Winning isn’t everything

Driving along in my jalopy one Friday, my thoughts were far apart; on one hand I was thinking about the air conditioner my jalopy badly needed and the dust that this arid road was blowing in with all these impatient 4-wheelers whisking past and on the other hand I was just thinking about how much rest I needed following what had been a rather stressful week. There were several other peripheral thoughts. I was tuned in to BBC on the radio, a new habit I was forming. It was Qaddafi making the news again. Was it news at all?
The panellists on “World have Your say” were discussing Mariah Carey’s performance for the Qaddafi’s and some money London School of Economics is to have received and the PhD his son is to have obtained from there. Having heard Qaddafi for nearly two weeks, I wanted to change stations. The University of California professor or some other panellist, opined that when profit is cardinal in our dealings with others, things are bound to go wrong. I was stunned for a moment that even from a possible secular source they were concluding that profit isn’t everything.

There were varied opinions from those who sent text messages in and those who wrote on the Facebook wall. Some thought it was no big deal for Mariah Carey and her bunch of musical friends to have received cash from Qaddafi. Others thought they shouldn’t have. Someone asked that if we’re to deal with only those of integrity/good morals there would probably be no one to deal it. That, for me, was a deep question but more importantly to me, that nagging thought remained: when profit is key, things will likely go wrong.

The idea of profit flung my mind rapidly to my own employers and the business environment in general. I asked myself, is profit king? Is making returns the cardinal thing? Any attempt to answer that question is probably tantamount to career suicide so I will leave that to your good selves to decide. Are we willing to tell the customer the absolute truth if it means losing them? Are we willing to pay employees a fair wage even if it means less profit over all? As a business man, is profit the main thing? As a company is profit the main thing? As an individual, is profit and progress the key thing? Might I propose that something can go and will go awry?

From the cradle, we’re conditioned to be competitive. Win at sports, win in class, win some awards, get into the school play, read more books, get more games, etc. Our net worth, for many of us, becomes tied to the number of abbreviations after our name, the schools we’ve been to, the cars we drive, the neighbourhood we live in, etc. We jump on to life’s treadmill running with as much energy as we have failing to realize we’re headed nowhere. Our lives become subject to figures, statistics and terms like EBIDTA, GDP and the associated financial jargons. But is winning really everything? Is being the number one company, the number one this and that really all that matters?

Recently, a court in South Africa ruled that miners could sue their companies for lung infections/disease. Can the management of AngloGold Ashanti which was named in the news item and other mining companies say they were oblivious to the risks? Can other company’s whose staff are exposed to varying risks honestly say they do not know the dangers to which they expose their staff? When companies downsize and smaller numbers do work meant for more, do they not know the adverse health risks? For many, profit is king.  Evidently, something other than the person is central and this has horrid implications.

As for companies, many if not most of them are less likely to change and it’s quite likely they will continue playing ostrich so far as the lives of their employees are concerned. Forget all those employee sessions where they promise heaven year after year. The question comes down to a personal one: is winning everything to you? Is being number one, on top, being seen, being heard, being read, being known the driving impetus of your life? It is quite likely that you are headed for a cataclysmic crash, one that may not be evident to all externally. When your world implodes it eventually shows.

I asked a female friend of mine the other day: if you were a manager in a “fairly good” company and had a decent place to live, a decent car to drive and could pay your bills with some money to spare, would you take up the Senior Managerial position or Directorship if it meant less time with the children, twice the among of current travel and less time with your hubby. Her response was tantamount to “why not?” What she was saying was that if she had worked hard and long enough, she deserved it as much as anyone else. I wondered whether she saw the entire picture or perspective, but to her winning was key. Are we any different?

We graduate from school with high hopes of “making it” or becoming a “success,” whatever those terms mean. We scramble for the few jobs available and well with God’s providence, we land one. Our lives become simplified (or so we think) and we join the polygamous throng – we make the job the second wife. We wear ourselves thin to rise up the ladder while complaining how meagre our salaries are all through. Is this all there is to life?

