Are You Fishing?

You are born. You spend four, maybe five years tumbling around, bringing joy to your parents, and then you are off to school. You are told that you have to study hard, score well so that you can go on to a good school to study harder. The process goes on until you graduate and go on to a nine to five job.

There you spend maybe a good five years till another better offer comes along. If you are lucky, you might get promoted so fast that you stay on the job. Nevertheless, you tumble around the job market, dabble in stocks and insurance and spend some money on the lottery. You might even try out some business sporadically for the next 40 to 50 years.

Thereafter, by official decree, you have to leave the job market when your nest egg is not even half filled for retirement. You work on odd jobs next just to make ends meet. Alas, one day you have a bad stomach ache and the doctor tells you that it is cancer. You linger around for another three to five years, 10 if you’re lucky. And that is it. You eventually leave this world with blank eyes and a gag, while your body gradually freezes and hardens in death.

Have these paragraphs described the life of someone that you have known? Or do they, at any line, describe your life thus far? These paragraphs have done both for me. My life is currently at paragraph one, going on to paragraph two. It is amazingly predictable what my life story will turn out should I continue my current way of life.

I was channeled into a mass production factory from the start. In these factories, inputs come in and outputs come out. Inputs are my youth and energy; outputs are my strong work ethics and a set of good employable skills. You might have guessed it – the factory is the education system. Don’t imagine for a second that I am berating schools or belittling the benefits of mass education. I am all out for mass education. Education is necessary to build an efficient economy with an employable population. School bound education is the way forward for many people with no bread on their tables and no food in their stomachs. Institutions provide me with the necessary skills to satisfy my basic human needs, but eventually, I arrived at a certain threshold to know that schools are not teaching the right skills to get us beyond our basic needs; beyond mediocrity.

Life is like a marathon right now. I came from 12 years of school, did my service for the nation with the Army, and now I’m back in school. At least I had a two years break from the monotonous cycle of waking up daily at 0530 to go to school, to face tests and tests and more tests. The girls of my age do not even have that chance. Sometimes I wonder if anyone feels as tired as I am while running this mentally, physically and emotionally draining marathon.

Shortly after the end of the 16 years educational marathon, we are thrown into the 40 years vocational marathon. The plan is to wake up at 0700hrs, a little improvement from the 16 years plan, trudge your half awake self to work by 0830hrs and expect to work your ass off to make someone else rich. Life takes on a new meaning from now on: 40/40. (40 hours work weeks, if you are lucky, for the next 40 years)

If you do your math, more than half your life will be over by then. The worse thing is, after 56 years of toiling, you are no better than where you have started from! You are just as broke as before, and that to me is a nightmare – a 56 years nightmare. (58 years, if you add the Army days.) I don’t want any part to play in that sad story; I have to break free of this bond!

You may be tempted to reprimand such acute egotism, and tell me to get a grip of reality and start helping those worse off than me. Sure, there are countless poorer people that I can help, but I will like to pose this question: Would you rather be a 2 hours weekend helper offering limited help; or a 24-7 helper with the financial clout to back up your charitable activities? This is a fool-proof question with an obvious question. Why commit to something that you cannot give your all? Even if you think you are contributing, are you really helping? As the old adage goes, ‘Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, and you’ll feed him for a lifetime.’ If I want to help, I have to first understand that receiving a fish a month will not suffice, and start learning how to fish. Helping others to do the same will be easy thereafter. With more fish than I can eat, I can help others in so many more ways than an employee on a payroll would ever dream of.

I am therefore questioning the objectives of all students who go to school tomorrow. Why you are in school and what are you studying for? Are you studying for a good pay check? Or are you studying to give others a good pay check so that you can build your business while providing employment opportunities? Are you rushing to learn how to receive fish, or rushing to learn how to fish?

I am also questioning the objectives of all good employees who reports to their jobs tomorrow. Why do you trudge yourself off to the office and what are you working for? Are you working for a good pay check to foot the bills and loan interests? Or are you working for business experiences, building up your nest eggs and investing wisely for a lucrative passive income? Are you receiving fish or are you fishing?

Ultimately, what are you dreams in life? Are you gearing yourself up to move towards those ends or are you diverging further and further away from them? Do you even have a dream in the first place? Why then rush in life if you do not know where you are going? You might be better off staying in situ.

What a shame it will be, should you rush for 56 years only to realize that you have rushed in the wrong direction. This revelation is hardly justice for trying so hard for so long. You deserve a bigger fish than the small prawn that you are currently receiving and you know it! You ought to be fishing, but are you willing to forgo the skills of receiving fish? That, my friend, is the question.