Mountains Don't Meet People Do

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Introduction: When I was in college in New York, I used to go downtown to admire clothes and shoes in department stores. Admire. That is what students do, admire. One day, on one of those wide streets, I heard somebody calling my name. I turned. It was an old friend. From Johannesburg to New York City. Incredible. 

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Be careful how you treat people today because you might meet them in the not-so-distant future. I’m trying to think of the right English proverb. Every dog has its day? It doesn’t sound right.

No condition is permanent? Definitely not that one because it sounds like a line in movies. That is how powerful they are, movie lines surreptitiously graduate into proverbs. Let’s check other languages.

1. Mountains don’t meet, people do: Zulu proverb.

2. When you come down a tree, you’ll meet the people you climbed on to go up: Igbo proverb.

All languages have something similar. Treating people right today is not in the front row of our minds because of power. It determines how I treat the help, the receptionist, the farmer renting my land and other people I regard as minions.

Besides, what is the possibility that the doorman I treat badly today will one day buy the Park Avenue building, where I live? It is so far-fetched, Hollywood and Bollywood have not made a movie about it. Point taken, but I’ll stick to the Zulu proverb.

Mountains don’t meet, people do.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.

 

 

 

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