Many people in Africa say life is full of cross roads; I think of it as a straight highway. To those with constant values, life is a journey following a constant beacon – a consistent North Star. That is a life of principle. Where there is principle, a path appears even among wild bushes.
But principle cannot hold against wave after wave of look-alike North stars. Too many shining comets resemble the North Star. It takes fine wisdom and patience to spot the North Star amongst all other shining things in the galaxy. Sometimes the mist clouds our vision and we become unhappy when we lose sight of the North Star, but celebrate in delight when we spot it again, after the storm has cleared. It is African to star gaze, just as it is to communicate with the spiritual world. All these are attempts to find our star.
Some of us think they have control of their North Star. That they can view it whenever they wish and that it will constantly guide them in the right direction. Such people are certain of success in their endeavours and attribute it to their own ‘self-making.’ They attribute success to hard work, determination and luck. They believe in success at every cost. To them, every star is a north star so long as it gets them across the ocean. Many of them eventually mistake islands for the main land and blame the harbor for staying behind forgetting that it is them who have moved away from the harbor. They cannot tell when they are straying from their course; they think it is their North Star changing position. They have developed an attitude of self-righteousness and blame everything that is moving parallel or opposite to their course. For them, it is ‘my way or nothing.’
Knowledge acquired in school or elsewhere provides them an illusion of experience and wisdom. Wealth gives them an illusion of confidence. Yet none of them created himself, nor knows when he will die. A famous scripture in the bible tells of God’s words to a certain man “…Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge…? “…Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation…?” “…when I said, “This far you may come and no further, this is where your proud waves halt..?”
The man being addressed was a man earlier in the book described by God himself as a ‘blameless and upright man who fears God and shuns evil…’ Job was his name. The man was human, and successful in every worldly term possible then. Most importantly the man thought he knew God. But a series of events not predictable to man and utterly catastrophic turned his world upside down. Eventually he said, “…My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you…I now repent…” At that point, his knowledge gave way to wisdom, and God rewarded him even more bountifully. He had realized that his massive wealth was like a speck of dust in his creator’s flowing robe. That he was only partly responsible for his success. He had almost lost his North Star.
When a person’s life is guided by principle; decision making becomes very easy. It removes all doubt; one doesn’t even need to ‘think’ or ‘consult’ to make a decision. It is worrying that many people have so many principles that they no longer know which one ‘to chose.’ One cannot have several principles. It is only possible to be absolutely loyal to one principle, just like one God. In matters of principle, there is no democracy; one must stand firm like a rock.
Some people say that principle does not exist in politics or business. Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’, Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals’ and Robert Green’s ‘The 48 Laws of Power’ are some of the books that have misled millions of people by presenting the easy road – expediency over principle. They are wrong. A German thinker called Max Weber wrote a paper titled ‘Politics as a vocation’ which spoke of a lesser known type of politics; politics inspired by the real need for change, not politics for the sake of politics, or politics as an end in itself. Pundits often speak of ‘this brand of politics’ or ‘that brand of politics’; they speak of ‘democrats or republicans’, ‘Whigs or Tories’, ‘leftists or rightists’. But politics is politics and politicians have the choice and responsibility to sanitize politics by practicing integrity and ensuring fidelity to positive values. They fool us by saying that ‘Politics is a dirty game’, yet it is not the game that becomes dirty; it is the player that decides to make a game dirty. I say it is only the politicians with a constant beacon who will be strong enough to survive the sweeping winds of fame and money. The most endangered of our species is the African politician; he is confronted by many ‘north’ stars. First fame, then money and greed comes in. A true North star cannot shine through such an opaque combination.
A person’s success is made possible by a combination of forces that cannot be attributed to any one man – not even himself. If you are a rich businessman, you became rich because you were able to move your products to the market on roads built by other people’s tax money… you are also partly alive because you enjoy security made possible by the state because of other people’s tax money. Some famous ‘economist’ spoke of the ‘hidden hand of the market’ – a vacuous wealth distribution concept that has failed the test of time and wasted Africa’s time and people.
The youth – especially those in Africa, have no one else to admire except politicians, celebrities and shrewd businessmen, those who have the ‘knack’ for politics and business – those who make it to the Forbes List or such other list. Their parents are a lost generation who were too busy chasing their own dreams to mind them. They are therefore inspired by the need to be different from their parents; the urge to be unique and to beat their own paths is a result of that. Many of them want change, but only feebly so. They have not been taught the virtues of patience, theirs is a life of ‘instant’ everything, from instant coffee to instant sex to instant change. They want revolution without reform, sex without love; they want to arrive without traveling.
African youth are losing respect for tradition. They forget that the old, long, dusty and winding path they are advised to take by the old is the right path for them because it is the safest one, albeit long and lonely. They prefer the glittery modern highway because it is short and fun, but no one told them of the dangers of the highway – so they must perish. Dancing is not an individual affair; one cannot dance to their own tune. Neither can one beat his own path and ignore the highway just because he is trying to be unique and different. There are things about being an African that must be guarded jealously. There are things about being African, that the outsider will never understand, and they should not.
To live by principle, you must first study to find your North star, then keep your eyes constantly on it while traveling. Stopping for the mist to clear does not mean your journey has stopped – nor does it mean that you are lost, you must find the courage to stop even when others are rushing past. It is because you must wait for your star to come out of the clouds again, your journey is not another man’s journey, there is no peer-traveling in life. On your life’s journey, storms may rock your boat. It means your star wants you to follow that rough part of the ocean. You must learn that only big problems are awarded with big solutions. Small problems beget small solutions. You must have faith that your purpose is unique and that you were built with sturdy material – strong enough to withstand the pressures of your journey. God does not give you a load you cannot carry.
Broken wings fly 
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