“The crossroads is not a problem to solve. It is a place to stand until you know which way to move.”
Eshu Elegba does not appear when you are certain. He appears precisely when you are not — at the moment when two equally real paths open before you and neither one announces itself as the answer. In Yoruba cosmology, Eshu stands where one road becomes two. He is the divine trickster, the messenger between the human world and the realm of the orishas, the original keeper of transition. And he has something to say to all of us standing at the crossroads of mid-year.
This time of year — the turn past the midpoint, the stretch between what we said we would do and what we’ve actually done — is not a scheduling crisis. It is a threshold. And thresholds, in African cosmological traditions, are sacred by nature. They demand something specific: presence, honesty, discernment, and a willingness to not rush past the uncertainty toward the comfort of a plan that may no longer fit.
The Orisha of Beginnings, Choices, and the In-Between
Eshu Elegba (also called Legba in Haitian Vodou and Exu in Brazilian Candomblé) is the orisha who opens the way. Before any ceremony, any divination, any prayer to any other orisha, Eshu must be acknowledged first. He is the original checkpoint. The guardian of every doorway, every beginning, and every moment of change.
But here is what is often misunderstood about Eshu: his designation as a “trickster” does not mean mischief for its own sake. It means disruption in service of truth. He reveals what we have been avoiding. He unravels the plans we were attached to when those plans no longer serve our growth. He shows up, unmistakable and inconvenient, when we have mistaken activity for direction — when we have filled our calendars with motion while the deeper question has gone unanswered.
If the mid-year moment feels disorienting, if the goals you set in January feel like they belong to a different person, if you are questioning whether the path you are on is actually the one you want — consider that this might not be failure. It might be Eshu, doing exactly what he is supposed to do.
What the Mid-Year Reset Gets Wrong
The productivity-industrial complex has colonized the mid-year moment. By June, your algorithm-curated feeds are full of prompts to audit your quarterly targets, revisit your vision board, re-establish your morning routine, recalibrate your “metrics for success.” This framing is not neutral. It carries a set of assumptions: that the self is a project to be optimized, that time is a resource to be managed, that the feeling of being at a crossroads is a problem to be fixed rather than a message to be received.
In African and Afro-diasporic worldviews, time is not linear in the same way. The Bantu concept of time includes the living, the ancestors, and the not-yet-born in a single, continuous present. The Akan understanding of time includes sankofa — the principle that it is not wrong to go back and retrieve what was lost. What the West calls “looking backward” or “getting stuck,” Ubuntu philosophy recognizes as gathering — collecting the pieces of yourself that got left behind when you were moving too fast.
A mid-year reset, reframed through an Ubuntu lens, is not an optimization exercise. It is a gathering. It is the moment to ask: What have I been carrying? What have I been ignoring? Who do I need to consult? What does my community need from me — and what do I need from them?
The Practices at the Crossroads
Eshu is not a passive deity. He requires engagement. The traditions that honor him understand that the crossroads is not a waiting room — it is an active practice space. Here are four practices drawn from Afro-diasporic wisdom tradition for working with, rather than rushing through, the mid-year threshold:
Four Practices for the Crossroads
1. Leave an offering of honesty. In many traditions, you do not approach the crossroads empty-handed. The offering is not material — it is the truth of where you actually are. Not where you hoped to be. Not the story you’ve been telling to protect yourself. The raw, honest assessment. Name it out loud. Write it. Speak it to the ancestor you trust most.
2. Consult your council. Eshu is the messenger between worlds — which means the crossroads is not meant to be navigated alone. Who is your council? The elder you can call. The friend who has watched you long enough to see what you can’t. The ancestor whose guidance you have felt before. Before you make a direction choice, consult. Sit. Listen.
3. Distinguish movement from direction. Are you busy? That is not the question. Are you moving toward what actually matters to you? The crossroads asks you to tell the difference between motion and direction — and to have the courage to stop when the answer is “I don’t know.” Not-knowing, held with intention, is the beginning of discernment. Not-knowing, rushed through, is just more motion in the wrong direction.
4. Receive the disruption as information. What has Eshu already disrupted in your life this year? What plan fell apart? What door closed? What relationship shifted? In Yoruba tradition, these are not random misfortunes — they are communications. The disruptions carry the shape of the redirection. What they “cost” you often reveals what you were holding that you didn’t need.
Ubuntu and the Mid-Year: We Reset Together
Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu. I am because we are. Ubuntu philosophy does not understand the individual in isolation — not at the crossroads, not in the moment of choice, not in the practice of recalibration. The mid-year reset, through this lens, is not a solo audit. It is a communal one.
Who in your community is also standing at a threshold right now? The colleague who seems scattered. The friend who went quiet after a loss. The family member who started something last year that hasn’t come together the way they hoped. The crossroads is more navigable when it is shared — not because others tell you which road to take, but because being witnessed in the uncertainty is itself a form of healing.
At Ubuntu Village, our understanding of health has always been community-held. The individual body is not separate from the community body. When one person stands at the crossroads, the community’s willingness to stand with them — without rushing them toward resolution, without offering premature answers — is its own form of medicine.
A Practice to Carry With You
Find a threshold — a doorway, a crossroads, a place where two paths meet. Stand in it. Don’t cross it yet. Ask out loud, or in writing, or in the silence of your own chest: What is Eshu trying to show me that I have been too busy to see? Sit with what surfaces. Don’t rush it into a plan. Let it be information first.
A Note on How We Hold This
The crossroads practices, Eshu Elegba invocations, and orisha teachings shared here are offered as cultural education and spiritual remembrance — honoring the Yoruba, Lukumí, and diasporic lineages that have kept them alive. A crossroads opens in every direction; the path taken is always a choice. Ubuntu Village does not support or endorse the use of any spiritual practice toward ill intent against another person. The responsibility for how sacred knowledge is carried rests with the practitioner, never with the tradition itself.
The Reset We Actually Need
The orisha of the crossroads has been patient. He has been standing at the intersection of your half-finished intentions and your unexplored possibilities, waiting for you to stop long enough to receive what he is holding out.
The reset you actually need is not a new productivity system. It is not a better morning routine or a more aggressively structured goal framework. It is a return to the most fundamental Ubuntu practice: honest self-knowledge, held in community, guided by ancestral wisdom.
You do not have to know which road to take today. But you do have to stop long enough to stand in the question. Eshu honors those who approach the crossroads with intention. The ones who rush through, eyes forward, refusing to notice the disruptions and the messages — they get to keep running. And they arrive, eventually, at another crossroads.
The invitation, always, is to stop. To stand. To ask. To receive.
Sources: Britannica — Eshu (Yoruba deity) | JSTOR — Legba/Eshu as Orisha of Crossroads and Communication | The SAFE Alliance — Healing Practices from Across the African Diaspora
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Rooted in Ancestral Wisdom. Reaching the World.
Rooted in East Harlem and reaching across the globe, Ubuntu Village Inc. empowers communities to truly thrive. We believe sustainability is both environmental and spiritual—which is why we combine renewable energy initiatives, such as our Solar Power Project, with programs in digital literacy, holistic wellness, and ancestral wisdom. Discover how we’re lighting up the world at UbuntuVillageUSA.Org.
Michele Mitchell is the Founder, President & CEO of Ubuntu Village Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with programs in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. A writer, advocate, and community strategist working at the intersection of ancestral wisdom, public health, and community power, Michele leads Ubuntu Village’s work to center communities as the protagonists of their own healing. She writes from the conviction that science and spirit are complementary, that healing is relational, and that community is the medicine. Read more about Michele, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
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