Comfortable,
contented, satisfied are three words that have constantly been etched in my
daily routine for the last couple of weeks, I could blame it on the slow,
sweaty and humid conditions at the coast, better yet I could pin it on the
blanket of laziness that seems to keep this coastal city warm all year round.
Complacency has caused the death of many dreams; I think its synonym should be
more like ‘slayer of dreams’.
“The arrogance of success is to think that what we did yesterday is good
enough for tomorrow.”
I am worried though that such a simple word as ‘complacency’ could take
claim to thousands of dreams that have died over the years. Sigh, couldn’t have
they chosen a better word, more befitting of the status and reputation that the
word has come to be known with.
I shuffle back a couple of years back, backpack slung on my shoulders
full of dreams, ambition, a flame for the finer things of life, naivety of a
teenager and the energy of the revitalized opposition leader (One must command immense
influence to declare a public holiday with no basis and a big chunk of the
country actually listens) ----> story for another day though! Fast forward a couple of years later, and the backpack is
still slung on the shoulder but its contents have changed, its beat down and
filled with doubt, disappointments, anger but most importantly ‘complacency’
and all its synonyms that come along with it ....#sigh.
I fear that this script is cliche’ to many of us earthlings, we get into
the routine, daily norms and the well too familiar chartered paths of our
predecessors knowing full well of the outcome but choosing to ignore that since
we are complacent and in tandem with conventional thinking practices. We finish
school and most of us just want that big corporate job, but after a year we realize that we need to supplement our income especially for dudes once these
statements become all too familiar (Oh I need to go to the salon…bla bla bla),
and then we all dip our heads into the conventional side hustles, mpesa shop,
rearing chicken, movie & game parlors nini nini …you know how it is!
So am guessing now you we can agree that ‘complacency’ and ‘conventional
thinking’ should both take equal responsibility for such mass murder of dreams.
But isn’t conventional thinking really made up of what we decide it to be, if
we all decided to have dinner for breakfast each day, wouldn’t that be
considered as the new norm? But we are afraid, because whereas you might decide
to have dinner for breakfast, the rest might not and then you will have to
change because we are afraid to stand out, walk alone, turn right when all are
going left. This inability is inherent in all of us, and so don’t beat down
yourself when you find your current state to be in tandem with this way of
life, but each day we can strive to be different, to stand out but tag a friend
along so that what you fathom will one day be conventional thinking, if you get
the right numbers to subscribe to your school of thought.
“Nothing is
more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future”
