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What is heritage? According to Wikipedia, Heritage refers to something which is inherited from one's ancestors. It has several different senses, including:

• Natural heritage, a nation's fauna and flora, natural resources, and landscape
• Tradition, customs and practices inherited from ancestors
• Virtual Heritage, an ICT work dealing with cultural heritage
• Inheritance of physical goods after the death of an individual
• Biological inheritance of physical characteristics
• Birthright, something inherited due to the place, time, or circumstances of someone's birth
• Industrial Heritage, the monuments from the industrial culture
• Kinship, the relationship between entities that share a genealogical origin

Today am only interested in tradition heritage.

What we have inherited from our ancestors. These are things that make us who we are. It is what makes us different from others.

But why is it that the youth don’t like to be involved with their ancestors past?

Why is it that we feel ashamed to acknowledge where we come from?

Is it because our past ancestors were “0utdated” as often portrayed by foreigners?

Is it because we think modernization is the way forward?

Is it because modernization is more superior to our heritage?

Or is it because of media presentation of our heritage to be “peculiar”?

These are questions that you and I have to find answers to.

As once said by Buddha, “Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, and is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a polluted mind, suffering will follow you, as the wheels of the oxcart follow the footsteps of the ox. Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, and is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a pure mind, happiness will follow you, as a shadow clings to a form.”

It is our mental templates about things or issues that determine our perception or our take on a particular issue.
No wonder the media use a lot of propaganda.

I may say we are brainwashed. For we don’t think for ourselves but rather what has been fed constantly by others especially the media.

We tend to be more inclined to what others think rather than what is best for us.

Our culture, our heritage and our societies have been polluted, excavated and dumped to the hollows of yester years.

But who do we blame? I say none but us.

We are our own destroyers, we stand on a hill and look at the sky and wish that we could reach yet we do nothing to reach there.

Is our culture and heritage that much outdated as it’s portrayed by others?

What I believe is that there is no superior culture or heritage.

They are right depending on what they believe or where they come from. When you think you are right then no one or nothing will make you see things differently.

You will rather die believing as such than to believe otherwise.

As such is true to our beliefs and values.

So why change our culture and follow what others have “shipped” to us!?

Africans will forever be Africans whether they are in Europe or America.

There is that value that we will always carry with us whenever we go. We can’t change who we are no matter what transformation we undergo.

We shall forever be “us”.

So why is it that many of us youths try to be different from what we should be?

I tell you all, be REAL and be who you are!! “Of heritage and ideals, our code and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.”

Is modernization that superior to our ancestral heritage?

I don’t think so, not even for once have I ever thought that.

What makes one person or group or culture superior to others?

Nothing!

I take it’s our perception that makes us think so or otherwise. The moment we take others’ cultures and/or heritage we unconsciously make them better than us.

We should believe in ourselves and what we believe in music is seen as one of the ways in which people interact and socialize.

But why is it that many youths listen and/or appreciate western music yet our local music industry lingers away to its death bed?

This is because we think and act in a manner to suggest that western music is superior. It is no wonder that even our local musicians tend to change their music style to suit the so called “better music” thus pleasing their fans.

Why is it that a youth or a youngster who listens to old, classical local music is seen as backward and outdated?

I bet your answer is the same or better than mine. We should change our attitudes and our perceptions if we are to conserve our heritage, for it is going down the drain to a lost world.

And this change has to happen quickly and fast before we are doomed if we aren’t doomed already.

I shouldn’t bore you with a lot of stories and connotations. I say tomorrow is another day God Willing. But keep this in mind,

“A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.”

See you another day when God gives me the time, energy and wisdom to write again.

Feel free to comment, criticize or even accept my opinions.

I would be grateful to hear from you all.

By

 Fuad Yusuf Mohamed.