Ambitions

Greetings.

It is yet another wonderful Friday. Last week you all had to endure my lament about my not so healthy account. In between then and now, my employer sorted it out. I was happy for a few hours but in a matter of hours we are almost back to the crying state. Perhaps some of us will never recover from these things and our aim should just be that of redefining what financial stability is for us. I loved every piece of feedback that was generated from last week's article and that is mostly because I discovered that I am not alone in this boat of "variable financial stability".

I had been feeling bad about myself and my account and other things to an extent that I got myself looking for some remedy. I found myself looking for solace in some book and rather disappointingly it was not the expected Bible. This is a book whose subtitle emphasizes on the need for having a counter-intuitive approach to life. The book has the same ideas and connotations some of you might have read from "the Case of the Prison Monger"; expect little and you will be fine.

The Case of the Prison Monger...

This was a story about one Matteos Gudu who found solace in imprisonment. This was one guy who perpetually committed crimes that earned him long sentences and made sure he always stayed behind bars. Those actions, according to the story, originated from an attitude of being satisfied by little and not wanting more than than the basic. The case ended with the "prison monger" protesting to the judge about the sentence after being sentenced to immediate freedom for a crime he had committed.

This, of course was a fictional story. Such attitudes are almost extinct and we do not have people who expect that little around here (on earth) anymore. Even our MOG's are demanding motorbikes from their flock and Buddhist monks are down from the Himalayas into the open. The general trend out here is that people are getting more ambitious with passing time. People want to make mote money and they want to have more power.

One would wonder as to whwy there has been an increasing hunger for power and money. My first response would be that it is human nature to have a hunger for more. Somehow we end up aiming for something only yo start looking forward to the next level thing the moment we get it. I am inclined to think that this is a universal problem as opposed to that of the selected few.

The outburst of motivational speakers has also led to an escalation of the malignant ambition problem. There are people who are masquerading under the motivational speaker badge and they are all over prescribing a certain standard of life, living under which implies that you are a suboptimal human. Some motivators have made us believe that those of us who are working are not living to our full potential. You can't expect people to be satisfied with little with these toxic messages being thrown around.

Back to the book I was reading...

The book insinuated that most of us are ending up worrying too much. About our situations because we have gotten to live in a world where people who have nothing to worry about end up worrying about everything. In his own words, the author cited that rates of depression are rising when everyone has a flat screen TV in their house and they can have there groceries delivered at the click of a button. This assertion might be more American than it is local but the idea is that with the improving living conditions, depression rates have to be on the fall as opposed to rise.

The social media might also be another contributing factor to the increase in the number of morbidly ambitious people. We are living in a world where people live picture perfect lives on Instagram and Whatsapp. The HD pictures from other people; adding to the fact that people like to base their satisfaction on comparison of others fuels hunger for more in the "have nots". At the end of the day it goes down to people wanting to appear successful rather than being successful. We are in the "impressions over reality" age.

Having said all this, one might wonder as to what we are suggesting as Richie Online. From the preceding paragraphs, it might be one might think that we (me and like minded fellas) are of the idea that three meals a day are all a human needs on God's green Earth. If you are to recall what I wrote in the previous article, I pointed out that we all need to live for others. With that in mind, modest earnings might not be the way to go. On the other hand, self-enrichment is greatly discouraged and should not exist in society. This whole thing of people sharing ma 40 mita should be a thing of the past. The main point is that there should be a balance between ambitions, abilities and motives for gaining more.

I will probably be called Captain Obvious for drafting this but having learnt about a counter-intuitive approach to life, I care less. 

Enjoy the long weekend.

Ndiye mwati holiday ya Monday ndi ya chani?