You Have Always Been

At times you neglect the lion in you.

At times you question whether totems even matter, whether the names carried through generations are anything more than old stories whispered around fading fires.

You forget.

You forget that before you were born, someone carried your name in hope. Someone endured. Someone built. Someone survived long enough for you to stand where you stand today.

At times you shrink yourself to fit rooms that were never meant to contain you. You trade conviction for comfort, silence for peace, and purpose for permission.

But the lion does not cease to be a lion because it has forgotten its roar.

The river does not stop being a river because it passes through dry land.

And a man does not lose his inheritance because he questions it.

There are days when doubt will sit beside you. Days when your reflection will look unfamiliar. Days when the weight of becoming feels heavier than the dream itself.

Yet beneath the uncertainty, beneath the fear, beneath every version of yourself that the world demanded—

you remain.

The same blood. The same spirit. The same fire.

Waiting.

Not to become something new, but to remember what you have always been.

So stand.

Stand as the son of those who came before you. Stand as proof that their struggles were not in vain. Stand knowing that identity is not found in the absence of doubt, but in what remains when doubt has said all it can.

And when the world asks who you are,

do not answer with your fears.

Answer with your roar.

Maita, Shumba.

Mazviita, Matikaha. Hekani, mutsika-panyoro. Anomuka odzvova, otsika nyika yoziva kuti shumba yapfuura.

Zvaitwa, vari pamberi pedu. Zvaonekwa, vakachengeta zita kusvikira rasvika kwatiri.

Nhasi tinomira naro. Nhasi tinorirangarira. Nhasi hatipinduri nekutya.

Tinopindura nemudzvovo weshumba.