Nime-confirm, mi najijua
Mitaa zimetii, tii, tii, mi nachafua
— Nyashinski
When I was in lower primary, our house was directly opposite my school, Tender Care Academy. House 576. Cross the road, and a school uniform is necessary. Cross back, and all that matters is that my clothes cover the essentials.
And yet, I would still get to school late.
Teachers on duty would hardly listen to my reasons, some of which were legit. As the tallest one in class, a key player in the school team, and with an enviable academic record, teachers knew who I was and even more, where I lived. It was wrong of me to get to school later than anyone else, despite living the closest.
Teachers would take my reasons as excuses. I don’t blame them. I too would label them that.
Reasons can serve as explanations, as can excuses. But excuses tend to have the implicit label of “wrong” attached to them. It is wrong to arrive late to school. At that point, your reasons are no longer reasons. They are excuses. Unless you have a doctor’s note.
When every structure is positioned to ensure any rational being with proper instruction and motivation can achieve an expected target, reasons to the contrary can be regarded as excuses. Why white light breaks into seven when cast through a prism can be explained using physics. That’s an explanation, a reason. It’s not an excuse.
Excuses are exclusively human. And when you have attained every possible goal, lamenting about your life’s situation will never be regarded with open arms. The commoner will think that you’re only bringing up excuses.
What money gives you
Character takes you places money never will. Money will take you places character never will. Money is a pass. Character needs a situation to manifest itself. Money doesn’t.
Want to sneak into a nightclub? Slip a tip into the hand of the bouncer, and you’re in. Want to escape traffic? Load your token with money and use the express highway. Need to get information from a security guard or even an exclusive parking spot? Money talks.
As for partying, money is the reason we have invite-only parties. Money is the reason we have VIP sections in festivals and clubs. Money distinguishes who goes to the best schools and who doesn’t.
Money facilitates. Startups need funding. Art, the most celebrated ones, require adequate financial patronage. Safety requires money. You can’t always be walking around with your pitbull and think it can stand in the way of a fired bullet. Money bolsters security.
Money can infuse arrogance. You can pee into someone’s mouth. You can force them to take your faeces. You can tell them to wipe you in places where the sun don’t shine. You can curate harsh conditions without a care for what happens to those who become its victims.
Money gives you status. You have a car? You are respected. You have a house? You won’t be sleeping alone most nights without your wish. As my friend likes to quip, money gives you the finer things in life. How strange, then, that the best things in life are free.
Money uplifts one’s beliefs in you. You may be the dumbest person on dry land, but if you’re loaded with billions, the stupidest words will be taken as gospel truth. Just add a little confidence to your style of speech, and everyone will believe you. Well, not everyone, but who would care what the marginal intellects say when you have the whole world in your palm?
Essentially, money puts you in the same position I was in in lower primary. It puts you closer to your goals. It makes others envious of your easy path — a simple crossing of the road to get to your destination. Easy mobility. Money positions you such that you can create your future, without worrying about predicting it. Those without money make predictions; those with money invent it.
So when you begin to claim that your life is not perfect, the world will look at you with disgust. What do you mean you’re not living your life? Every other person at the bottom of the ladder would have killed to be in your position. Money gives you no excuses to have a life envied by others.
Moneyed individuals can crave a single day in my life. I would also not mind spending 24 hours in theirs, in which case, now you know where I stand in this money divide. But what money does is it shuts the door on sympathy.
Was it the money?
Okay, you see only what they let you see
Na hii ni advice, si matusi, don’t fuck up juu ya ganji
Don’t act like you’re so holy, judgement yako haikuponyi
Ukiomoka asubuhi, usikuwe ushasota by jioni— Nyashinski
I work in the ICU. Patients who have money can sometimes treat the clinicians with arrogance. The last thing you want is to piss off a nurse who is already under pressure from her superiors with unwarranted workload. And more often than not, these patients will not get the best care. It’s not the money.
When you’re at the neck of your doctor, breathing heavily why you pay them so much so that they can siphon the best care to you, the interventions they perform will not be done with good intention. Everyone will just want to be done with you.
And there are moments when the unit can have haboured a patient who was almost certainly going to get well, but for unknown reasons, begins to deteriorate. The family has to convert all their assets into liquid to cover the bill. Decades-long savings can be wiped out in a few weeks.
If we’re to assume that the patient came from a family of arrogant people, those who would flagrantly show others that they lacked the means, those who flossed their wealth, people would have no sympathy for this family. It might even be the opposite; some may say that it was karma.
But even if you are the best person, always share a joke with the security guard, leave a healthy tip to the waiter, and try to ensure your family is elevated to an envious status, claiming that you’re not happy seems absurd.
