Tests of Time

I have lately been planning to make a stride in my career path. I believe the step would make my days more orderly and productive.

While trying to do this, though, I find out that moving on is not an easy thing to do. One has not to only avoid binding old values, but one has to fight with established presumptions and adopt new values. My decision, for instance, entails dealing with people who associate everything I do with them to monetary value, rather than systems that prefer to settle for less.

It remains puzzling to me that how some presumably ‘smart’ people often forget the role feelings play in career decisions. It is even more so to witness businessmen and leaders, who struggle to buy commitment to a brand of product by way of monetary value. For them, it all ends up in money.

Unfortunately, many of these people seem to fail to create loyal employees through their money. The presumed direct proportionality between cost outlaid and loyalty obtained does not often happen. It is even more so in a country like ours wherein reliable competence is scarce.

As I have reached a decision to move on, regardless, I have come to associate my decision with what is happening around me. I realise that it is not only me facing the test of times to move on, but also our fair nation.

In multiple fronts, our nation is facing the litmus test of moving on to a better state of equilibrium. The test is coming in all forms and from all directions. An ongoing drought, instability in some regions, expanding governance problems, turbulent global markets, lingering social tensions, and shortage of resources are some indicators of the trying times in which our nation finds itself.

For instance, the drought has endangered over 10 million Ethiopians. Although the government has invested 380 million dollars of its own money, the challenge of availing food and water to people in the drought-stricken areas remains a daunting task. Reports show that the international community is not responding to the requests of the government, due largely to its preoccupation with Syria and the migrant crisis the war there created.

Seen against the governmental plan of transforming the subsistence agriculture of the nation to a surplus producing sector, this shows the test of moving on. A nation that aspires to do better is facing a headwind with a speed capable of reversing the gains. Analogous to a person trying to make a career decision, the government will have to strike a balance in its plans, between the monetary value of its decisions, expressed in the resources it needs, and the feelings it has.

Having one without the other is not an option. Both have to exist. Plans without resources will only be good for shelves. Resources without plans breed inefficiency. A headwind such as drought is, therefore, a factor that puts the balancing act in the limelight.

In the case of the instability in some regions, such as Oromia, what is being tested is the democratic stock of our nation.  As a nation with a nascent democracy, trying to adjust itself to the evolving needs of the various sections of the citizenry, we cannot avoid such things. Viewed through the prism of our vision, which entails building a democracy that provides equality of opportunity to all its citizens, the events constitute a predictable test.

What is required here is a political balancing act. The problems causing the instability ought to be solved. No amount of rhetoric and skin-saving will solve it. Committed leadership is needed instead. But this ought to be done in a way that fits the vision. With the vision being mainstreaming democracy, the redress ought to also be democratic.

It is similar to other problems being faced by our country and the inherent nature of moving on.

Moving on, be it in one’s career path or in the national agenda, demands balancing between the tangible and the intangible, the tradable and the non-tradable, and the short-term and the long-term. Done in a wiser way, it could lead to a better state. But done thoughtlessly, it could endanger one’s career or a nation’s development.

I hope our nation will remain wise in handling the tests of the time. This, will lead to a stronger, democratic and more empowered nation.


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