Soul's Wisdom

The Stolen Narrative: Reclaiming Africa's Soul Our Buried Inheritance Ethiopia—and Africa—possess a  living tapestry  of history: ancestral wisdom in 3,000 tongues, cultures deeper than soil, unity forged through millennia, and pride in the melanin that maps our genesis. These are not relics, but  birthrights . Yet they were  deliberately fractured —not for being too vast, but too unifying. Colonial architects knew: united cultures resist exploitation. The Generation of Lost Stories 70% of Africa is youth (20-35) but all of them (100%) were robbed of their roots. Our elders’ truths were silenced by political puppets branding historians "tribalists" or "backward." Western-curated textbooks replaced oral epics. Youth learned  distortion as doctrine : Diversity became division, Kinship became suspicion, Shared land became "stolen"territory. The weaponization of identity has become the main strategy to implement the fictional narrative making us victi...

I love my birthplace—Addis Ababa. I love my village, my town, and my country. How could I not? I believe the same holds true for every Ethiopian. We are deeply connected to our people, our languages, our landscapes, our food, our culture, and everything we grew up with. It is part of who we are. Ethiopia, like many African countries, is vast and diverse—stretching across the south, north, west, and east. To give you a sense of scale: the eastern part of Ethiopia alone is comparable in size to the entire country of France. As a nation, we are large, rich in heritage, and culturally and linguistically diverse. Yet, for generations, Ethiopians—like many Africans—have been fed a single, fictional narrative. We were told we are “poor,” “uncivilized,” “backward,” and even “liquid” — a term some Western thinkers used to label developing nations, in contrast to their supposedly “solid” societies. But the events of recent years, especially, the COVID-19 pandemic, have revealed the truth: no cou...

An Invitation to Balance Human Ingenuity with Divine Trust In earlier times, conversations often began with something as simple as the weather. Today, we instinctively reach for bigger questions—questions that ask us to imagine the shape of tomorrow. So let me borrow that modern icebreaker: If you could see your future, what would it look like? Most of us would answer with hope. And this is striking, given that we live in an age marked by pandemics that have shaken the world’s confidence and overturned our assumptions about progress. This is the paradox of progress: Humanity has achieved extraordinary things. We have shrunk distances through technology, built unprecedented wealth, and connected billions with a touch. Yet for all our brilliance, we remain unable to see even one step ahead with certainty. COVID-19 laid this truth bare: With all our algorithms, satellites, and data, we still could not foresee the fury of a microscopic organism. This isn’t a lament against modernity. I ad...

Ethiopia’s fledgling democracy stumbled before it could take root. This failure is not Ethiopia’s alone; it echoes across much of Africa, where nations that once embraced self-determination now teeter toward discord. Our youth—those who should be the torchbearers of democratic ideals—have become captives to a politicized identity crisis. In today’s discourse, especially on social media, political opinions are interrogated not for substance but for the speaker’s ethnicity, region, religion or identities. Ideas have been subordinated to who we are: this or other ethnic group. We’ve ceased to be citizens first; we are now tribal emissaries, relics of a corrupted liberation struggle. This crisis was not born of chaos but of calculation. For over thirty years, higher education was turned into a tool for social engineering. Universities no longer nurtured critical thought; they manufactured ethnically charged elites. Curricula were hollowed out and replaced with dogma approved by those in ...

While reading Jimmy L.Lyson’s poem "Left Out in the Cold," I was deeply moved by his palpable anxiety and felt compelled to sympathize with his sense of mental incarceration—which I did. His portrayal of being unable to act or speak freely, despite his technical "freedom," evokes a universal empathy. He admits to wanting to "remove the sting," which I interpreted as a stain from the past, yet finds himself perpetually "left out in the cold"—a fate that feels tragically plausible. But as I immersed myself in his thoughts, the line  "wanting to claim some of God’s power and glory"  struck me abruptly. My sympathy curdled into anger; the words seemed delusional. If he truly believed in God’s power and glory, why couldn’t he be "brave and bold" enough to "sing" as he claimed he desired? Mystified, I reread the poem, probing beneath its surface. Only then did I grasp Jimmy’s deeper intent: his repeated lament —"he ha...

Today’s public discourse—both in mainstream and social media—reveals a consistent, radical shift in societal values. Perspectives on tradition, education, and life itself have transformed dramatically. Why? Time  has  changed: democracy champions unprecedented freedoms—gender identities, careers, lifestyles—with few restraints. Living standards have surged, extending lifespans. Youth form families earlier, fueling a global population boom. Education is democratized; degrees and titles flow freely (if not always meaningfully) from institutions. Technology shrank the world, and nanomedicine promises miracles. Even religious institutions now prioritize "well-being" over scripture, granting followers near-total autonomy. Yet, amid this wealth, luxury, progress, and optimism, heinous crimes multiply. New diseases emerge. Unemployment and poverty persist. Deaths toll hourly. What explains this paradox? What defines today’s "refined" human? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s dia...

There are many quirks in local media that I can usually tolerate, but one recurring practice makes me uneasy: the excessive and often unnecessary use of personal or professional titles in news reports. Take, for example, Mr. Bekele. He may be a civil engineer by training but currently serves as a CEO of a company. Yet, the media repeatedly refers to him as Engineer Bekele —"Engineer Bekele said this and that..." This is superfluous. What matters to most readers is that he is the CEO, an authoritative figure in the context of the report. His educational background, unless directly relevant, is secondary at best. Firstly, his current role as CEO is far more pertinent to the issue being discussed than his academic or professional training. Secondly, "Engineer" is not a formal title like Dr., Prof., Mr., or Rev. (A discussion I’ll save for another piece.) If the aim of the news is to convey what the company thinks or what its leader has said, why distract us with i...