Of Appearing and Being

It is a wonderful Friday and after a week-long leave of absence I am back with something of the article’s sort. Last week I was busy meditating on the court proceedings and watching Liverpool FC thump Norwich city in the opener of the English Premier League and that was enough to distract me from writing the much needed article. How sad. This time, I have taken time away from the work of the day to complete this before it is too late.

Talking of Liverpool FC, this is the team that beat my Chelsea who three days after they were mortally wounded by Manchester United. The beginnings of the football season haven’t been good for those of use who support the blue boys from west London but that is okay. It is only football after all. 

What fascinates me in the football season is the growing fanaticism that I am beginning to see over the years. Every other football fan that I know always has at least the home kit of their favorite European club. I joined the frenzy this season by buying my own Valencia home kit but I doubt that it was because of my love for the team. It was rather the love for the nicely designed Puma shirt. And then there is this thing of couples buying new season jerseys and going for photo shoots… Ndimafuna ndikambe zampira but I think we should divert to this. 

Back in the day, our relationships used to be way stealthy. When you were dating, you always made sure that you met in the most secret of places and you avoided public appearances. Knowing in-laws was something that was reserved for the advanced stages of the relationship and the picture of relationships was a perfect opposite of what is happening in the later day where we search our in-laws on social media and offer them a bottle of something. Then there were the photos. In those days, there used to be a photographer moving around with his bike, taking and distributing pictures. When dishing out, he would hide those pictures of couples he had taken in some bushes and even when dispatched to the owners, those were puctures that used to be hidden behind others in our photo albums. Fast forward to 2019, we have couples movine around with custom t shirts to a photo studio where they have their pictures taken. And on most occasions, the pictures are delivered into a phone or memory card for posting on Instagram or WhatsApp (I am told Facebook is not much of a thing nowadays). 

This whole thing of pictures and all gives me the impression that sometimes all people want is to give out the impression that they are in love and all is well. That is not wrong and perhaps most of these people are truly in love and enjoying it. What it has done, however is to give other the urge to go for such things as photo shoots just to create that flashy image before they actually earn the grounds for doing so through building a strong bond between them. Some of us started going for photo shoots before it was cool but chances are that the people we went with are married with 7 kids. At the moment, we are desperately searching for the contacts of the ladies with whom we took pictures in the bush beyond Chingalangande hill as those were the ones with whom we had real love.

I am not just saying this because I am a swazi (as my friend Tuntufye calls me) but the whole point is that we have more people striving to make an impression that things are well; more that we have striving to actually make things well. Think of the church. Nowadays we have our religious leaders who are teaching us lots of exciting things about God and how we ought to operate in this world as his children. On the other hand, the very same people that preachings are being wasted on walk out of church to resort to the very things their pastor was teaching them minutes ago. Or worse still, it is the pastors who spearhead vice. Not too good. 

Perhaps we should talk about something called success. Now this is something that is getting complicated by the day because people are redefining success and teaching others how to succeed. Teaching someone how to succeed, if you think about it, is not something you would call a bad thing. Rather, it is something I would call noble. One of the problems that comes with it, however is that the definition of success tends to be more subjective than it is universal. For others, success would be defined by the kind of car they are pushing in town while for some it is about how much they have in either their accounts or investments. Then we should consider those who measure their success by the number of spouses.

In the modern day, most young people enter the job market or into business fresh from tertiary education with a mission of proving a point that they are doing well. And then there are those that leave college for various reasons, trying to prove to everyone that they can walk down the same lane as Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. That becomes a problem because in the midst of trying to prove a point people tend to make costly mistakes that ensure that they never get to achieve the financial success they portray to the outside world. 

There is another issue of charity and making impact in this world. I appreciate the efforts that some people I know are putting in towards the betterment of the lives of others and the good of the environment but the rate at which organizations are proliferating in this country makes me wonder if they are up for anything beyond taking high definition photos for some websites while building a profile. Do not get me wrong. It is good to help, but the motive matters. If we only do things to show off as opposed to doing something for the impact it has on the nation or someone’s life, then we have a big problem. I should say no more for the fear of being stoned by the huge number of CEOs that patronize Richie Online. 

So… There you go. There is a lot of pretending happening out there. There is too much focus on appearing to be something good with little if any focus on the attempts at attaining the actual status we like to portray. The question we should be asking ourselves is that of how much the picture we paint to others will cost us. On another note, I am not saying that we should not dress well, drive nice cars or live in nice houses. Neither did I declare going for a photo shoot with your spouse at Bensam Studios a taboo. All I am saying is that there has to be a balance between the impression you give and what you really are. On the other side, we need to be able to take a shower and wear some deodorant to ensure that people manage to see the positive side of us. 

Signing out…. There is no second chance at making a first impression. Mind the picture you paint and balance it with what you are.