I haven’t seen it all. I haven’t been to all places. I haven’t met all the people yet but one thing I have seen too many times to remain silent about is the fear of committing mistakes, especially growing up as a typical African in varying settings.
I have lived in villages, small towns, bigger towns, and cities in Ghana for the past twenty years and over and this is one thing that keeps recurring so often and I just can’t overlook but prompt you, my dear reader to also think around it and together we can cause a revolution. It’s a REVOLUTION!
We are so much afraid to commit mistakes and we end up doing virtually nothing in the end, which to me is the biggest mistake rather. Students are scared to make mistakes and it imprisons their power of thinking outside the box and so they would want to quote the lecturer’s words to him verbatim.
Employees cannot take initiatives because they just don’t want to commit the mistakes superiors wouldn’t make the slightest room for. Children are simply scared of trying anything other than what mummy and daddy want and they never get to discover their true selves for the rest of their lives.
It is sad how we walk through life, from birth through all the other rites of passage, without making little room for people to express themselves freely with the possibility of making mistakes and picking up from where they left off. I have met very few people who look beyond others’ mistakes and pat them on their shoulders even when they are failing.
I have only read about such people in books and I know it wouldn’t take you by surprise to learn that very few Africans fall within this group. No wonder we’ve been struggling even with leadership for a very long time. There is a REVOLUTION that will break that jinx and you my reader, are the agent of this.
God, the God of creation, right from the beginning of time made enough room for man to make mistakes, be corrected and learn. If God has always made such provisions, I struggle to understand why we would allow ourselves to be enslaved by this kind of fear.
I was just about settling on the fact that I couldn’t have survived in the levitical days when people were stoned and killed by heart for doing evil. I was privileged to be part of a topic discussed in a meeting on 7th February, 2013 in my church (PIWC –Sakumono) dubbed JOURNEY IN THE DESERT where God, in spite of all the strict rules laid down for the Israelites to obey, made enough room for people to run to cities of REFUGE for committing unintentional sins. That places the subject I’m trying to communicate in a better perspective. We are handling mistakes not evil.
God knows men are bound to mistakes in attempting to exercise the dominion He has bestowed upon us to rule the earth, be fruitful and multiply. Biblical King David understood this principle, wasn’t afraid to attempt anything and went ahead to say, the righteous shall fall seven times, yet he shall rise. It is the RIGHTEOUS who will fall seven times here, not the devilish. Attempting daunting tasks and making efforts to surmount mountains are supposed to be championed by GOOD people. Making mistakes does not automatically put you in the pit of hell.
Please get me right. I’m not encouraging evil; I am talking about not being afraid to make mistakes. Not all mistakes are evil. We have actually lived in this kind of fear to the extent that we have failed to make attempts at a lot of things and have allowed the “world” to take up all the influential places in society, they perpetuate their selfish agenda and then we congregate back in our churches, parks and prayer camps to still “intercede” for them. Evil certainly thrives when evil reigns.
The one stronghold of evil thriving is for GOOD men to remain silent. If you (a GOOD person) are afraid to make mistakes, the evil will attempt as many times as possible because he understands there is actually nothing to lose by making attempts.
I have only been to school in Ghana so that is what I know of. Throughout school, pupils and students are not even made to understand the need to take chances and expect failure to be an option. The average teacher would use canes on us those days, especially when we were expected to have done better in our “corrections”. Very little room was left for us to even ask for further explanations as to why things were done in certain ways and not as we thought. We were never encouraged to take bold steps and expect to fail but still continue in our pursuit of achieving great feats.
I can’t tell if the situation has changed now but with what I keep experiencing each day, I doubt it has. The famous story of the inventor of the light bulb, comes to mind. He attempted thousands of times and finally had it. He went ahead to make a statement worth noting and mentioning in this write-up: “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize close they were to success when they gave up”. Slip once, twice, thrice and you will castigated just like that guy who did nothing at all and so where lies the motivation to make attempts and fail in the first place? With this REVOLUTION we are moving beyond our educational system.
It’s a REVOLUTION! Dare to make mistakes. Expect failures as options when you try something but don’t accept the mistakes as the outcome of your actions but a means to an end. The end is supposed to be that excellent product you have conceived in your mind’s eye. It is that wonderful set up you have structured in your mind’s eye that will be a solution to the problems of many other people looking up to you. It is that ambition of yours to get into any level of governance to cause that radical change all of us so much desire.
A young man is afraid to even talk to a woman he’s been having sleepless nights over just because of what if… A lady is convinced in her heart that that guy should not go past her for any other person but she is busily battling with the what if… Most people are scared to step beyond certain boundaries and expand. They prefer to be glued to the little they have done that makes them comfortable all because of what if… They are just fine with corporate Ghana but never the global stage all because of what if… So I ask, so what if not?
With this same fear, we have relegated the spirit of entrepreneurship to a few people who choose to fix systems and dictate the pace of the same economy we all still live within. Aren’t we denying ourselves of so much, simply because we don’t want to commit mistakes? Sharing my Pastor’s passion, we have left the Media, Governance, Arts and Entertainment etc. fallow and expect to see positive changes when others get in there with wrong motives? It’s almost an impossibility.
An attempt is not enough. By the Davidic principle I mentioned earlier, the minimum should be seven. I am suggesting to you that the fear preventing from making that move that looks unconventional doesn’t even exist. It has always been done in a particular way but there could always be a better way; we make mistakes, find alternative ways and eventually settle on the better way forward. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, my dear reader. Don’t be afraid to be thought of as being weird. Don’t be scared of the anticipated perception you are likely to incur from onlookers because you went in for what you want and what you are supposed to do. Don’t allow the good standing you want to maintain with humans prevent you from taking a risky step which is pregnant with success and its alternatives, all things being equal. Our advantage is, irrespective of any anticipated negative outcome of our actions/inactions we are encouraged by the fact that all things work together for good, to them that love the Lord… I guess I need not give an exposition on this again.
Be inspired! Go ahead! Express that thought now! Put that thought to action now! Move further with what you are already doing now! You might make mistakes but you are not a mistake! Don’t be afraid to be thought of as being a failure! Don’t be afraid to be thought of as being too primitive! Don’t be afraid to be bounced!Go all out to conquer that thought of giving up!
It’s a REVOLUTION!
