We often sit down and ask ourselves a question that never seems to have an answer: Why did our Forefathers and fathers live longer than men of today?
These were men who would wake up before the cock crowed. Men who trekked miles to the farm only a cutlass, a hoe, and their bare strength. Men who cleared think forest with just a cutlass and a hoe, who tilled hard soil under the scorching sun, who carried heavy loads on their heads for kilometers without complaining. By every logic of modern science, they should have died earlier. They work harder with less medicine to relieve their body pains. They only maternity hospital with no sophisticated machines or equipment.
Yet they lived. Some 80, to 90, and even 100 and above. My grandparents died at 105, and 98 respectively.
Why do they live this long despite the crude condition of life they lived in?
Many people would say it is about the organic and pure natural food they eat. Though that also contribute, it's more about how they respected time and tradition.
In many of our local communities in my country and across Africa, the calendar was not just to number dates. It was more or less a law. It was life by itself. There were three days for work and the fourth day is for rest. That fourth day was sacred, and a day no man does no work. And men respected it.
On that fourth day, you would not see a man with a hoe on his shoulder going to farm. You would not hear the sound of a machete in the bush. Men stay home and rested that day. It was an unwritten agreement between man and nature. As men work for three days, they let the earth breath on the fourth day and rested with it too.
That kind of rest gives the body what our bodies are begging for today. It's a complete circle of exertion and recovery. They understood something we often ignore: that rest is not laziness. Rest is part of work.
Now, look at us today who claimed to live in an era of modernization and have everything that makes life easier. We do not rest. We have turned ourselves into machines. Monday to Saturday we chase money in the office, in traffic, on our laptops and phones. And even the Sunday, the only one day that the entire world has agreed should be a day for rest, has become so only by name. Sunday is now for weddings, for burials, for shopping, for side hustles, for church programs that last from morning till evening in the name of prayers. We return from Sunday church services more tired than we were on Saturday. We call it rest by name, but our body never experiences it.
We have no fourth day, we have no Sunday. What we have is only endless motion. Our Forefathers knew that a man who does not stop will break down. That's why they built rest into the culture itself, so you could not disobey it even if you wanted. Tradition would hold you. People who saw you working will question you. It was sort of a communal protection against self-destruction.
Modern men lost that protection, and we are paying for it with high blood pressure at 35, with stoke at 40, and sudden death that we can only explain away as "he was always strong."
I think it's time we look inward and give ourselves the rest our bodies needs. Rest means a state of no motion. Today's Sunday, sltay in your house. Eat. Sleep. Sit outside and look at nothing. Let your body repair the damage of the hustle for the week. Let your soul catch up with your body.
You need it not just for yourself, but for your children. They do not need a hard-working corpse, they need a living father who will be there to see them become men and women.
Our forefathers were not primitive, they were Wise. And perhaps we can borrow from their wisdom.