Age of change

IT is one of its own kind without comparison or contestation and nothing in human nature is beyond its dynamics of influence. Like it is often said, the only phenomenon across the length, breadth, width and depth of the universe, or in the affairs of man, that is constant is change and for all practical purposes, change changes all changes cum things! Even in ages past, change was the primary motive that propelled the nature in man to opt for a new lease of life. It acts as a function of societal orderliness as well as being a guarantee of sound generational successions.

Hence, from age to age, generation to generation, culture to culture; man has been inspired or compelled to change, for better or worse. In the events of deliberate stagnation vis-à-vis man-induced resistance to change, consequent upon power tenacity-cum-other vicious obstacles, change as a god-of-some-sort, in need and deed, acts as a rescue of last resort by duly realigning forces of contention.

At its own beckoning pace, change can be likened to an impartial umpire that is ever conscious of its role-expectation on what and how to do it quite appropriately. By its regulatory mechanism, change can be so timely, precise and fundamental in the course of ushering new options and with its connecting power of linking successive (past, present and future) generations, there are almost always more excellent offers of doing it better.

Going by the onerous task that change usually plays whenever it is resorted to, it can be said that change, in itself, is a centre of gravity which operates as a balancing act between fiercely contending forces thereby ensuring that the order and course of nature is not voided by any dislocation or disruption for too long. Irrespective of the ensuing crises, human or superhuman, the inherent capacity of change empowers it to strike a gravitational pull that is equal to zero, and by implication, a balance leveling for all involved to start afresh as each circumstance or situation may require.

So habitually, change comes to man’s rescue whenever mere mortals resort to ‘playing gods’ with the corporate destiny of their nation at large. It was because of this usual irresistible change-dynamo that dislocated a once Nigeria’s ‘ultra-powerful’ ruler by forcing him to ‘step aside’ in the early 1990s having exhausted all his known-tricks for power tenacity. On the other hand, of yet another Nigerian ruler in the late 1990s, who had to be pulled out of power by the cold hand of death having deceived himself, for so long, of being insulated against any appeal for change. However, when his own time of reckoning came, he was eased off from the affairs of man by this ‘infinitesimal thing’ called change.

By deduction, what change cannot freely achieve through the voluntary choice of man, persuasive or interrelated means, it terminally does by a singular, deathly stroke.

Most often, it hardly ever matters how a typical change manifests, so long as it meets the ultimate craving of its beneficiaries; whereby the end justifies the means of getting it done, or so it is erroneously believed. By this, it does not matter who or what initiates the needed change so far as the society in a broader, better and beneficial sense ends up being the overall winner.

Just imagine if there has not been anything called change in the course of human affairs since Father Adam; for the world would-by-now have been afflicted with an asphyxiating monotony on one hand and some more hellish vices of quite unimaginable proportion on the other extreme, endlessly assailing humanity. That the world now has reprieves of sort from some often cataclysmic events essentially has to do with the open-ended elements of change.

If not for the reliefs and escape routes offered by changes through death, humanity by now might have been sunk in to the abyss of perpetual torment if the maddening tribe of Herr Adolf Hitler and ‘Comrade’ Josef Stalin were still in charge of larger Europe, Idi Amin Dada holding sway in East Africa or Sani Abacha in West Africa while Saloth Sar, also known as Pol Pot, was still on his own reigning spot in Southern Asia! Or the self-made gods of different eras in the mould of religiosity or terror attacks? Quite damnably, these pseudo-heroes or false-faith leaders were able to hold hostage the souls of their gullible folks through sheer deceits and polluted soul twisting.

In fact, with such a set of vicious minds still in command and breeding more of their ‘own bloody tribe’, the creatures called man would have been so experimentally recreated as another species for another planetary system! After all, part of Hitler’s Aryan Race plan then was to level the entirety of the defunct Soviet Union, human and all, and thereby turn it to inter-locking fishponds while Poland was to be wiped off for a grandstanding project! Nonetheless, thankfully, the force in the change mechanism readily came to man’s needed rescue, just in time.

At whatsoever and where-so-ever all else in human affairs have woefully fallen and failed to meet set-targets, there does change come along with ‘its magic wand’ to do what is needed and this it does, without let or favour. As the virtual lone factor which all fundamentals of development subscribe to, it follows that none can afford to ignore change and what it stands for.

So foundational is change to nature and its occurrences that even its seasonal circles of summer, winter, autumn and spring are easily noticed by the changes in weather conditions; planting and harvesting outputs. Within these interchangeable seasons, change actively motivates all inputs of orderliness as well as the resultant developmental process it evolves.

An account once had it that at the point of creation, two phenomena (i.e. change and land) stood out from the rest of the beholden pack without being accorded any visible endowments and this made the duo to depart from the said gathering so sorrowfully. Not long afterwards, their innate gifts began to manifest. While the entire universe, both animate and inanimate, disdainfully lorded it on the ‘common land,’ they matched so carelessly, they disregarded change as a disposable piece of wastage.

Before long, the reality of death which all human beings had (and still have) to submit to came and it was the same land that now gleefully opens up to swallow everyone and everything and that is after change on its own has already battered them from their infancy, adolescence, youthfulness to pitiable senility and from innovative innocence to utter uselessness.

By quantifiable standards, change is a force of some last resort which can swing either way of its directional pendulum – good or evil and what needs to be done is to fully harness the inherent virtues in its manifestation, rather than wait to be subjected to its devastating destruction!

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