Amongst the stories that I was told during my childhood, the most memorable one was about the struggle my dad had to pass through to make his own way in life in Addis Abeba. My dad migrated to Addis Abeba when he was 16 years old. As he had an elder brother who had an established life in the city of cars and lights, he started off by living with him.
Yet, he needed to do all manner of work to be able to stand up on his own two feet. His brother was generous enough to provide him with the basic necessities. However, the challenge of finding a job, getting a better education, selecting a profession and being independent under the hustle and bustle of the city was left to my dad himself.
The story entails many ups and downs – even occasionally seeing him risk his life. It also involves surrendering the social status of relatives – usually considered a taboo – for the betterment of individual livelihood. Beyond all, the story is all about a person who takes the risk of leaving the rural comfort zone for his imagination of an urban life and surrendering self-importance for economic betterment.
I often recall this story of the person that I highly regard whenever I have discussions about personal development and unemployment in our fair nation. This same story comes to my mind whenever I face the educated youth for job interviews.
I get puzzled as to what went wrong between the generation that could take the personal initiative of shaking free from its comfort zone for personal development and my generation – who are seen searching for a comfort zone, no matter how inferior it is. It is indeed confusing how much modernity has increased our risk sensitivity.
The young job seekers that I often meet are individuals with no ambition in life. They lack the determination for personal development. They often come up with fabricated ambition, blurry dreams, sensational explanations and false stories.
Some even have the courage to pimp-up their application documents – including fictitious experiences and short-term trainings have become the norm. As if talking is what it takes to be a good professional, I often see job seekers talking highly about themselves.
The reality becomes visible when the chance to display their capacity is given to them. Regardless of where they were educated and where they have lived, members of my generation always settle for the easiest way out. They shun challenges and believe in revolutionary growth. Evolutionary development does not carry any weight with them.
In contrast to the dreams we might speak so fondly about, we are not ready to pay the essential price that could help us to realise our dreams. We seem to live under a serious contradiction of self-importance and disposable capacity. We are not ready to accept who we actually are and build on that.
Considering the social structure of their time, individuals like my dad had no shortcut to growth. They rather had to face whatever life had given them and succeed. If they had any other choice, it was failure.
The cost of personal growth at the time was very high indeed. Anyone can imagine how difficult life could be for rural-urban migrants under a feudal system, with its rigid stance on social status and mobility.
Where did we lose the courage that our parents had?
I believe that focusing so much on money has eroded our stance on personal values. We seem to have improperly thrown out our values to the extent that we have begun to think of life as being measured by the amount of money one accumulates. Hence, we have downgraded the importance of values.
Even modern economics claims that money follows values. It does not exist in vain. As a means of transaction, money is naturally meant to denominate the value embraced within a given good or service. Thus, it has no existence without values.
This shows that we are contradicting not only our instinct, but also the basic theory of economics. By settling for shortcuts, we are aspiring to trade the value that we do not possess.
There seems to be a huge divergence between my generation and that of my dad’s. Whereas theirs run for the development of tradable values, mine lives under the shadows of monetisation. Theirs has the determination to take risks, but mine tries to buy its way out.
I wonder how we could be supportive to the growth of our fair nation without having the commitment and determination to stand strong in the face of our challenges.
Certainly, if we are not to change our attitude, we could end up creating a nation that prides itself on a rich historical legacy, but has failed to retain a portion of it. We do not even have the moral ground to claim our lineage to the heroic forefathers who inherited for us a nation that defied the powers of colonialism.
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