Edinburgh, Curses and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

I arrived in Edinburgh a few days ago from London, and one thing has caught my attention almost immediately.

Tourists.

People are spending significant amounts of money just to visit historic buildings, castles, monuments, museums, and sites connected to events that happened hundreds of years ago.

My tour guide, who has been one of my closest friends since our university days, has spent the last few days sharing stories about Scotland’s history. Some of those stories were fascinating. Others were disturbing. Stories of public executions of people accused of witchcraft and hanged.

Stories of religious conflicts and women punished for having children outside marriage. Stories of violence that today would leave many of us horrified.

As I listened, a question quietly formed in my mind.

If bloodshed automatically condemns a people to perpetual suffering, how did Edinburgh become one of the world’s most admired cities? How did Scotland become home to some of the world’s most respected institutions? How did the United Kingdom produce universities that attract students from every continent? How did Germany rebuild after two world wars?

How did nations with painful histories become global reference points for innovation, tourism, education, and influence?

The question is not whether terrible things happened. The question is what people chose to believe and build after those things happened.

Growing up, many of us were taught that Africa’s struggles could largely be explained by curses, ancestral problems, bloodshed, and spiritual limitations. While I do not dismiss the spiritual dimension of life, I sometimes wonder whether many of our greatest limitations are not curses but inherited beliefs, stories, trauma and conclusions.

Perhaps what we call a curse is sometimes a deeply embedded narrative that has gone unchallenged for generations. Because every society has experienced pain and every family has experienced loss. Every nation has endured dark seasons, yet some societies have learned how to transform pain into power, telling their stories differently.

The Scots do not deny their history; they have simply learned how to frame it. The same castles that once witnessed violence now attract visitors.

As I reflected on this, I realized that many of us are doing the opposite. We keep rehearsing our wounds and magnifying our limitations. We keep explaining why things cannot work and over time, those stories become our reality.

So perhaps the bigger question is not ”What happened to us?”. The bigger question is “What story are we telling about what happened to us?” Because stories become beliefs and beliefs become actions. Actions become habits and habits become culture. And culture eventually becomes destiny.

Here are four lessons Edinburgh reminded me of.

1. Your Past Explains You, But It Does Not Have to Define You - Every person, family, organization, and nation has scars. The winners are not those without scars; the winners are those who refuse to build their identity around them. Your history therefore is a chapter not the whole book.

2. Pain Can Become a Prison or a Platform - The difference is interpretation. Some people spend their lives explaining why they cannot succeed while others use the same pain as fuel to create something extraordinary. The event may be the same but the meaning assigned to it changes everything.

3. The Stories You Repeat Become the Life You Experience - If all you rehearse is failure, limitation, and victimhood, eventually your life begins to mirror those beliefs. The most powerful stories are not always the most accurate; they are often the ones repeated most consistently.

4. Great Societies Turn Wounds into Wisdom - Edinburgh did not erase its difficult history; it integrated, learned from, built upon it and it moved forward. Because growth does not require amnesia; It requires perspective.

As I leave Edinburgh, one thought remains with me. Perhaps the greatest battle many of us face is not against a curse; it is against the story we inherited about ourselves. Because every day, whether we realize it or not, we are writing a narrative about our family, country, and our future.

The question is: Will that story imprison us or will it inspire us?

Have a reflective week ahead.

Praise Fowowe