The Scroll That Never Ends
We scroll through feeds; they scrolled through life.
We double-tap; they nodded in silence.
We post to be seen; they spoke to be remembered.
If our grandparents had Instagram handles, would their posts trend, or would they simply teach?
Would they post selfies, or stories wrapped in proverbs?
Would their “aesthetics” be filters or firelight?
Because before captions, there were chants.
Before hashtags, there were hints.
And before content creation, there was meaning; slow, deliberate, spiritual.
The Morning Post: “The Sun Teaches Patience”
Imagine your grandfather with a smartphone.
He takes a photo of his farm, dew glistening on yam leaves, and types slowly:
“The morning doesn’t rush the sun. Why should you rush your journey?”
No hashtags. No filter. Just truth.
Now scroll to the next post, a Gen Z version:
“Soft life loading #NoPressure #Blessed.”
Different captions, same desire: peace, timing, enoughness.
But where he found peace in the soil, we look for it in pixels.
His patience was a lifestyle; ours is a hashtag.
The Comment Section of the Ancients
Let’s imagine what the replies under his post would look like.
@ObiTheBlacksmith: “Truth, elder. My yam shoots have just broken ground.”
@MamaNgozi: “The gods reward steady hands.”
@EzinneSpeaks: “Wisdom as always. I’ll rise earlier tomorrow.”
No trolling. No spam. Just echoes of gratitude.
Every comment was a proverb; every like, a bow of respect.
Their threads didn’t go viral, they went vital.
Each word added to the community’s collective knowing.
The Grandmother’s Feed: Threads of Firelight
Her content wasn’t digital; it was alive.
She went live every night by the fire.
If she had Facebook today, her post might read:
“No matter how tall the iroko grows, it still listens to the wind.”
Bio: Storyteller. Healer. Keeper of the night’s language.
Meanwhile, her granddaughter’s bio says:
“Unbothered. #Soft era. Taking no nonsense”
Both powerful; one rooted in survival, the other in self-preservation.
But what happens when the aesthetic forgets its ancestry?
The Marketplace Post — Their Version of a Trend
The village market was their trending page.
The chants, the laughter, the rhythm of drums, everything was performance, marketing, storytelling.
Every seller had a “content strategy”:
The pepper woman sang loudest; the bead maker told legends about her stones;
the palm wine tapper came with jokes that kept customers coming back.
If Grandmother posted from that space, her caption would say:
“Your tongue can buy what your hand cannot afford. Speak wisely.”
And it would spread, not through data, but through destiny.
By sunset, her words would reach the next town, passed on by traders who’d become her followers.
No Wi-Fi. Just word of mouth and wonder.
A Viral Post from the Past
Once, an elder spoke after a bitter dispute in the village.
He said only one sentence:
“When two brothers fight, strangers inherit their father’s land.”
By dusk, the whole community knew it.
It spread, from palm wine bars to riverbanks,
from whispers to wisdom.
No retweets. No shares. Just resonance.
Because truth, once spoken, doesn’t need algorithms to travel.
It rides on the wind, carried by conscience.
Today, a post trends for 24 hours.
Theirs lasted 24 generations.
The Feed Beneath Our Feet
The past isn’t gone. It’s archived in our DNA, a living scroll waiting to be read again.
Every proverb, every silence, every scar is a post we still carry.
Maybe we don’t need to delete our digital lives.
Maybe we just need to decode them,
to make them hum with the same wisdom our ancestors lived by.
Because the ground beneath our feet remembers more than our phones ever will.
Because your chi still refreshes your soul’s feed when your signal fails.
So before you post again, pause.
Ask your chi:
“Is this truth, or just trend?”
And maybe, in that silence,
you’ll hear them whisper —
from the ground, not the cloud:“We posted our lives so you could read the way.
Don’t just move, remember.”