Table of Contents
By Jackie Adhyambo
We are just about to bid farewell to 2024, a year packed with unprecedented events and insightful twists and turns that ought to teach us something to cross with into 2025. I say, “ought to” because many times we go through experiences whose lessons we deny a chance to temper our behaviour and mindsets moving forward.
Indeed celebrated English polymath Herbert Spencer was spot on when he said that, “the great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”
Of the many lessons life handed Kenyans in 2024, allow me to pick three that I believe we ought to take note of with keen interest.
Consensus building is key to nation-building
One, we can agree on amicable methods of reaching consensus without allowing chaos to take centre-stage. The blanket rejection of the 2024 Finance Bill that the Government ended up shelving once the Gen Z-instigated strife blew up did not have to culminate in death-dealing confrontations. We played with a detonator and any right thinking Kenyan ought to avoid walking that path again and avoid it like the plague. There is no telling what harm or misfortune the needless provocation that characterises the kind of confrontations we experienced in June and July of 2024 end up causing. So why test fate? Such sweepstakes are best left to obtuse seekers of reckless misadventures not individuals with an intact conscience. And why risk being reduced to a number in a schedule of woeful statistics in the name of seeking fame from vapid enticements?
No one is indispensable
Two, anyone can be stripped of the trappings of power within two shakes of a lamb’s tail – but if you like, before you can say Jack Robinson. Cabinet Secretaries came to terms with that reality at the height of the Gen Z frenzy mid this year. And so did one Riggy G from the Deputy President perch in spite of his cocky posturing and runaway verbosity, nay logorrhea, for it resonates better with the word that captures the sick-bound furious dissemination of rubble at the extreme end of the alimentary canal. The lesson here is that no one is indispensable whatever your skills set is. We will be better off if we resolve to treat each other with civility irrespective of the circumstances that prevail. Besides we should let our output speak for us not us to yell about it!
Constructive criticism is key to consensus-building
Three, no amount of disrespecting our leaders and attacking them in online forums will really change our fortunes. In fact, some of the posts seen in online outlets confirm just how ill-mannered and out and out insolent our society has become. I may not like a certain leader or certain leaders but I would rather not be as self-desecrating as to join the league of graceless and uncultured cavalier types who derive pleasure from being crass. When did being rough-hewn translate into heroism? Are we losing our sense of civility and nuance that hopelessly as a society? Come on, people! Express yourself but remain dignified for crying out loud! My take home here is that picking scoops of your poop with your bare hands to smear another person with the same leaves you equally soiled. It always pays to be honorable!
I am sure there are many other lessons we can add to my mere trinity… We don’t have to disrespect ourselves to be heroes. Neither do we need to wait until those we call our leaders to show us the way in everything! Or are we that vacuous upstairs? God forbid!
Ms Adhyambo is a knowledge management consultant running her own Nakuru-based firm.
