I did not want to raise you in fear or false memory. I did not want you forced to mask your joys and bind your eyes. What I wanted for you was to grow into consciousness. I resolved to hide nothing from you.

A Way of Being Free - Ben Orki

“It is for me an axiom that words create a mysterious reality. That is why my approach to writing essays has always been a personal one. I always aim for uncluttered expression. It seems more courageous to express your thoughts clearly and simply. Nothing is more difficult than knowing what you really think. It is a curious thing to say, but it is easier to be complicated and complex than to say something truly and simply. Rigour and logic are perhaps not much appreciated, yet without logic, without rigour, writing fails. It took me many years to rid myself of needless complexities.

Laws do not bind our perceptions. There are as many worlds as there are lives. It is not those who have no imagination who are the problem, for we all possess imagination, few of us use it well. The problem is with those who are frightened of the rather limitless validity of the imagination, frightened of people who continually extend the boundaries of the possible, people who ceaselessly redream the world and reinvent existence; frontiers people of the unknown and the uncharted.

It is precisely in a broken age that we need mystery and a reawakened sense of wonder: need them in order to be whole again.

*Redreaming the World: For Chinua Achebe

“It is possible that a sense of beauty, of justice, of the inter-connectedness of all things, may yet save the human species from self-annihilation. We are all still learning how to be free. Freedom is the beginning of the greatest possibilities of the human genius. It is not the goal.