By Ugochukwu
Ejinkeonye
“Now, I think no riches can compare with being alive…”
–
Achilles, Homer’s Iliad.
“One life
taken in cold blood is as gruesome as millions lost in a pogrom.” – Dele Giwa
 |
| *Dele Giwa |
Death is one appointment which every being must keep. And
as we know, appointments can either be brought forward or moved to a later date
or cancelled altogether. In the matter of life and death, any changes in
appointment schedules should be the exclusive prerogative of the Creator. No
man, therefore, has any right to arrogate to himself the role of bringing
forward any other person’s appointment with death. In fact, it is abominable to
even use one’s hands to hasten one’s own appointment with death. Laws of God
and man hold such actions highly condemnable. So, suicide bombers and their
sponsors, supporters and cheer-leaders should, therefore, get it into their
heads that they have no mandate whatsoever from the Creator of man to either
take their own lives or that of another, no matter the beliefs that fire their
unholy zeal and action.
Death,
however, is unavoidable, though loathsome. There is hardly anyone that wishes
to die. Not even the most valiant of men would embrace death so willingly. Even
those people who had been compelled by very harsh, unbearable circumstances to
wish for death have had to shudder, cringe and shrink back when the icy hands
of death sought to grip their throats. Deep down the heart of every man and
every woman, and beyond the facade of all apparent fearlessness and bravery,
lie this cold loathing and resentment for death. The survival instinct is there
and also the desire to avoid danger and death, and the longing to postpone
one’s date with death, temporarily at least, if not forever, hence the struggle
and fight at many a deathbeds.
