Living Life: Of Responsibility & the Love Phrase

For the record, I, like many other young people of my generation, like to consider myself a member of that ‘it’ generation – savvy, well connected, not in the sense of ‘connections’ of knowing ‘big’ people, but in the manner that I can get to who and where I want, up to date, in the sense of knowing a lot of the stuff going on around. But alas, this past week, I got the shocker, a reality check on the self Since my day job entails using the powers of persuasion by techniques and knowledge, here comes an elderly gentleman, sly as a fox, but focused with the determination of a young raging bull. During appointment one, he lavishes all the praise on my technical knowhow of my trade which he urgently requires, after which I was to give him a call within the same day to set a second rendezvous. A day later, the chap walks in with this look – whatever happened to the much waited for call. Typical of me and my type, I begin to feign an excuse. “You see, this guy was supposed to call you, didn’t he?”The chap waves me to sit down and begins to respectfully pass on the message. “It does not matter whether you told him to call me or not. You see the problem with Africa is that everybody is trying to blame someone else. Do you know what responsibility means? It means – the ability to respond. Simple.” The message stung but within seconds, I felt that this chap’s few words were my Eureka moment. Dictionary.com defines ‘responsibility’ as one, the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something and two, the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something. A lot of us view responsibility as a duty, a weight, and even a burden, but this gentleman made it so blunt and true – the ability to respond. The wise old man simply says that when there is a situation one has to respond, not dilly dally, blame the weather, this or that, just do something about it, however stupid or thoughtless or whatever, instead of just sitting around hoping that the situation will just go away by itself. What appeared to have been a snipe turned out to be the best thing I had heard, must I say, all month? Am confident that many of you, like me, relish the pedestal of education and living in a fast paced world and begin to think of ourselves like some sorts of Silicon Valley graduates, yet that idea sits in our heads and we just go to sleep. On realizing my keen interest in the old chap’s advice, he could not help but throw in a cheeky one. That in Africa, honesty is a moral value that most choose to avoid conveniently, but in Europe, speaking the truth is just a way of life. To push the point home, he added that in Europe, it takes a lot of guts for a young man to tell a woman ‘I love You’, simply because every girl knows the weight of those words, but back here, chaps keep throwing the line all over the place several times when the last thing on their mind is love, and the girls keep falling for the same line, or so my wise old man supposes. Anyhow, in a brief five minutes, I discovered that although sometimes I prefer to lie just to keep a business lead hot, it may not necessarily be a good means to achieve an end. About the three word phrase, well, the jury of men & women is out. I wish you a responsible Sunday! kelviod@yahoo.com