The Lindy Effect is a quiet voice from the past, an echo of endurance, a law written not in ink but in the survival of things that refuse to die. It is the reason why the proverbs of our grandmothers still roll off our tongues, why Krik? Krak! still opens the door to a story, why the rhythms of yanvalou and the chants of vodou have outlived every attempt to erase them. It is not just an idea—it is the blood memory of our people who have seen empires rise and fall, and yet the culture endures!
The term was born in a New York deli, where comedians noticed that those who had lasted in the game would likely last even longer. But long before Lindy’s deli, before any scholar named it, Haitians had already known it in their bones. We are, after all, the people who spoke liberty into existence, who turned whispers of rebellion into the crack of a whip breaking an empire. The world did not expect Haiti to last. And yet, over two centuries later, we are still here!
If a book has been read for fifty years, it will likely be read for fifty more. If a way of being has persisted for a hundred, it will likely endure for another hundred. This is why we still dance to the drums that called our ancestors to freedom, why the Konbit still gathers hands for the harvest, why the words of Jean-Jacques Dessalines still carry the weight of prophecy.
The Lindy Effect is a warning against the seduction of the new. It tells us that not everything modern is good, not everything ancient is obsolete. It is why the lambi still calls across the mountains, why the old songs still rise at dusk, why lakou traditions persist in the face of urban sprawl. What has lasted, lasts because it carries something deeper than time—it carries truth, it carries necessity, it carries the spirit of a people who have never bowed except to God.
But longevity is no guarantee. The Lindy Effect is not fate; it is a probability, a lesson in endurance. It reminds us that what survives does so not just by accident, but by the hands that build it, the tongues that speak it, the feet that dance it. Our history is proof: some things are not merely born—they are willed and done into permanence.