Why You Should NOT Mind Your Business (For Harper Lee)

I assume you were probably brought up to mind your business. If you have forgotten or you think the advice is out of date, a quick search on YouTube will show you what happened to the elephant that stuck its nose where it did not belong. You should see that video.

But, no, it is not to mind your business I want to talk about. I want to talk about not minding your business.

Harper Lee, best known for writing To Kill a Mockingbird died today. I am not a card-carrying member of the post-mortem club who think, on an artist or artiste’s death, he becomes the greatest person ever. Death does not make you good or bad... No, in my world, You do not get cookies for dying. Neither do you get a reprieve for dying.

That said, that book is my book. If I were to give a list of ten books to a Martian, it has a secure place on the list. When I remember the book, however, what touches me most and never fails to touch my sentimental bone is the trial of Boo Radley. Yes, Atticus Finch was the courageous lawyer who took a lost case on himself, putting his neck on the line. I write to talk about not minding your business and Harper Lee, yes... so, bring on Atticus but somehow, Dill steals the show for me. Dill, the little white boy that burst into tears had to be led away from the trial.

You must excuse me for dropping names. I think Alice Walker feels the same way I do when she says in The Color Purple, that to truly see the truth about a people, we must observe the children. If a single child is crying, it is highly important. She says we should ask: “Why is the child crying?”

Dill’s tears were not over his business. It was over the stench of his society which the adults had adjusted to.

I have always been asked why I bother with some of these things I go up and down disagreeing with. What is my own with male circumcision? Or with being interested in reading up all I can on the Holocaust? Or being the one bothered about FGM... For most people I have come across, no be today..

And so I seem to be one of those people who got the memo late that the world is crooked and no one can fix it. Yet, I cannot look away. Even when do not know how it is my concern, I just can’t turn my head and look at the other side. So I pick –isms here and there, carrying my mental placard when I know in my heart that what I seek in the world is not captured in any one –ism. I stay behind anyone who can shed tears and not leave trash for Lawma.

I doff my heart for the Harper Lees, who like Laaroye of the Yoruba pantheon, shed tears even more than the bereaved, for the Dills, the seeing ones in world where to be seasoned is to grow hardened and be able to look on at injustice without recoiling inside. For the men who are feminists, for the women for whom gender equity is not only feminism, for everyone who can cringe and sympathise with a cause that is not his.

How do you know it is not your business anyway, in a world where private companies go public and privatisation happens within the blink of an eye? How does one keep tab on what is one’s business or not?

Look what happened to the man who (thought he) minded his own business:

A man was in his house. He heard them shouting “Carry it”, “Nooo, don’t put it there”, “Why Should You Put it there?” He turned left, covered his ears with the pillow and slept even more soundly, cursing barbarians for not minding their business. “Carry it this way”, “Carry it that way”; our man slept on...

When the party was over, he found the thing at his backyard.

No, the story is not mine. I merely drew it from a proverb my father is particularly fond of which is translated literally as: “If you hear the clamour: “carry it, lift it”, if you don’t join them, it will be put in your backyard.”

So, I carry my mental placard and stand behind any –ism and talk that is for the sidelined because the affairs of man are my business. Every time the world has taken a step forward, usually it may be credited to the man who would not mind his business.

N:B: Please, give me the address of the man who said:”The darkest place in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality”; I think he deserves some flowers from me.