This life is cyclical. It is recurring and repetitive. It is what you put into it that you reap back. Your gains therein are your investments in it hitherto. In Yoruba philosophy, ” a ki i gb’alubosa ko h’efo” _ ”we can’t plant onion and harvest vegetable!
In life, if not for one or two cases which may run contrary to natural order, a man will not father a goat; a bird will sire not an insect while a tree will not produce a fruit not knowing to its natural species! Like the users of the environment who throw their refuses in its opening; who defecate in its public; who flush not its sewages and who clear not its filths , the environment will give nothing in exchange with all the dirties they are thrown in its way except which is more dirtier in forms of ailments and diseases which in turn will deprave its dwellers good health, security of life and resources that could be deployed to other developmental projects!
The orderliness of this cosmos has not been limited to only animal, tree and environment but has been extended to the planetary bodies such as the Sun , the Moon, the night and the day! They all ,in truth, maintain the sequence in which their Creator and our Maker, Allah, Has fashioned for them.
We read about this in Qur’an 36: 37-40 as follows:
” And a sign for them is the Night: We withdraw therefrom the Day, and behold they are plunged in darkness;
” And the Sun runs unto a resting place, for him: that is the decree of (Him), the exalted in Might, the all-knowing;
” And the moon ,- we have measured for her stations to traverse till she returns like the old and withered lower part of a date- stalk;
” It is not permitted to the Sun to catch up the Moon, nor can the Night outstrip the Day : each just swims along in its own orbit according to Law”
When everything has been regulated and guarded as painted above so as to foster peace and security in the land, a thinking head will be wondering why man, who has been made to enjoy all these constituents of the cosmos and who has been blessed with unparalleled intelligence to administer the land, would still act against the natural order and effect a disequilibrium therein?
Or why should the one created to benefit and enjoy the end-products of Allah’s grace of orderliness invest evils in it through his deeds and doings, forgetting that it is what you put in the nature that you reap from it ,- there is no magic or prayer that can alter the law of the universe since it has been patented that ”he whose balance of good deeds is found heavy, will be in a life of good pleasure and satisfaction ” while ” he whose balance of good deeds is found to be light, will have his home in a bottomless pit”
While the above Quranic statements are talking about the affairs of men in this life and what will be their lots according to their deeds in the hereafter, one can say without fear that a Friday which will be pleasant can be gauged from how its Thursday has unraveled and he who whose hereafter will be sweet will taste some of it here in his life. That is, man will start experiencing the reward of his deeds in this world even before his sojourn in the hereafter. If he does well, he starts enjoying what he is going to enjoy abundantly after his demise here before his death – ” And whoever is blind in this life ( blind as in blind from good way and deeds) he shall also be blind in the hereafter, and more erring from the way” !
As we can see the examples of a people who have invested evils in the cosmos and who have reaped evils in their offsprings , we have also seen a people whose good deeds have bounced back on their offsprings and cleared the roads of success for them for many generations afterwards!
Without mentioning symbolic examples of a people whose negative deeds have impacted adversely the lives of their offsprings, let us look around us, in our immediate environments if we will not find legion of people such as:
– A man who is into hard drugs and whose children have later in life trailed in his footsteps and even bested him to the extent that whenever their names are mentioned based on their deeds, the neighborhood will surprise not but instead exclaim that ” a child is a product of his father’s deeds!”
– A heavy smoker of hard drugs who regularly sent his son to buy it for him from its seller and whom when he was cautioned by other smokers who were a bit discern , not to send his son to procure the thing for him again but who would argue back that he who would smoke will definitely smoke whatever the efforts of others to dissuade him from it but who started reaping the fruits of his labour on the child before he was fifteen in age and who would go ahead to smoke more heavily until he was mad and spent the rest of his life in the act from the same neighborhood he had undergone his formative years!
– A primary school boy whose parents would not spare any teacher that would beat or punish him for whatever misdemeanor he might have committed and who would beat the teacher up in lieu of his beating on the child! Alas! Before the child would be twenty in age, what the father had invested in his life came to tell on him – he became untouched in the neighborhood for fear of the father who would beat up whosoever would beat him when committing a crime ; he entered into a bigger crime, nabbed by the long hands of law and gave a heavy fine to rot in jail for another twenty years of his life and when eventually completed the term, he could not be fitted into the society again , fretted into heavy drugs , became mad and died shortly afterwards!
