“If that’s not possible, then I will have to make do with the playgrounds of mortality, and hope that at the end of my life, I can say simply, whole-heartedly, that it was grace enough to be born and live.”

“The world is a marketplace we visit, the otherworld is home,” runs a Yoruba proverb from Nigeria.

Once we were so few we fit intimately into the life of extended families. As our numbers swelled, you would think we would feel an even greater sense of belonging, of belonging everywhere to everyone. But there are so many of us, more than we can ever know in a lifetime – or even imagine as individuals – that we often feel just the opposite: as if we belong nowhere to no one. We can move among multitudes, and feel isolated and alone. We live unique, private lives of hope and self-interest. We also live polite, cooperative lives of team work and negotiation. When our population was low, that meant cooperating on a hunt or ceremony or marriage, or perhaps the exchange of goods. We knew the people who owed us, and those to whom we were indebted. We knew our friends and allies on sight – they often revealed talents and tempers in the daily dramas of the community. We knew who to trust in a crisis, where to go for solace. Today there are so many of us that we forge alliances with people we will never meet, whose names we don’t even know – with banks, insurance companies, sprawling corporations, governments, churches, armed forces. We belong to organizations more virtuous and trustworthy than any of their members are as individuals. We belong to our families as we always did, to kith and kin, but we also belong electronically, telephonically, statistically, generationally, anonymously to people far from us.

“You are the bows from which your children, as living arrows, are sent forth.”

Be patient and you will finally win, for a soft tongue can break hard bones.