For most people, living life in your shoes is their goal. For you, you feel a hollowness you cannot fill with more money. So, what is the money that you were after? If money does not free you from depression, melancholy, or trouble, should money be the goal?
Consider an athlete. Their goal could be to get to the Olympics. After much practice, they qualify. The next couple of weeks, they practice as if their life depended on it. On the actual day, they outperform every other competitor. They win the gold medal. They have achieved their goal.
What then after that?
If you’re sad after that, the world may never understand you, which is worse because you’re already battling your inner state. Now the world wonders what excuse you have after achieving everything you have ever wanted.
Nyashinski raps:
Nimeng’aria hawa watu for long, mpaka saa ina-bore
Ina-bore saa mpaka umeanza tu ku-long for watu nang’aria
Clearly, what exists before the goal is achieved is motivation. Motivation to have your name featured on the Forbes list. Motivation to appear on the page of Time Magazine. Motivation to stand on the topmost pedestal, to receive a gold medal. And clearly, once you have achieved your goal, that motivation, that drive you had, is now meaningless.
What wakes you up every morning to narrow the gap between you and your goal is principally fuelled by motivation. I am a victim of this state.
In medical school, our human anatomy lecturers bragged about how their students published articles before completing the MBChB course. I was inspired. I wanted to be one of those students. I eventually became one of those students.
I remember my first publication. I was at home. I ran to tell my mother. She was ecstatic. We celebrated with a cup of tea, the stuff of champions. After that, I didn’t have any drive. Soon, you began to compare yourself with your colleague. How many publications do they have? Have they published in a high-impact factor journal? How many citations? What is their h-index?
After some point, I lost all drive.
My peers who never went through the programme may wonder what was wrong with me. I had a CV to die for. It contributed to admission to the place where I currently work. From their perspective, I have no excuses.
It begs the question: Was it really the money? Was it really about the goal? After achieving all these, what then?
After motivation?
After motivation, what’s left?
For most, nothing. Decadence. José Ortega y Gasset gives an example from natural order. After populations have increased past their expected capacity, what is left is decay.
The last phase of the growth curve shows complete occupancy. Depletion of the available resources. Exceeding the carrying capacity. What’s left is decadence.
A clear goal is like a finite land. You know its extent. You can tell when it will get fully occupied. After clinching that medal. After being welcomed into the billionaire’s club. After attaining your PhD.
But after you have achieved this goal, what’s next? Decadence. Or, for those who may not know where to strike next, they will begin to share stories of “back in the day, how they did …” They stopped living for a future, and now they continuously rehash the past.
Motivation, however, is different from obsession. Obsession is like the energy powering the black hole energy beams. It is powerful. It has no visible or foreseeable future for when it will ever stop. When you have found an obsessed person, you have found life at its fullest.
Edward O. Wilson was obsessed with finding more about the smallest creatures. After a small accident in his younger years, he was left with a single good eye. He made the most of it. His obsession with eusociality led him to develop a theory different from William Hamilton’s. He managed to convince me. I too see faults with Hamilton’s theory.
Obsession keeps an individual free from ever considering retiring. Wilson never retired. He worked until his last breath, way before I got a chance to meet him.
David Attenborough is already a century years old. He continues to be fascinated by nature. His is an obsession, not a motivation. For when motivation dies, in the absence of obsession, there is depression, decadence, or both.
Obsession has no definite goal. It can be such a crucial part of you that not doing it can be detrimental to your health. Alternatively, doing it can also be detrimental. George Lucas was admitted to the hospital for excessively dedicating himself to producing the first trilogy of Star Wars.
However, obsession can be so powerful as to overshadow the effects it may have on the body. Indeed, it may be the fuel that drives the body. Obsession is not caring what other people may say about your habits, your routine, your priorities, your attention to detail in what you dedicate hours in a day to do.
Obsession is not accepting excuses and not feeling off because of it. Motivation introduces self-punishment whenever you slip. Obsession is friendlier. Motivation is the short-term nitrous. Obsession keeps the team going for 42 kilometers. When you’re obsessed, rabidly so, there are no excuses. In the words of Nyashinski, one can claim:
Nime-confirm, mi najijua
What I’m trying to say is…
Without obsession, art, admirable entrepreneurship, formidable scientists, laudable logicians and mathematicians, legacy geniuses and irrational rationalists could not have invented the ideas we know today.
It’s not motivation. It’s obsession. When you’re obsessed, you don’t have to worry about excuses. You don’t have to be reminded. You have no goal you’re bridging. You just do it, every day, until you drop.
Find your obsession, and let it kill you. But first, let it breathe life into you.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube