Right before coming to college, I experienced a mental crisis where I questioned every single bit of my beliefs about life. Trust me, it was not a piece of cake, it was chaotic! Filled with a lot of anxiety and emotional instability, I had to go through each question I posed to myself one by one only to find yet another unanswered question that caused more anxiety.

However, after I went through this painful process, I understood that it was worthwhile. In the aftermath, I had established a sort of mental framework, a narrative that I was satisfied with, through which to view and make sense of life. The trick for me, as I understood it later on, was to establish a narrative that incorporated and explained every fact I knew till that point in my life, a strong foothold to proceed with the rest of my life's journey.

What I described thus far could be conceptualized as the experience of a search for meaning or narrative from an individual’s point of view. But what could a similar search for narrative look like for a group of individuals or even better, a whole society? As individuals need a narrative to sustain them through life, so should a group. And as the complexity of the group increases and it gets more diverse in an array of dimensions, the need for not only a narrative but also a unifying one must also intensify.

In today's Ethiopia, there are more than 80 ethnic groups and three major religions, each representing a significant share of the population. Growing up in the country, I have been accustomed to reading enormous billboards that celebrate ethnic diversity. There was one in my hometown that read “Our Diversity is Our Beauty!” It may indeed be; nevertheless, the more important unanswered questions still loom underneath: Who are we in the first place? Are we groups of people who just cannot wait to live together? Do we have anything to truly call “ours,” anything we genuinely share? If we do, how do we make sure that its existence is not just some intellectual fantasy and that it actually does exist? How much of our ethnic culture do we keep and how much of it do we let go when we form the one nation that unifies us? Is it possible to keep all of our ethnic culture and still become one nation? How so? What would the resulting unified nation look like? Does it resemble all of us at the same time or none of us at all or both? Why bother with all of this while we can just live with our own kind?! … The questions go on, but there seems to be more disagreement than consensus on the answers.

Today, only a vague and divided notion of Ethiopian identity exists. The answer you would get if you ask what it means to be “Ethiopian” depends on who you meet, varying based on the person’s religion and ethnicity. But is this necessarily a bad thing? Don’t we all have different opinions about almost everything in life and still decide to live together peacefully? Well, we do … but only until we do not. In everyday life, it is rarely the case that two random Ethiopians from different ethnic origins start up a fight solely because of their difference in ethnicity. It is when some activist releases a provocative post on social media, reflecting on their version of the Ethiopian narrative, that ethnicity starts to matter profoundly, that dividing lines start to get drawn. At that point in time, you are walking on a sword's edge. Then, whether you like the Ethiopian flag with the emblem or without matter, whether you date back the formation of the Ethiopian nation-state to several millennia or merely two centuries ago matters, even whether you envision the late Ethiopian emperor Menelik II as a hero or a villain, matters.

But the thing is, this is not a mere debate! Over the past few years, numerous Ethiopians have been killed, displaced, and tortured merely because of their narrative of the nation. If you live in a place in the country where most of the locals villainize Menelik II and you think of him as a hero, chances are you will either get displaced or, in the worst case scenario, murdered. This is the power of narratives: As important as they are in building a successful nation by providing a shared imagination and underpinning the role of the parts in the proper functioning of the whole, they can also be destructive when they are in conflict, usually costing the lives of multitudes.

How should then Ethiopians grapple with such a problem of conflicting narratives while they are still in the midst of all the problems the narratives themselves have caused? How do they make sure that they are not on the eve of another civil war while the memories of yesterday’s are still fresh? How do they determine who they are in the presence of several narratives pertaining to their identity? Do they just “pick” a unifying narrative that they can all genuinely agree with, that they can all relate to? Well, it does not seem that simple. But only one thing is clear: If Ethiopians long to see tomorrow, they absolutely need to search and find a shared narrative!