From Who’s Who To Who’s He

Africans tend to fear death. If there’s a topic we consistently avoid discussing, it’s mortality. A lot of folks (and maybe even we ourselves) do not consider succession planning. We strangely believe that by planning for a life in our absence, we are inviting the Grim Reaper to come for us. It’s a denial of sorts, as we console ourselves with the belief that we will live forever and that when the lights go out, things will somehow take care of themselves.

This fear of death is also what makes us rage on in careers and positions even when it’s clear that our time is up. We become paralysed with the fear of death—which is often viewed as a decline—that we do everything in our power to hold on to places and positions long after our sell-by date. We have expired but still insist on remaining on the shelf, hoping some gullible shopper will imagine our value and buy us.

Raging on is what most of us know. But it fails in work just as it fails in life. So why is it so hard to notice and welcome a decline in a stage of life? Perhaps it is because for many of us, our lives are our work. We are nobody outside our occupation, status, or position in life. Yet, life doesn’t give any of us special privileges, at least not all the time. We all get our fair share of opportunity (though some have more ground to cover than others) to leave a mark on the universe, and then make room for others.

I recall the popular story of a top civil servant in the Kenyan government who suddenly lost his job. Gava jobs come and go faster than the lunar eclipse we recently witnessed, hehe. At first, he seemed to be in denial, and so was his phone, because it was no longer ringing off the hook as it had been previously. When the job katikad, so did his phone calls. He tickled many when he told us of how he went to Safaricom to find out whether there was something wrong with his phone. With time, he accepted his reality and went back to doing what he had long loved: teaching at the university.

Perhaps therein lies a clue: when a season is over, we should look back and seek what we naturally enjoyed doing and consider going back to it or starting that thing we have always desired to do. This could be a childhood dream we abandoned or a career we left behind when a new opportunity arose. That’s what this mzee did, and guess what? He did so well impacting young minds that he was invited back into government and given an ambassadorial job abroad. Talk of a happy ending!

Folks, maybe the way to be invited back is to be willing to leave. It’s like when people see you are comfortable leaving, they then want you to stay or come back. But a word of caution to remember, leave the room when they are still clapping for you, as Sunny Bindra reminds us.

Through my own halftime transition, I have come to realise that no matter how solid a situation appears, it will surely come to an end. I ran my events business well, and when we got to cruising altitude, I became complacent and forgot that the plane would eventually need to land. The plane cannot fly indefinitely, and the landing was excruciating, to say the least.

Now that’s a lesson I don’t intend to forget—some classes in life should only be taken once. The transition hack I use now is to regularly imagine life after this current season is over. How do you picture the next phase of your life after your job is over, and it’s time to move on to another place? I try to keep one eye on the lookout like a sentry checking out the horizon to see what the lay of the land looks like huko mbele.

We should maximise our current station of life and work, do it to the best of our ability and let posterity take care of itself. Legacy is often a result of our actions over time and not a targeted outcome. In his book, From Strength to Strength, Arthur C. Brooks tells us, “Obsessing over the future squanders the present. If you love your work so much, you might as well enjoy it while doing it. If you spend time thinking about and working on your legacy, you are already done.” Legacy and impact are the outcomes of good work done over a long period, and if I may add, of successfully transitioning from one season of life to another.

Folks, the way to live meaningfully is by doing good deeds at every stage of our lives. Those good deeds, and the imprint we leave on people’s lives, don’t expire. In fact, those may be the only things we bring to the next phase of our lives. Perhaps when we view our lives in a wider perspective, we can see decline more positively and be released from the cage of raging on in fear. Let’s loosen the grip on life a bit, folks. That way, we breathe easier.

Good deeds do not expire; they appreciate like a shamba. So, when we transition from being a “who’s who” to people asking “who’s he” only a short while after our role is done, it won’t bother us as much. Our focus will have shifted to settling into a new season, which, if well executed, will make us a who’s who again, just like the civil servant I mentioned earlier.

So, dig in as much as you can at your current station in life, but remember to keep an eye out for what is next. Be hands-on but keep your eyes on the horizon, at least with one eye, to see what is loading next. Life is fair and gives us hints to start preparing for our next transition. But we have to notice them and act. Seeking out God’s guidance also helps. You may want to try that too. It’s another hack that works.