You Can't Hide. We'll Meet Again

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Mountains don't meet. People do.

It's a Zulu proverb that means 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, 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 buy the Park Avenue building, where I live, one day? 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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