Of late, I think a lot about my childhood thoughts and compare them to my current modified ones. I think about how as a child, the universe was situated where we lived in a four bedroom walled house. My all-knowing parents dictated the rules and they were always right. I believed that my tribe was superior to the others. I don’t know how I came to that illusion but I strongly believed that.
I was a bit taken aback in secondary school, when I discovered that some of the other students lived by different rules in their homes. They even ate different foods or cooked the foods I was used to, differently. Imagine the horror of meeting kids from other tribes (that I had looked down upon) who were smarter me!
As the year passed, I discovered that even though my parents were the bosses, very occasionally, it was alright to break their rules because realistically, no one could follow all the rules right? I bet that even though my parents were perfect now, they surely would have been a little flawed when they were kids.
In college, I often hang out with people whose ideologies were similar to mine. I saw that even though there were many Christians, there were those that were super Christians (spent most of their day at church activities, never missed a University Christian Fellowship morning devotion, and spent the early mornings at the football field, praying themselves hoarse), there were the average Christians, and the occasional super Christian who behaved quite "unchristianly". What an outlier! What a disappointment!
At each stage, I modified my views a bit, and yet my overall perceptions were formed through the lens of a Ghanaian. In the US, I had a rude awakening that not only was the universe not only located in my childhood home or country, in the grand scheme of key players in the universe, my kind played less of a key role.
The differences between the others and me, was not just based on parenting, but culture, country, religion, the lack of religion, and so on. I was quite disconcerted to realize that despite all my growing up, there were truths I had held onto which were shaped by my specific culture and upbringing, and that when I shed those identifiers, those truths were not as set in stone.
There is also the modification in knowledge due to new discoveries. I think about the way we learned when we grew up in a pre-tech era, learning information that we thought was sacrosanct and how today with the discovery of new knowledge, we find that knowledge is not static, and that what we learn today may not be wholly true tomorrow. My middle son said that his teacher advised them not to ask their parents for help with math homework, but to check with their older siblings as they would have knowledge that is more current. Parents have dated knowledge!
I am often in awe when my youngest son, who is in kindergarten, and who is the last of my kids to attend the elementary school he just started, confidently explains stuff to me about the school’s practices. It is clear to me that he is clearly making up explanations on the fly, but he speaks so authoritatively that it is impossible not to listen to his fabrications. He even argues with his older brother who has been at the school three years longer than he has!
I can’t help but re-evaluate long held truths. What is truth? Whose truth is it? Is a truth I currently believe, formerly a lie?
CNN Lokko
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