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A life deferred
Peeping tom…
Kaieteur News – There is a particular sadness in a life postponed indefinitely in the name of duty. It happens not suddenly but via the quieter erosion of years, years surrendered to causes that promised meaning but which delivered only regrets. One wakes, late, to the realisation that the postponement was not temporary, that the waiting itself became the life.
Few works capture this condition more poignantly than the movie Remains of the Day, brought to life through one of cinema’s most measured and devastating performances. Anthony Hopkins dis one of the great and most versatile actors of cinema. One of his most riveting performances was in Remains of the Day, a movie adopted from the book by the same name, a book written by Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Kazuo Ishiguro.
The moral of the book and movie revolves around the central character named Stevens who gives his loyalty to a man and to an idea of service so total that it consumes him. He does not merely work for Lord Darlington; he lends him his moral judgment, his silence, his emotional life. What is most devastating is not that Darlington is flawed—history is crowded with flawed men—but that Stevens, a butler, insists on the purity of his devotion to his master long after the cause has collapsed.
Duty then becomes a refuge from self-examination. This is the bargain many make, not only in grand houses or imperial drawing rooms, but in political movements and parties. One offers one’s time, intellect, moral seriousness. In return, one is promised participation in something larger than oneself: progress, justice, nation, destiny. The sacrifice is framed as noble. Personal desire is indulgence; doubt is weakness. Life, we are told, can wait.
And so, it does.
The years pass in meetings and manifestos, in defence of leaders who speak the language of virtue while practicing something far more ordinary. We, their supporters, repeat their arguments, internalise their grievances, and borrow their enemies. Slowly, our own inner life thins out. We become representatives rather than persons. What is most unsettling is not the eventual betrayal but our complicity in it. The signs are always there. Stevens hears them in the polite evasions, the changing guests, the narrowing moral universe of the house he serves. Yet he refuses to see. To see would require him to acknowledge that the life he postponed has no later date scheduled.
This is the unspoken terror. It is one in which loyalty, once invested, becomes irreversible not because the cause remains worthy, but because withdrawal would expose the emptiness beneath it. To leave is to confront the question that loyalty successfully postpones—what have I done with my life?
Men and causes exploit this fear instinctively. They reward obedience with proximity, with the illusion of influence. They punish doubt and dissent with exile. And they understand that those who have given the most are the least likely to leave. The sunk cost becomes moral captivity. When the betrayal comes—as it always does—it is rarely dramatic. It arrives quietly, dressed as necessity. Principles are “reinterpreted.” Promises are “contextualised.” The language of sacrifice is repurposed to explain why the sacrificers themselves must continue to do without. And still we remain, defending what no longer defends us. The tragedy is not simply that leaders fail us. It is that we allow them to borrow our lives without interest or repayment. We confuse endurance with virtue. We mistake loyalty for identity. Like Stevens, we pride ourselves on professionalism, on restraint, on having “done our duty,” even as the substance of that duty empties out.
Only later—often too late—does the reckoning arrive. Not in public disgrace, but in private moments when we are hit by the realisation that relationships were neglected, talents undeveloped, joys deferred until they quietly expired. One sees that the cause did not require this much of us; it merely accepted it. To give oneself to a cause is to escape the burden of self-definition. It is easier to serve than to choose.
Yet the cost is severe. A life postponed in the name of duty is rarely recovered. When Stevens finally travels, finally speaks of love, the world has already moved on. The dignity he prized reveals itself as sterility. The lesson is not cynicism, but vigilance. Causes matter. Loyalty has meaning. But when duty demands the permanent suspension of one’s humanity—when it asks for silence where conscience should speak, or patience where courage is required—it is no longer duty. It is abdication.
And the most painful betrayal, in the end, is not by the men or movements we served, but by ourselves—for mistaking postponement for purpose, and obedience for a life. Choose carefully the leaders to whom you give your days and your voice, lest in serving them too faithfully you discover—too late—that your own life was the thing most faithfully postponed.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
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Thank you, thank you Peeping Tom. I just ordered The Remains of the Day on eBay. Will probably order a few more to give as gifts. What a powerful message even though fictional.