Sometimes human beings can be quite mysterious. Several years later we find a drug addict in our home or some nymphomaniac and we wonder to ourselves “what happened?” I bought you this and that and took you to the best of schools. Genevieve, you had LCDs, dSTv, BBC, CNN and every mod-con, how in the world could you mess up? Some years ago, our fathers could not be ancestors unless they had good homes and children known for their decorum. Apparently, modernization has changed a lot. Will you even qualify as an ancestor? Is this your story?

At life’s centre isn’t money but people. When a boss disregards the legitimate needs of his employees or even more cogently his wife and children, that’s a recipe for disaster. We keep whining about social vices, increasing crime, homosexuality, online fraud, teenage pregnancy, abortions, etc. but have we stopped to ask ourselves, how did we arrive here? There are as many answers as there are people but I want to point us to two.

Some time ago, sociologists used to tell us that the home was the primary agent ofsocialization. I dare say that now it is the peer (in most cases). We have the Internet with its allies Facebook and Twitter, SMS, satellite TV and Nigerian movies socializing our children. When you don’t know what your kids are doing on the Internet or what they’re viewing on their cell phones don’t wake up surprised that your 15 year old is sexually active. The family is one place we should look to finding answers. When all we’re concerned about is going up, we neglect these children who need direction. We neglect wives and husbands who need attention and dare I say, when the family begins to crumble, society will in consequence crumble. How could I forget music and the arts? What would have been considered socially abhorrent just a decade ago is so warmly embraced as entertainment. Andrew Fletcher is right: “let me write the songs of a nation and I do not care who writes its laws.”

Evidently, it is not enough to end there ̶at the family. I am a Christian and can only propose what I know: that a living relationship with Christ which pans out in a Biblically-modelled fatherhood and family is our only hope for survival. Stronger Bible-based families lead to stronger Churches and stronger impact on societies. I’m no scholar of world religions but I’m yet to find a religious tradition that abhors family and the responsibility a father has to wife/wives and children. I recall a discussion with a Muslim colleague who explained that Allah granted additional wives only if the man could take care of them. I’ll avoid the excursus into polygamy and Muslim marriage. The question is, is care ONLY about putting food on the table or it is about helping shape another generation of people who will be useful to society and impact it positively?

At this writing, Qaddafi is clinging unrelentingly to power when others have fallen. Young men and women are dying out of what has been called Sudden Adult Death Syndrome and employers almost gleefully bury them oblivious or rather pretentiously blind-eyed to how their need to be number one is killing our nations’ futures. When “me” rather than “we” (us) is important we tread this road. When profit and gaining is king, we cut corners, sell our consciences and throw away our integrity so we can make progress.

I’ve yet to see a person on their death bed who has asked for their certificate from Yale, Oxford or Princeton. Quite often, people are caught in the euphoria of their hope beyond the grave or in the morbid fear of what awaits them beyond those moments. You will find some seeking some peace through a preacher or Imam or spiritual man/woman and still others trying to make peace with those they have offended. Eventually it boils down to relationship – either to the divine in the hereafter or to those they are leaving behind.

I have no angst about people climbing up the professional ladder and those other things. However when they neglect their families and what is most important – family, friends, people – and turn around to criticize society, I believe I am- we are-rightfully irked. We cannot cause a thing and turn around to criticize society for creating these problems.

I believe we have some lessons to learn from all thathas gone on around us – Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya. Am I advocating some kind of revolution? Partially so. When employers begin to realize we value ourselves beyond the machinery we’ve almost been reduced to, they will change. When employees make a statement about their values and collectively and peacefully communicate it that may turn the tide around.

Each day that we rise, we will be confronted with the opportunity to be better fathers, better mothers, betters brothers/sisters, better guardians and it will not be because we have made more cash than the day before but because we have spent time of worth touching the lives of those we love. The best legacy you can leave your children is knowing their worth and might I add in Christ, a worth devoid of competition, struggling and rivalry; a worth independent of their doing but inherent in their being – their creation in the “Imago Deo” – the image of God.

As you enter a new day and week, are you going to jump on life’s performance treadmill running everywhere and yet arriving nowhere or you’re going to stop and consider the things that truly matter – GOD, family, friends and life itself? In the end, winning isn’t everything.

March 6, 2011

1744GMT