Find “X”!

The death of Edward “Ted” Kennedy really came across to me with a big shock, a rude one like my Jamaican friends would say.

I didn’t really know much about him but I know a little of his political build up. He was ranked as one of America’s most experienced Senators but could not get a shot at the presidency largely due to the Chappaquiddick incident.

In July of 1969, Mary Jo Kopechne's (a former campaign worker for the assassinated U.S Senator, Robert F. Kennedy) body was discovered inside an overturned Oldsmobile belonging to Edward “Ted” Kennedy under water in a tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts.


After the body was found, Kennedy gave a statement to police saying that on the previous night he had taken a wrong turn and accidentally driven his car off a bridge into the water. Later, he plead guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury; he received a suspended sentence.

The incident became a national scandal and may have affected the Senator's decision not to run for President of the United States in 1972 against the back drop of his elder brothers thought and belief that he was actually the one blessed with the richest political talent. He is the last of the Kennedy’s to bid us farewell.

This family lived all their lives thinking and being Americans. I remember Teds remark at Robert Kennedy’s burial “My brother should not be Idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; he is to be remembered simply as a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it” I wish I will have the opportunity of repeating these words by his grave one day as my tribute to the last of the Kennedy’s. I can just imagine the smiles on the faces of the Kennedy’s waiting to welcome their Kid brother and probably have a report on how he handled the Crown.

The Kennedy’s are some of the many Americans who over time built up a legacy that will live centuries after they have gone, I can confidently say that just for bearing that name Kennedy there are certain values expected of you in the United States, these are men who lived there lives adding values to peoples lives and fighting causes that will benefit the unborn and for that reason the world is celebrating their existence and mourning their exit.

No wonder an average American is so proud of himself. I can imagine how proud I would have been if I had a role call of Founding fathers like Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jnr., John F. Kennedy etc, men whose existence affected the life of generations, men whose contributions to government, produced a system that delivers to the people, men who answered the call for there existence and left with the hope of having people follow that path.

But then I am not American, so unlike the American who can boast of high ranking founding fathers, I do not have much to boast of, other than the likes of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Tafawa Balwa and a few etc, but an orphan should not deny himself the right of fatherhood, because then his existence shall not be recorded by anyone.
Like the great men of the past, we should be on a quest to find the Mathematical ‘X’ which I consider the reason for our existence. The process of finding the value of ‘X’ has never been a fun filled trip, ranging from nursery to primary through secondary and finally down to the tertiary institution. It is a journey you can not run away from. These men of old at every point in there lives realized that their existence would only make real meaning if and only if they took steps to right the wrongs of human existence, steps to make life easier for the people. The value of our ‘X’ should be the words on the lips of the generation we leave behind, it should be the legacy we leave on the sands of time. Like Naomi Rhode once said, “We can’t all leave a prestigious background or lots of money to visit our children, but we can leave them a legacy of love” and in the words of Benjamin Disraeli, “ The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example”

The final question will be to find ‘X’, to identify what our legacy will be when we are gone, how many lives have we been able to affect knowing that our lives are not just measured in terms of our achievements, Inspirations, Aspirations, Joys or Sorrows but most of all by our contributions to the happiness of our fellow men.