Dear Editor,
I penned this letter almost two months ago but delayed submitting it, for no specific reason. Well, the brother has departed, so why not now? I’m sitting with a Sports Illustrated magazine carrying the banner headline, ‘Muhammed Ali – The Legacy of the greatest still grows.’ I am transfixed, focused on a blown-up half portrait of him standing in a ring leaning on the rope, hands wrapped in bandaging and sporting his trademark black and white Everlast trunks. He strikes a pose like a super model; a youthful and beaming Ali with a winsome and child-like smile. There is the gleam in his eye, and he exhibits the chiselled and athletic physique of a young male in the prime of youth. He appears as if at any moment that picture will step off the page and stand before you – great people are so endowed.
As I kept looking at that picture along with a recent one on the opposite page showing him virtually helpless, sitting leaning forward slightly, wearing dark glasses and a slight smile, it seemed the direct opposite of the other. The words accompanying it read: “With effort, Ali can muster a shadow of the smile that seemed to light up the world in 1970…” And in looking at this world renowned sports personality who once had seemed larger than life, it brought to mind two sayings: “Once a man twice a child”, and “We know what we are, not what we may be.” Such a call rests within the domain of the great master, father time.
Nothing beats time, time does wonders both in good and bad ways, and trumps all. All things in the universe mature with time and bring to light everything in their fullness thereof. There is no saying to match our local proverb coined by our humble ancestors highlighting the overpowering influence of time: “Hog asked he mother wha mek he mouth suh long; he mother seh ‘wait me chile yuh time ah come’”. Most of us over time have become very much aware that maturity has its own virtue and carries with it a quality of reason that cannot be squeezed out of any forced ripe condition.
Often in my solitude I close my eyes and walk back in time as far as I can recall. And as always other strange things for reasons unknown would creep in such as: poor folks will surely die if they try to live by all the rules that were made for them. The words spoken by the ever vigilant and crafty Cassius of Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves, that we are underlings” ought to jab us and warn us to forever be aware. Yes! Time does mysterious things, and brings to the fore that which was once incomprehensible to young innocent minds. It is kind of magical how it brings order to what was scrambled, rearranges and assembles in a chronological sequence, and reveals in fullness. The answer to everything dwells within the bosom of time.
Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe
