How Man Got The Gift of Death

- Chidinma Okafor

      On earth today every living thing dies. Nothing lives forever. Animals and plants, and humans as well. Even plants and animals outlive humans. In the world today people die at any time and anyhow, old and young alike. There is no definite age for death. Originally, after the "let there be" it was not like this. Death was unknown and living things lived forever.

How then did death come? Why do living things die? All these started when man ate the forbidden apple. The creator chased him out of the lovely garden and he came down to the treacherous earth. He suffered so much on earth that the creator who was always looking down at him from heaven thought of a way to relieve man of such suffering and pain.

The creator then summoned man and told him that he would give him an option to choose from. What were these options? You can't imagine it, LOVE and DEATH. The creator told him to send two animals to come up to heaven to pick up whichever he chooses. But the creator gave him a condition that whatever the first animal to arrive chooses is binding on man. Man was very happy thinking that the end of his sufferings had come. 

So he sent out the tortoise and the dog, knowing very well that the dog runs very fast while the tortoise can only crawl. Man ordered them to go up to heaven and bring love to earth. The tortoise being very crafty, selfish and jealous was angry that he could never reach heaven before the dog, to get the honor of bringing love down to earth. So he made up his mind to deal with man for matching him with the dog in such a historic glory-winning race.

The dog and the tortoise set out for the journey with the tortoise's mind full of grudge. The dog ran and ran. He ran so fast that he covered more than half of the journey in a day while the tortoise in his crawl had just begun the race. The dog got tired and decided to take a rest. Then he said to himself, "there is no way the tortoise can come this far in three days." So he went hunting for 'feces' to eat. After a while the dog found a fresh mound of feces and settled down to enjoy. When he finished eating he fell into a deep sleep for he had overfed himself. The dog slept and slept while the tortoise crawled past. Due to the grudge he bore in his mind he was so delighted to see the dog sleeping.

Tortoise went straight up to heaven and met the creator while the dog still slept. The creator brought out the options and told tortoise to choose. Tortoise full of vengeance was only too happy to pick death, and merrily he started back home.

The dog suddenly woke up after the third day and soon realized where he was. He ran and ran until he got to heaven just to see tortoise grinning from ear to ear with a horrible looking parcel under his arm. He rushed up to the creator and asked him what tortoise had chosen, only to discover to his chagrin that tortoise had chosen death. The dog covered his face in shame and cried all the way home for the untold horror disappointment his indiscretion has brought to earth.

Gladly tortoise crawled back to earth and summoned all living things together. When all were present, he opened the parcel of death. Every living thing there was affected by the smell of earth including tortoise himself, though he withdrew instantly into his shell but he could not hold his breath for long. From that fateful day death came to earth, living things began to die and it has been that way till date.

I then pop the question, "who is to be blamed". You can apportion blames but the fact remains, "every living thing must die". Thus there is no need to continue asking, "Why living things die".

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Chidinma Okafor is a Lawyer and writes from Nigeria, West Africa