Niko na too much on my mind
Just enough in my account
Stress enough kukuwa na vices
Mbona na-try kuzi-hide
— Nyashinski
The irony is that as of this writing, I have run out of money. The title assumes wisdom is about to ooze. I highly doubt it. You’ll be the judge of that at the end of this piece.
In the Kenyan dictionary, a wiseman is someone who knows how to navigate the toughest of life’s situations. No human has lived until they have faced rough times. In an era when money calls the shots, running out of it can either leave you hopeless or with a chance to crank up your creative juices.
You can never get used to not having enough money. Or poverty. Logically, it means the wisest ones are not found in places where the extremely wealthy often tread. The bible had already given us a hint — wisdom is shouting in the streets.
When you wake up in the morning, feeling like the alarm didn’t consider your cozy sleeping position, it’s not an obligation that pushes you to wake up. It’s because you have run out of money or will run out of it if you continue chasing comfort. You should wake up, bathe, if necessary, dress up, and ensure you don’t catch traffic along the way. Any rational being knows that this is what you should do.
But you don’t.
I know I don’t.
Instead, we become wise.
A wiseman once asked: Is it a must?
This question is philosophical as it is empirical. It is not a must, but then again, it is. The pause between waking up and sitting at the edge of your bed, regretting your life and career decisions, defines the depth of this question. Every morning when we wake up tired, this question can resurface. Is it a must? Heading to work does not answer the question, neither does calling in sick.
The question reveals one thing — you have to act. In dire situations, action can be necessary. Can. But not always. To a world-class tennis player, inaction is the wise way to win matches. Alas, world-class tennis players hardly run out of money. I’m talking about you and me. Well, mostly me, but, please, feel tagged.
Wisdom takes shape when you run out of money because you simply have to get by. Before I joined campus, I worked in a bank. As a cashier, some faces were familiar. They would report to my counter, beaming, with a yellow sheet of paper requesting a withdrawal. They did not have money in their accounts. It was an overdraft, a soft loan of sorts. It happened so often that I knew several of them on a first-name basis. In the heart of Nairobi’s CBD, bumping into one of them was akin to seeing a long-lost friend. Wisdom knows how to make the most of acquaintances. These were people I would call wisemen.
Wisdom shows up standing right next to adversity. The Katara to Avatar Aang. The uncle Iroh to Prince Zuko. The Master Yoda to young Luke. Running out of money is as close to adversity as we can get in the present economic times. Wisdom always finds a way — a way to be persistent. Since the dawn of civilizations, nothing shouts as persistently as the poor getting by.
Cities are among the most iconic innovations of humanity. They can concentrate large populations in a small 3D space. The busiest ones have shanties budding with resilience. In Nairobi, there are several. Kibera is a notable example, topping the list as Africa’s largest slum.
Thinking of cities as organisms shows how they, too, have undesired outcomes. It’s not just an increase in lung infections, low vitamin D levels, reduced playground spaces, noise and light pollution, but also slums. The poor reside in slums. And like roaches, they refuse to die. Wisdom is finding a way to make a living from the cards you were dealt. As Ryan Holiday affirms, wisdom takes work.
You can get used to many things. Even fame. But you cannot get used to being poor. It is like that pebble inside your shoe. Try as hard as you must, it will have you shift your walking style awkwardly, regardless of who you’re walking with or where you are. Eventually, you just have to remove your shoe and release that nuisance.
As for a lack of money, you have to find a way to get it. But as Notorious B.I.G already warned us, the more money we have, the more problems we get. In my newly proclaimed wise status, I believe it means we have to attain a level of wisdom when we have no money, so we can use it wisely when we eventually get it.
The contrast between a lack of money and its abundance reveals that they are simply bottleneck problems. Consider a child who wants to become an astronaut. They have to know what subjects they should major in before they can be accepted into a college offering the required courses. A visit to NASA may help. Getting a mentor from the same institution may give you an edge. All it reveals is that when your problems become your priority, other options get squeezed out.
In Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, Sendhil and Eldar explain why poverty can criple one’s bandwidth of attention and priorities. To survive poverty is to master aspects of wisdom. Life happens; what matters is how you react to it, a stoic way of life.
Bottleneck problems abound everywhere one looks. Adam Mastroianni writes:
I have found myself facing all of those limitations at one time or another, and as soon as I overcame them, I was immediately stymied by some other obstacle. I think all of us suffer from this bottleneck blindness: we assume our current bottleneck is our only bottleneck. When you’re strapped for cash, you think all of your problems are cash problems. But once you’ve got some money in you pocket, you realize that what you really need is time. Free up some time, and you discover that you’re actually lacking motivation. Acquire some motivation, and you realize what you’re missing is ideas. Then you need direction, then you need discipline, then you need buy-in, and so on, forever.
I recall a time when I was just from our semester holidays and was getting ingredients for my supper when it hit me: I don’t have a spoon.
Midway between the grocery shop and our hostel was a hotel. I walked in, talked to the kind waiter, and asked if they could sell me a spoon. She laughed. Who wouldn’t? She then gave me one for free.
Beaming with glee, I pocketed the silver treasure and walked uphill to my room. As I was preparing to cook, it hit me that I had no cup to measure the amount of rice I would use. So I used my knife to cut a 500ml Sprite bottle into two halves, and used the bottom half as my cup. And right before I began tossing my onions and tomatoes, I remembered I had no salt. So I quickly walked down the stairs to the students’ mess and sampled some of the salt that is always stored in the salt shakers.
Bottleneck problems and a little bit of wisdom, I think. Or maybe I’m just a wiseman.
Even AI has a poverty problem — a poverty of subjective intelligence. It does not have all the solutions to the squishy, murky, distorted problems, such as the meaning of life, happiness, or the substance of consciousness.
In my immense wisdom, I have written this piece because it is my way of handling my money-deficient state. I have to get by. Words come for free, as do ideas.
If you have read this far, thank you, although I don’t think I have oozed wisdom. The oozing part may be intact; the wisdom part is what I highly doubt. You tell me. Or have I yet to really run out of money?
Niko na too much on my mind
Just enough in my account
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube