The Mentorship Factor

One for the Friday.

Being a Christian, I have always been reading the Bible for as long as I have been able to. In my young years, however, reading the Bible was an issue of entertainment. I was always fascinated by the nice stories of the Old Testament. Sticks turning into snakes, Israelites crossing the Red Sea on dry land and the many other stories. The fact that I was reading for entertainment meant that I did not pay much attention to something until recently; nominology.

Throughout the Old Testament and in parts of the New Testament, names are always given with the name of the person and then that of the father. Joshua son of Nun, David son of Jesse, Simon son of Jonah and many other countless examples. In the sort of David's defeat of Goliath, we also see the emphasis of the importance of the father's name, as the first question Saul asked people about David was "whose son is this?".

We might wonder as to what this meant, but to the Jews, the father played a big role in the child. Traditionally the occupation of the father was transferred to the children for generations and the honor of the father was also reflected in the offspring.

Taking a look at how diverse and modernized the world has become, it is easy to recognize that these principles cannot work in the same way as they worked among the old day Israelite communities. Children are being sent to school to pursue careers and professions of their dreams (sometimes of their parent' dreams; komabe nzabhobho) and some turn out to be perfect opposites to their parents when it comes to honor.

The application of the principle of parent to child transfer, should therefore not be focused on issues like career, but rather on other things like character and ideologies.

I have every reason to believe that we used to have this transfer even in our own community, where parent would be able to sit down with their children and talk sense into them. Over time, children became less and less obedient and parents sort of gave up on advising them (Kamwezi's Theory of Parent-Child Dissociation; might not be the case, so don't take it too seriously) and so far we don't have much of that happening. The moment people get to tertiary education they are almost untouchable by parents and they gain independence of their parents, having no one to listen to whenever it comes to practical life issues.

The whole thing of having no one to listen to comes with a dangerous thing I prefer to call enslavement by freedom. Some would resort to doing things that parents or guardians in general prohibit for every good reason.

Others, on the other hand will fall into good hands of mentors, mostly from church. Others will get exposed to coaches on success and begin to pick recommendations on various lifestyle traits and reads. The results are sort of mixed because despite the source of the mentor, there are a lot of dynamics when it comes to the mentor, the content and the perception of the mentee.

I have observed a couple of adversities of mentorship. A couple of people have suffered unintentional breakups or have missed out on finding loving spouses because their mentors said no to their desires. Others have ended up mixing up priorities because their mentors recommended things that diverted from their personal dreams.

That being said, I  have to say that I am advocating for a carefree life for those who are free. I, by saying that, was just being me; was just exposing the other side of mentorship because it may go wrong at some point. When well understood and applied, on the other hand, mentorship is an awesome thing for both the donor and recipient end (if you know what I mean).

In the first place, we need to understand that there are people who know better than us by virtue of having much more experience or knowledge. That understanding should always give us the humility and let us be human enough to sit under someone's teaching to listen to their opinion and draw some wisdom from it.

On the other hand, it is important to realize that what we may hear from those we think are better than us in terms of knowledge and experience may not apply to everyone. In other words, everyone is unique and some of the directions they may give are more of opinions than they are facts. It is important to, therefore synthesize what we hear from those guiding us and see what may apply to us. Of course that may depend on how the mentor presents issues, so the choice of of someone to listen to is critical.

Now kwa anthu amene muli ma coach ndi ma mentor; those of you who have taken it upon yourselves to see to it that those below you have it better, I salute you for the noble course you have taken. I would, however like to remind you to understand the diversity of humanity. In as much as there are some general principles of lifw that do not change, not everything that applies to you applies to everyone else no matter how similar people and situations may be. It is important to be flexible and to focus on giving facts for people to make decisions; as opposed to making people live our dream lives and forcing others to live the way we want.

All in all, those of us who are young need to find people we look up to and that goes to everyone. No matter how big we may grow or who may (or may not) be seeing us, there is need for sitting under some teaching in order to forge ahead. Those who have learnt need to also share with others for continuity of goodness. Those who like to read should read good reads but let us not roam around like sheep without shepherds; and in the same way we shouldn't let others roam like goats without ujeni.

PS
Shout out to all the Richie Online Readers who celebrated with the author on his birthday. Management hopes you will do the same on his wedding.