If We were gods.
Exploring the myth that might hold our truth.
Growing up in an African household, spirituality was more than Sunday services and prayer meetings. It was the stories whispered late at night, about gods and deities who walked among us, who shaped the land, and the waters. The tales weren’t just about power; they were about people — humans —who tapped into a force beyond the physical.
In African mythology, deities like Șango, Oya, and Oșun were once humans. Their stories tell of transformation, of ordinary people becoming extraordinary beings.
Every culture, every religion, speak of beings who transcended their limitations and found some power that lies beneath the surface of our skin. The gods we hear about, the ones we worship, they weren’t otherworldly. They were… here. At some point, they might have asked themselves, is there more? And somehow, they found it. Perhaps we too, like the gods of old, have untapped potential that could transform us. Maybe the difference between us and those deities lies in the fact that they discovered their powers while we remain asleep in ours.
I find myself questioning more these days. What if everything I’ve been taught is just one version of the truth? Christianity, Islam, Traditional African spirituality — what if each holds a piece of the same puzzle? Like different rivers flowing towards the same ocean. Perhaps every religion, every belief system, is just a pathway to understanding the same universal truth.
Maybe the truth isn’t confined to one book or one doctrine. And in that truth lies the possibility that we are capable of far more than we can imagine. What if, despite the uncertainty, there is something to this yearning we feel deep inside? Maybe the stories of gods and ancestors aren’t just myth, but blueprints left behind for us to follow. What if spirituality isn’t something we discover but something we remember?
I think about how so many of us, raised in religious households, were taught to respect a higher power outside ourselves. We look to the heaven, or to the divine, for guidance, for salvation. But what if the divine is already within us, waiting for us to tap into it? What if every prayer, every meditation, every ritual isn’t an attempt to connect to something external, but rather a reminder of the power we already hold.
It makes me curious, this idea. That maybe the gods we were told to fear and adore were once just like us. People searching, questioning if there was more to life than what we could see. then they found the answer. Maybe they unlocked a part of themselves that passed the limits of the human experience.
What about us? Could we, in this modern world, with all its distractions, find that same spark within us? Or have we moved too far away from spirituality?
Then again….What if it’s all just a beautiful lie? What if the gods, the spirits, the ancestors, all of it, are just stories we tell ourselves to feel connected to something bigger than our brief experience? What if our potential is limited, not by a lack of faith or awareness, but by the simple truth that we are humans — flawed and fragile.
What if there’s nothing profound lurking beneath our existence? What if we’re just fleeting moments with no secret or deep spiritual mystery waiting to unfold? What if the gods we worship are just stories, and our search for something more is a futile attempt to make sense of the chaos that surrounds us? Maybe we are simply small, insignificant beings, trying to make meaning in a universe that doesn’t owe us any.
In the end, I suppose the answer is something we’ll never fully know. Whether or not we ever tap into something greater, perhaps the journey itself is what matters. The search for meaning, the exploration of our potential — maybe that is what makes us more than just a fleeting moment in the universe. And maybe that’s the most spiritual thing of all.
