When The Chickens Come Home To Roost
My childhood was amazing. I was born in London, I had a brother, a sister and my grandmother. That was it. That’s all I had and it was more than enough. Yeah, I lost my mother when I was 4 years old, but it was never a factor. I love my siblings and the love I have for my grandmother is well documented.
Sometimes, times were hard though, but somehow we managed. We left London and moved to Jamaica and the second half of my childhood journey began. Life in Jamaica was vibrant compared to dull old London and finally I could see why my Grandma had spent so many years reminiscing about Jamaica while we lived in London. Jamaica was an amazing place to grow up in.
Being raised by my Grandmother also meant that I grew up on proverbs, my goodness, that woman had a proverb for EVERYTHING.
Whether it was telling you to hurry and do a task;
“nuh mek mi spit a grunng and it dry before yu come back”
(Translation: Don’t let me spit on to ground and the sun dries it up before you get back from this errand – Hurry Up)
or sometimes she would issue a warning …..
“Chicken merry, hawk deh near”
(Translation: The chicken is happy right now, but it doesn’t know the hawk is near – Basically, right now you’re acting up, happy, exuberant but trouble is around the corner – (usually said when you were one step away from a beating!)
She had a proverb for EVERYTHING
As an adult I now find myself speaking like her, thinking like her, which isn’t a bad thing because she was a phenomenal woman. I mean this woman outlived four husbands and felt absolutely NOTHING, she was a WARRIOR.
One thing she always told us was that we had to stick up for ourselves, she was after all, our fiercest defender. “Don’t let anyone treat you badly, stand up for yourself” – it was drummed into us and I see her teaching everyday through me and my siblings personalities, more so my brother whom, like me, is the calmest guy you will ever find. However once you cross the line, his temper, like mine, is uncontrollable.
This is one of the reasons why I want a zen life, because I know myself. Anger destroys the person who feels it and the thing it is directed towards. It’s like hate. It destroys the hater and the hated.
Where am going with all this you may ask? I’ll tell you. Two of the proverbs my grandmother used most often were “The higher monkey climb, the more him batty expose” which basically means the higher a monkey climbs the more of its ass you will see. The higher people get in life, the more they will be exposed to scrutiny, so live right. The second one she always used was “If yuh nuh go a fowl roost, fowl cyaa shit paa yuh” – If you don’t go under where a chicken is roosting, it can’t shit on you, which loosely means if you don’t put yourself in a bad situation you can’t feel the effects.
We complain about a lot of things in life, but how much of the things that we complain about come about because of situations that we put ourselves in? How much of the mess in our lives are we responsible for? I’ll tell you. ALL OF IT. Every single last ounce of it is our responsibility, especially we put ourselves in places and positions or even surround ourselves with people or situations that we just shouldn’t be in. You and you alone are responsible for your happiness, ALL OF IT. Never allow your joy to be dependent on anyone. You’ll find that they are worried about their own happiness, not yours and you deserve to be happy. It’s your right. There is no nobility in pain and you should live that way. FIND YOUR JOY
Life is too short to be covered in chicken shit…