instead of fulfillment, salvation, completion, paradise and joy – inner emptiness, despair, confusion, doubt and self-doubt, a sense of betrayal and the feeling of being even further away from one’s goal than at the start of the journey of the earnestly-meant striving. Desperation and futility seize one’s soul.

At this point, one stands before the opportunity to awaken into a new conviction, fructified by a new, higher, freer, truer thought. To let go of the fear born of indolence and vanity, of egotism: The self-seeking fear that wears the false countenance of humble selflessness.

You have to become honest – to yourself, about yourself. Honest to the world about yourself. Who you are. What you are. You have to free yourself of the fear of failing and, even more accurately, of being seen to fail – which is vanity. The ugliest fruit of this vanity, the deepest sin, is the inglorious ambition to impress God. And, in consequence, to impress those who one supposes to be God’s representatives on earth. This is not necessary, as it only distracts one from God’s true nature – the height of naturalness and authenticity itself. It separates one from the inner state, the condition of self-consciousness, needed to be in contact, via homogeneity, with Paradise.

It is better to be yourself. Your truest deepest realest self. Because Paradise is inside you.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

NEW THINGS

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Environmental and spatial beauty start with Art and Imagination. When you imagine it, draw it, design it and then outwardly build it after that image – then you suddenly have outwardly what you crave and imagine inwardly.

As simple as this may sound, this is the key to quantum leaps and to infinite development. This is the assurance that the boundaries of Genius will always be crossed and thus extended intermittently as long as we continue to march through Time. Space is flexible, and bendable to Imagination and Inspiration.

New Nations will always arise from time to time; and groups of people will receive new insights into outworkings of the fundamental thought, and find a new characteristic of Matter and of engineering space – that is, they will find an old fact but it will seem new to them because it will supercede the knowledge available to them in their era.

The abstract is the Petri dish of the concrete, imagination is the fertile breeding ground of reality. To kill a people, kill their imagination and make them into a nation of copycats. Praise them when they copy others, and give them prizes, awards and honors when they copy others very well. But when they attempt to be innovative, to produce new thoughts, to toy with new ideas, to experiment with new possibilities, then ridicule them.

When they choose not only to copy or be inspired by that which is trending, but to create that which is different and not (yet) popular, when they decide not to follow follow, but to open new paths, then ostracize them, mock them, sideline them, punish them and hurt their ego and do not finance them. At the very least, ignore them. Soon they will abandon the path of difficult authentic growth and blend into the game of joining the train and going anywhere the train is going, but never going their own way or birthing new things.

But if you want to uplift a people, then liberate their spirit. Because human was not made for the sabbath, but the sabbath was made for human. If time waits for no-one, then no-one should wait for time either. It is not imagination that should adjust itself to reality, but reality should bend to imagination in order to keep on elevating itself. Matter, at its highest, can still only be the cloak of spirit. As the spirit wills it, so the universe will execute it reciprocally upon the spirit. Unfortunately, even when the spirit is willing, still the flesh – the brain, the earthling in flesh and blood – is weak.

That’s why we fight wars, and seek to oppress, dominate and ostracize each other. That is the origin of racism, bigotry and extremism. This is the cause of the stagnation of human civilization despite all illusions of technological flight. Weakness. It has its origin not in strength, but in weakness; inner weakness. The inability to really imagine and intuitively perceive Paradise and then to build it on Earth.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.