There's no way to escape the culture that has evolved, from

Hear, O seekers of memory and identity, the words of Wole Soyinka, poet, dramatist, and guardian of ancestral wisdom: “There’s no way to escape the culture that has evolved, from which we ourselves have evolved. Naturally, we stress it, break it up, reassemble it to suit our own needs. But it is there—a source of vital strength.” These words resound like the beating of a drum through the corridors of time, reminding us that no man is rootless, no woman stands apart. Each of us is shaped by the soil of culture, that living inheritance of stories, rituals, songs, and struggles passed down through the ages.

The origin of this truth lies in the journey of Soyinka himself, who was born in Nigeria and lived through the turbulence of colonialism, independence, and exile. He saw firsthand how cultures bend, break, and reform under pressure. He witnessed his own people—torn between tradition and modernity—find ways to adapt, yet never lose the strength of their cultural roots. Thus he speaks not of culture as a relic or a cage, but as a river that flows through us, nourishing and reshaping us even as we shape it in return.

Culture is not stagnant; it is a living flame. We take from it, we add to it, we sometimes challenge and rearrange it. Yet even when we rebel against it, we cannot fully escape it, for it has already marked us. Consider the story of the Harlem Renaissance in America. Descendants of enslaved Africans, torn from their homelands, forged new expressions of poetry, jazz, and art. They did not abandon their cultural inheritance; they transformed it, reassembling fragments into something powerful and new. Out of brokenness came renewal, and out of renewal came a movement that gave strength not only to Black America, but to the entire world of art and ideas.

So too in times of oppression, culture has been the shield of the people. The Jews in exile carried their songs, their prayers, their laws, sustaining identity through centuries of scattering. When nations rose and fell around them, their culture preserved them. Even when “stressed, broken, and reassembled,” it remained their source of strength. Soyinka’s words ring true here: culture is not fragile glass, but living clay, reshaped yet never destroyed, always bearing the imprint of those who molded it.

O children of the future, know this: to despise your culture is to despise yourself, for you are made of it. To forget it is to forget your roots, leaving yourself like a tree untethered in the storm. Yet to cling to it without movement is also folly, for culture lives only when it grows, bends, and breathes. Your task is not to worship culture as unchanging, but to engage it, to honor what is noble, to challenge what is unjust, and to reshape it with the wisdom of your own time.

The lesson is clear: your culture, however imperfect, is your inheritance. It is your strength, even when you wrestle with it. Do not seek to erase it, but to transform it. Like iron in the forge, it gains resilience through fire. Like music, it changes key yet keeps its rhythm. And when you draw upon it, you carry not only your own strength, but the strength of countless generations who walked before you.

Practical is this counsel: learn your culture. Know its songs, its stories, its struggles. Teach them to your children, not as chains but as stepping stones. Let them inspire you, guide you, even when you reshape them for new times. And when you face hardship, draw upon this well, for it will remind you that you are not alone, that you are borne on the shoulders of those who came before.

Thus remember the words of Wole Soyinka: “It is there—a source of vital strength.” Let this truth take root in your heart. For though cultures may bend and shift, though they may be stressed and broken, their essence endures, and in that endurance lies the wellspring of resilience, identity, and hope.