Business Post Contributor
By Nneka Okumazie
How gracious should someone be, for something that does not belong to them? If someone died after one month, but before was strict with possessions, forming alliances with some neighbours against others, and allowing nothing to come near theirs, not knowing that in just one month, that thing would not belong to the individual anymore, should that person have changed his/her behaviour?
Yes, the kin takes possession, but that individual who had it can no longer exert control. This also means that before the demise, that thing did not belong to the individual again, it just seemed so.
This can be extended to one year or 10 years prior, but ownership, at least personally, is temporal. While anyone can keep what he owns, rejecting or using it for whatever purpose, there is an amount of temporality, in belonging, with everything.
It is true that the world can be sometimes cold, with no one caring as much and an unprecedented amount of selfishness. It is true to be wise, prudent, do what’s best with what one has and be cautious. But there is a place for being graceful, not because every possible direction to take advantage is not possible, but that the temporality of owning things makes it foolish to be so ungracious.
The turn that life takes exceeds predictions and understanding. The inanimate nature of possessions shows their disloyalty and change of ownership, possible at any moment. A complete enemy may turn out to own what the other person said never to.
There is so much uncertainty about things that to keep barriers like its possession would last forever, is unwise.
Grace is an understanding of the with-and-fade, of anything, including life itself. Being graceful is not about the judgement of what one is able to do what others can’t, but of the grace that may have made that possible.
The world being cold is sometimes exacerbated by capitalism. Money flow, control and possibility carries no care, only for what money does. But grace is greater than money, all of it.
Some people have worked hard for money to get things, while some have done other things to get money, then get the same things that the honest labour people got, or better.
This shows that the end of what money can do, loses its special place, since all kind of money sources gets there, and most times without grace. The things money gets, get old, new ones emerge, the prior owners go away, only a few expenditures from time back matter, etc.
Grace may not be considered at the point of every decision, but being graceful is its own kind of wisdom, gratitude and life.
[Luke 10:33, But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him]