– A man who was into selling alcoholics to children and adults in the neighborhood. He was into it for more than twenty years. Became wealthy and owned big property around his home. Later his children too started drinking heavily, involved in crimes around the vicinity where they grown up and later caught and rot in jail for years. While in jail, the father who had sold alcoholics for thousand of youths years back and who had had hands in their criminalization and bad character, became worried on the conditions of his children, became hypertensive and eventually stroke became his lots!
A woman lied against her co-wife that she was into adultery and that she had witnessed another man having intercourse with her junior co-wife! The junior wife was shamed and chased out of her husband home. But before she would go, she imprecated the senior wife that if she had not involved in any adultery and that if the senior wife had not caught her in any act but had lied so as to curry her disfavour with their husband, eternal same will accompany the senior wife and her offspring for life! Later, the imprecation had come to be as she had prophesied it!
A director of a public entity who had embezzled the pubic money with abandonment and had used the proceeds of the public parsimony to finance the life of his children and wife while the poor which the money was meant for in the first place ; for the betterment of their education , wallowed in ignorance and substandard education and eventually became disempowered and became poverty-ridden in life! Later, the children the man had belaboured himself to please would abandon him in the country at his twilights while enjoying their lives abroad without biting an eyelids!
– A police officer who in his haste to nab a driver who was not ready to bribe him had opened up a fire on the ‘erring driver’ and the fire instead gone into another man’s heart! A final year student of the university around where the policeman was plying his trade had been got caught in the ensuing fire! What a misfortune! The policeman having realized his avoidable error, ran away quickly from the crime scene, knowing what the public was capable at that moment and later, hi s Oga ( masters) in the capital, weaved the psychiatric option, saying he was a patient at Yaba left ,and eventually procured a pardon for him at the expense of the final year student’s soul! Some years later, two final year students of the same university were reported dead from the same spot while the then police officer had killed a final year student by an insouciant driver of a commercial bus in the school. Alas! The two final year students who had met met their ends this time, when checked were children of the run-away killer policeman who had murdered an innocent final year student in the past years! And the cycle continues !
In the reverse, the people of good deeds have also enjoyed the products of their investments too in the pleasant things of life which had happened to their children! A young lady had reaped the good of her parents when seeking admission into an higher citadel of knowledge at a time when it was hard to do so without having influence or knowing the people of affluence and influence.
She had approached an admission officer to beg her if she could see the school admission list perhaps her name might be there for the list pasted outside had been ripped off by angering admission seekers whose names could not be found in the list!
In the first instance, the officer ,a woman did not want to hear her complain but later she asked her her name. When she had told the woman, there was a frown in her face ,then a smile and then another question ;’ you said your surname was Ade’? Please which Ade and where were you from?. When the lady had answered her she repeated ‘ you didn’t mean you were Ade from town A ? . And when the young lady insisted that she was in actuality an Ade from the town the woman had mentioned, the woman probed her further : ‘ Is Mr Ade , a former Islamic studies teacher in B school ,your father’? The lady said yes and the woman who had been questioned her since all this while offered her a seat, bought soft drink for her and questioned her the more: ‘ where was him now?
When the lady said that her father Mr Ade had retired from civil service as a principal and he was now in the town enjoying his retirement, the woman praised God and told her as follows:
” Your father was instrumental to whatever success I might have attained in life and I had been looking for how to repay him though I didn’t know his whereabouts again since he was seconded to our school then as an Islamic studies teacher when I was in form 1! ”
”It was your father who had financed my secondary school education when my father had met his end abruptly after my admission into the school! He, out of his meagre salary then and magnanimity when my mother said I should quit schooling for her incapability to shoulder it, volunteered to pay my school fees till I finished the form five! ”
” And surprisingly, when he was transferred to another town when I was in form four, he made arrangement for my form five school fees and that of WAEC too! Thank God, the then regional government through its scholarship scheme, offered me a slot to study abroad and since my return, I had been trying to locate him but to no avail!