Though the irrational view of ‘fortune favours fools’ might tickle the ears of compatriots who wish to use this flawed opinion as a psychological escape hatch, the more pragmatic of us would rather subscribe to the narrative that, fortune favours the super-agile. The lacerations inflicted by the COVID-19 scourge, compounded by the anxiety palpitated to all nooks and crannies of our country, has taught us the immense value of staying alert to opportunities and grabbing them before they dissipate.
In fact, the quickest way to face socio-economic oblivion is to inanely shut one’s ears and eyes to opportunities. In this context, perhaps no English expression beats the sayings, ‘Time and tide wait for no man,’ and, ‘Make hay while the sun shines.’ While I do not necessarily dispute that forces beyond our control often collude against us, fate remains a foreign concept to me.
My gripe with it, is our willingness to anchor ourselves on this intangible notion and excuse outright indolence. I strongly believe that it would be silly to surrender our mental capacities to fate and feebly watch as it rules and ruins us. Our inclination to bend to free will is often reflected in the gross practice of irresponsibly shifting the blame to fate, purely because of our failure to map a dignified and sustainable trajectory of our life.
In a play entitled Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare’s character named Brutus said, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, omitted, all the voyage of their life, is bound in shallows and miseries! On such a full sea are we now afloat.
And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.” The play was originally performed in the Globe Theatre in London, in an open-air theatre by Shakespeare’s playing company the King’s Men over four centuries ago. In the midst of a civil war, Brutus was facing the forces of Octavian. Cassius, Brutus’ brother-in-law, held the view that they had to retreat, take a break and regroup. Quite insightful are the words of Brutus when he rejected Cassius’ unsolicited advice, “Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe. The enemy increaseth every day. We, at the height, are ready to decline.”
What was the import of Brutus’ words? That the most irresponsible and asinine thing to do, would have been to retreat when his forces were at their “height.” Since his troops outnumbered the enemy’s forces, and wielded more power, that was the opportune time for them to focus on sealing victory and conquering the enemy.
On the flipside, by cowardly retreating, they would have risked dilution of their strength, thereby giving the enemy the chance to gain an upper hand. The opportunity to win the war had to be seized “at the flood” or high tide, when the strength of the forces was in their favour. “They had to take the current when it serves,” meaning that they had to be alive to that opportunity before it blew away.
Failure to do so, would have resulted in them “losing their ventures,” because this would have meant swimming against the tide, and therefore standing the risk of suffering defeat.
What’s the lesson for you and me? That the alpha and omega of success purely rest on the courage to agilely seize opportunities. Closely riveted to the collapse of the genuine entrepreneurial spirit in Botswana, is our culture, which is unfortunately awash with the less than desirable wait-and-follow mentality.
We tend to shy away from the entrepreneurial mantra of adopting the valuable innovative and creative disposition. Hence, the disproportionate ratio of followers to leaders.
If we do not reverse this unfortunate culture, we can be sure that we are slated for a collision course with success. We need to have the courage to valiantly confront the continuously putrefying spirit of entrepreneurship.
While the whole world is bent on harnessing technology, and fully embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution, most of us are content with dragging our feet and paying for services that we could have pioneered and directly reaped financial benefits from. I would be the last person to buy into the unverifiable conjecture that, we are a spent force of confident but pitiable intellectually vacuous souls. Not because of natural bias, nor blind patriotism, but out of informed appreciation of our capacity as individuals and as a collective.
Our ability to take advantage of opportunities, including fleeting ones, as they arise, might to some extent be influenced by what is inculcated into our minds from childhood. It starts with what we may perceive as inconsequential things, like encouraging our children to work on their school assignments in good time and warning them about the prevalent regressive culture of procrastination.
Not only that, owing to the effect of social media’s regrettable content, some children do not value education. Accustomed to flying by the seat of their pants, their view is, devoting time to school eats into the time they could be dedicating to endeavours that would help them amass wealth. For this reason, we tend to raise hallucinatory day dreamers and chronic truants who are not keen to receive basic education before allowing themselves to be lured by the rife, phony get-rich-quick schemes of this wealth-crazy world.
A friend of mine is grappling with this issue. Her son, who lives with her overseas, failed the degree course he was pursuing, purely because he was not willing to focus and expend the required level of energy on learning.
He has wasted an opportunity that many children can only dream of. Little did he realise that this was a fleeting opportunity. He is now simmering in his moment of regret as he finds himself weeping alone, sadly singing the blues day after day, unceremoniously dismissed from a reputable tertiary institution for failing to meet the minimum requirements for advancing to the next academic year.
We have many similar cases locally. These have provoked the frustration and ire of even the most equable of parents. All these are connected to failure to recognise and seize opportunities as and when they arise. Perhaps it is for this reason that Thomas Alva Edison, an American inventor and businessman, wisely cautioned, “Most people miss opportunity, because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” If, out of ponophobic or ergophobic inclinations, we fall victim to continuously kicking the can down the road, we may never succeed in our quest for excellence, and we would often get sidetracked from our mission to recognise and seize opportunities.
We need to help our children to appreciate that the key imperatives to success are: the willingness to work hard and smart when called to step up to the plate, and the importance of adopting the commendable attitude of a self-starter, thereby obviating the need for micromanagement. The most effective way of teaching our children to be agile in seizing opportunities, is not to sound like a broken record, but to set an example worthy of emulation. To our children we are heros, sheros and role models. Hence, the need to be exemplary. If they see us subscribing to the mantra pushed by an American author and business consultant named Tom Peters, “If a window of opportunity arises, don’t pull the shade,” they too are likely to do the same.
When they see us fluffing around instead of diligently chasing our targets in a way that reflects we are conscious of time, they are likely to grow into slothful entitlement-centric adults, totally unbothered about meeting deadlines, achieving targets and accounting to any superior.
Invariably there is an element of risk in seizing some opportunities. Risk should not always serve as a deterrent. Once we have conscientiously calculated and profiled the risk, we will set in motion our mitigation stratagem, thus tremendously reducing the chances of gambling away our precious time and hard-earned resources. Didn’t Mark Zuckerberg share this abiding soundbite of perception, “In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks!” It behooves us to do all we can to promote the sustainable culture of seizing opportunities.
