27: The Page and The Book

The pages turn, leaf to leaf they rustle. Fine prints, small fonts, recycled paper, double space, and indented paragraphs: they constitute the citizens of a page. The parchments of old were rolled as one page while modern books are an aggregation of several pages.

Can one page in a book determine the total value of the book? Can the single page turn a new book to a bestseller? Can the contents of a page take a book from literary project to treasonable material? In the days of old the Bible was burned whole, not the pages that the reigning tyrant objected to but the whole book. These questions strike at the heart of the struggle between a man and his mission.

If we liken man to a page and his/her mission to a book then the struggle becomes clearer. A sense of mission and assignment endues many a mortal soul. You live with a sense that you are on earth to do something great…you know that yours is not a life of mere existence but should be one of intentional impact.

Then rises the dilemma when success follows your sense of mission, when the tide has turned in your favor and the justice of your cause becomes clear to all, what happens next? Is it a time for gloating; is it a time to be sunbathed by the praises of the multitude? Or should it be a time when you point the attention away from yourself and to the mission? Which is greater? The man or the mission?

This drama has played itself out throughout history: Achilles after storming the beaches of Troy, Julius Caesar on his return from winning the battles of Gaul, Jesus after feeding the multitude, Churchill when he was finally elected Prime Minister and Tunde Bakare when Obasanjo began to show his true character.

These were decisive times for all these people. They had bested the naysayers, those who said their calculations were risky, those who said they couldn’t deliver on their promises. They leaped forward, some with fear and some with confidence yet they all acted with courage because they could not see beyond their noses at that moment and had to trust their instincts. They knew they were born for the mission and acted with faith in the mission. Their courage paid off.

But this is when the true test comes…for Achilles he became filled with pride and turned the national battle to a fight to immortalize his name. Needless to say many lives were lost for the folly of his ways. For Churchill he graciously embraced those who had called him a warmonger when he clearly saw that Hitler was not a man to be pacified. His action united his nation behind him in the long and bloody battles for the soul of Europe and indeed the world.

But these were all men in the limelight, quite unlike the majority of us. We are not exempt from this dilemma. Those who are blessed with knowledge and jealously withhold its sharing graciously fail like Achilles. The worker who attains distinction at work and is suddenly elevated by the ‘powers that be’ but fails to use his/her new pedestal to plead the case of the not so gifted fails like Achilles.

She considers her elevation an endorsement of herself alone but fails to see it as a gifting that must be used to better the less gifted. Personal accomplishment is a poorly written page when compared to the bestseller that corporate success can become.

Again I ask which is greater, the Man or the Mission? the page or the book?

I beg to plead the case for the mission and the book. For without them, the man and the page would have no context for relevance. In all your posturing, never forget your mission and the strength you ought to show to preserve it above your own glorification.

Don’t be in a hurry to tear out the page from the book, the book would likely lose its total meaning. Its not about you, it’s about the mission. Never forget it.