Ability and Courage
I am finally out of my holding pattern and for the first time in years, I feel free. Nervous, sure, but also excited for what lies ahead. I am not beholden to anyone for what I can say, write, do or believe, and I am fortunate to carve out some time to return to my beloved home country of South Africa, while pursuing the next steps. I am grateful for the last couple of months of reflections, experience, and learning, and I have faith that it will bear fruit at the right time.
During a conversation a couple of weeks ago with a friend of mine, we lamented the lack of people who have the ability and the courage to speak up. “Ability” speaks to experience and technical expertise built up by years of hard work, or creating your own business, or just paying your dues the old-school way, showing up, putting the time in (productively!), and honing your skill set. From reading articles and talking to people I have a suspicion that the younger generations don’t understand so lekker that applying and landing a job is all about what you, the applicant, the worker, can do for the company or organisation, not the other way around. The pervasiveness of DEI departments and their messaging of everyone being unique and special probably does not help. And we definitely need less managers and more workers.
Oops, I got sidetracked. On to courage.
Having courage is important but we must be conscious of the consequences of our decisions and actions. Some people have the financial freedom to reject the woke corporate world and set out on their own professional path. Others simply cannot afford to lose their livelihoods and are subjected to awful policies, e.g., the vaccine mandates. Not all of us can be courageous, even if we want to be. If you are a family with both parents working to keep head above water, you have to toe the line. It is infuriating that we live in a world where the intolerance of the woke mob rule the day. The tide is turning though. People are waking up to the fact that they are lied to about everything, all the time. People that still rely on government sponsored mainstream media (MSM) for their news… I don’t know. All I can suggest is that you at least digest different sources of MSM.
Always keep thinking for yourself because you know more than you think. Question everything: ask yourself why you hear certain news at certain times, and be aware at how the narrative is being presented. Keep an open mind, because we all have the ability to think for ourselves. There is that word again, ability. I press upon the few of us that are not beholden to the managerial system for our livelihoods to show courage. It is up to us to make connections with like-minded people. It can be as easy as striking up a conversation with a parent at a school event (please just “read the room” before diving in), or talking to someone at the gym. Just yesterday I realised there are increasingly more people that abhor the leftwing politics in Canada and have the courage to say this out loud!
Lastly, don’t get fooled into choosing the lesser of two evils. This reminded me of an incident when I first joined a bank in Canada, I was supposed to be trained by a “manager” how to execute trades. I already had years of trading experience, including emerging markets interest rates which are way more volatile and trade all over the place with massive spreads; but hey, I was curious about this exercise, so I played along. Say you want to sell a bond. Apparently, you had to ask four dealers for a price, and then you sell at the highest price of the four. What absolute nonsense! You should only trade at the correct price, not the best relative price when all of them could be wrong. Do your homework, do your research, and think for yourself. This is nearly as bad as another fund manager executing on a trade knowing that the price quoted was hugely incorrect and the bank must have made an awful mistake or typo. Where is the integrity in that?
It is the same when you make choices in life, especially when it comes to your time, integrity and energy. Do not think you have to choose the best of several bad options. If you have the ability, and you can afford courage, reject the bad and ugly options. Save your energy, and preserve your time and integrity for the right things in life, the right option, the righteous course of action.
The same applies when we (have to) support a political party. If a certain political party seems to be the best option in a very dire situation, we as the voters must still keep them accountable to do the right thing, not simply the “best” bad option. For example, I am very worried about the opposition party in South Africa importing woke ideology from the West. But people tell me, no…. at least they (the DA) know how to govern, and wherever they are involved, things are working. This is true. Still, keep them accountable to do the right thing. Just because the West has gone down the “Go woke, go broke” path, does not mean we have to follow their lead. Choose the best options for South Africa, and if there are no good options, design the best options with input from the voters, the people on the street. We should demand from the political leaders to lead with ability and courage.
Ai, it really feels like we are living in the midst of history – it is a funny thing to say but if one reads about WWII, you wonder what it felt like to be in the midst of such a volatile period. Well, here we are. The world seems so topsy-turvy at the moment, I smile when I think about being alive today. Something tells me we will look back one day and be amazed at how we muddled through our current state of the world. Worst-case I suppose we should enjoy this ride.
I am very hopeful for the future.
Anyway, simply thinking out loud. Thank you for being here, and if you find my Substack interesting or inspirational, please click on the 🤍 button, and subscribe for free if you want to receive a notification of the next “Thinking Out Loud”.