Living Not to Survive

When going to school and doing odd jobs to pay the bills, two work-related incidents stand out.

The first was a night job that, at first, I could go to at any time as long as I got it done. It was a perfect job that I could schedule my homework around. Soon, however, the boss changed his mind. Now, I had to call him when I arrived and when I completed the job. There was no problem with the quality of my work—it was just an attempt to control the numbers of hours he paid me. I was disturbed, to say the least. I had to survive. But the thought of merely surviving wasn’t tenable with my personality—I quit with no promise of the next job. Surprisingly, when I came across him one day, he offered to give me a good reference for my next gig, which I got soon after.

Another incident was at one discount grocery store chain. One way of keeping costs down was hiring part-timers with no benefits. At training the personnel manager instilled the evils of unionization. One middle-aged fellow male employee falsely reasoned in our conversations that, since he got the job himself, why would he pay a union to represent him? Funny enough, he lost the job before three months. One woman stayed for only a week and quit to sue the store chain for illegal hours and the right to associate. She was awarded an undisclosed amount, and the rest of us got nice chunks of checks in the settlement.

You see where I am going with this. Living merely to survive is unnatural. Besides hindering your ability to manifest your true spirit, you soon pay for it. Look around in the office how people suffocate under the fear of not surviving. Most learn small and timid ways to survive thereby robbing themselves of creative and bold fulfilling lives.

This fear of not surviving is what robs Uganda Parliament of its manhood. Museveni has cracked the balls of the men into eunuchs and cowed the women into submission to do his biddings for an absolute monarch. Look at the country, as a result.

Somebody said: “Living boldly and well is not derived from linear logic [of playing safe]; it is a truism experienced by befriending death.” I will add that only then will you open up to creativity in meeting the challenge of the day like a man—or woman for that matter.