Your complaints will take you just here—-not far

Life is but a breath. You don’t have much time here but you can get so much done. And one thing you can desist from is saddling your life with platitude of complaints instead of nourishing it with right thinking patterns and actions. In either ways there’re consequences. Wouldn’t you rather reap the consequences that emanate from right thinking patterns and actions?

Often when stuck in thick traffic I listen to other passengers complain bitterly. The cake of blame is divided and shared between the driver and the government or the driver and the police officers on duty. Either ways, it get shared. On noticing this, I will then bury myself in my book. As a result of these experiences, I wield a book anytime I sit in a commercial vehicle --- perhaps the traffic situation in Accra is not about changing any moment from now. My observation has been that, we never got to fly to our destination on time --- it doesn’t change the situation for good. It only add up to one’s frustration bringing health consequences. The telling truth is that complains will not get anything done. It has an immobilizing pill---lulling one to sleep---into inaction. One goes through life by being passive instead of active citizen.

On a different plane, many people resort to complaint when they hit the wall in their lives. When the penny drops on them. Suddenly they are filled with complaint. Complaint. And more of it. They allow the situation to decide their thought patterns. They’re impatient towards other opinion of the same situation. Often misjudge. They become immobilized. Bedridden. Inertia takes the better part of their lives.

Helen Adams Keller was born a healthy girl on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. She became deaf and blind at the age of 19 a consequences of an unknown illness. She was judged by her ‘incapacity’ but Anne Mansfield Sullivan --- a 20 year old graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind thought otherwise. Anne believed that the key to reaching Helen was to teach her obedience and love. She saw the need to discipline, but not crush, the spirit of her young pupil. She gained permission to remove Helen from the main house to a nearby cottage. They were there for two weeks. Anne began teaching Helen by manually signing into the child’s hand. When others encouraged her to take the highway of moaning as remedy for her situation, she took a different direction --- she learned and acted. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. Mark Twain remarked, “The two most interesting characters of the 19th century are Napoleon and Helen Keller”. Helen authored several books: ‘The story of My life’ 1902, ‘My Religion’ 1927, ‘Three Days to See’, ‘Teacher: Anne Sullivan Macy’ 1955, ‘Midstream: My Later Life’ 1929, and ‘The World I Live In and Optimism’ 2009. She broke the back of incredible odds to be successful.

Man has come far to give up his history to complaint and inaction. The lives of our forefathers in early stone, and iron stages were dramatic and lesson laden. They reckoned that in order to protect their kind they had to tame the other elements that were threat to their survival. Rather than whining, they shaped out tools from stones and later iron. They discovered fire to ward off wild beasts whose free range lives were threat. They clinched to their judgment the way a child would hold on tight to his candy. They oft judged right through series of thought processing. They had good grounds to complain but the reverse was true. Today we owe most of the luxuries we’re enjoying to generations of hard working people --- who were never broken by bad happenings.

I can tell you where the complaint will take you ---- not far. Initially it will seem you’re getting somewhere with it. The reality will soon set in – the seemingly flying ambition will bust and you will fall big on the back. Time and chance happen to everybody under this sun. There’re times bad things happen to good people --- that’s the earth. Ask a farmer and you will learn this lesson. His crops are either destroyed by other elements or by flood. It’s not because of his sins or his forefathers’. You’re not the only jobless graduate on the streets, you’re not the only ill-clad youth, and you’re not the only youth with money challenges. You will neither be first nor last. The economy has been either good or bad all time and not now. Perhaps it was your judgment that says last year’s economy was good. Oft-misjudgment.

The all-time definition of success is --- doing what the average person wouldn’t dare. At least you know who they are: they complain and don’t act, they sleep hoping for a light, and blame everybody for their sordid situation. When their plan A is shot down, they get all too worked out. They look out for emotional tranquilizer in the form of sympathy from others. ‘Kofi why are bad things happening to you?’ people would say in comforting them. Suddenly tears began to course down their rough cheeks in a form of rebellion to their worsening situation. ‘Why am I always suffering in this world?’ they would say. The telling truth is that, nothing gets done. The worst thing too is that their questions go unanswered.

While they’re waiting for ‘answers’, someone is challenging the status quo via series of activities. Remember: the story of the Israelites? They wandered in the wilderness for forty years --- a direct result of their whining behavior. So now you can decide to go through this life either by being passive or active. However, the former is fatal.

Know: you will not get everything done right at the first attempt. You will need the other factors --- perseverance and discipline. The common denominator that separate the achievers from those under.