“Life was a journey of discovery, and character was a variable that kept veering left and right in search of the perfect way for a particular day.”
Source: Abyssinian Chronicles, English trans. Knopf, 2000 · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The line appears in Abyssinian Chronicles as part of the narrator Mugezi’s reflection.
- What remains uncertain
- Attribution to Isegawa is verified at the work level; the sentence functions as a narrated observation within the novel.
Understanding the quote
Isegawa frames identity as an ongoing, unstable process: character isn’t fixed but shifts in response to daily pressures. In Abyssinian Chronicles the line, voiced by the narrator, captures how history, family and migration push a person off-course and force constant reorientation.
The story behind it
Notable detail: Isegawa worked as a history teacher in Uganda before moving to the Netherlands, a life path that feeds the novel’s perspective.
Going further
- The era
- In the post-independence decades and eras of Ugandan dictatorship, when social norms and loyalties were frequently overturned.
- The thinking
- This expresses practical existentialism: who you are is discovered through choices amid unpredictable events, so you keep reassessing and deciding.
- Key word
- Moral instability: character seen as changeable under shifting circumstances.
- Who quoted it
- The sentence appears frequently on online quotation sites and in commentary as a literary take on changing identity.
Three challenges to live it
In the app, you pick the one that fits your day, and in the evening you say how it went.
Write for 10 minutes nonstop about a recent day when your character 'veered': describe the context, pressures, and the choice you made.
Writing a specific scene shows how history and circumstance nudge your behavior. It makes the shifting character Isegawa describes concrete and observable.
Today take three one-minute pauses (morning, noon, evening) and quietly note your impulses and which direction you feel pulled.
Brief pauses let you observe in real time the character shifts Isegawa describes, helping you detect what pushes you off-course each day.
Create a three-panel mini-comic today (sketch or collage) that shows how your character veered from morning to evening.
Turning a day into images makes the character shifts Isegawa names visible; creative work lets you explore instability without self-judgment.
How would you act if today’s choices could reshape who you become tomorrow?
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