Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how great human trauma can be transformed to commence true reconstruction of people. Human trauma can lead to stunted growth and mass withdrawal.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the potential for transformation and growth following significant trauma.
Wole Soyinka highlights Rwanda's journey after severe human trauma, suggesting that despite the daunting effects of such experiences, it is possible for a society to rebuild and reconstruct itself into a positive example for others. The narrative shifts from despair and stagnation to hope and growth, illustrating the resilience of humanity in the face of adversity.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming adversity, one might reference this quote to inspire hope.
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
A war, with its attendant human suffering, must, when that evil is unavoidable, be made to fragment more than buildings: It must shatter the foundations of thought and re-create. Only in this way does every individual share in the cataclysm and understand the purpose of sacrifice.
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
I'm an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society.
There is no such thing as a great man of God, only weak, pitiful, faithless men of a great and merciful God.
The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.
In great countries, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents want to make them into adults. In vile countries, the children are always wanting to be adults and the parents want to keep them children.
Live both in the future and the past. Who does not live in the past does not live in the future.
But the saddest difference between them was that Zazetsky, as Luria said, 'fought to regain his lost faculties with the indomitable tenacity of the damned,' whereas Dr P. was not fighting, did not know what was lost. But who was more tragic, or who was more damned -- the man who knew it, or the man who did not?
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