Growing up teaches us that some adages have more than just a grain of truth to them. We gain an understanding of the importance of adhering to established facts and guidelines. It’s not uncommon for us to adopt a phrase as our personal credo.
You get out of life what you put into it, or you reap what you sow, to cite just one such adage. This aphorism struck me as one of the most accurate I’ve come across, and I think it’s important for every person to keep in mind at all times.
However, even though we are familiar with the adage and may have a hunch that it holds some truth, we do not make it a guiding principle of our lives, despite the fact that we do indeed reap in life what we sow.
I am convinced that the vast majority of the things we receive in life are a direct payoff for the efforts we put into creating them. To the extent that we have paid a certain price in life, we have earned whatever rewards we have received.
People often deceive or trick themselves into believing that they are not accountable for the outcomes of their own actions. We have a tendency to project our internal experiences onto the world around us. In my experience, many Ethiopians are quick to assign blame to others and slow to consider their own role in bringing about a given outcome.
I think the biggest problem with making real changes is that people don’t want to take responsibility for them. When we hope that others will make positive changes, we rarely examine our own actions to determine if we contributed to the current state of affairs.
In my opinion, people generally receive rewards commensurate with their efforts. It’s unfortunate that many individuals believe they are entitled to much more than they have contributed. Think about Ethiopian businesses.
I’ve seen that businesses started and run by Ethiopians alone don’t usually last more than a few decades. There might be some exceptions, but I’m not aware of any privately held businesses in Ethiopia run solely by Ethiopians for the past 50 years.
Despite the fact that some companies have been around for decades, they no longer enjoy the same level of popularity or prosperity as they once did. It’s highly possible that they’re heading in the direction of oblivion. Why?
Some may try to place the blame on anything other than themselves, such as the government’s policies, the current state of security, a negative work culture, etc. Although it has been selling its soft drinks across the country for almost fifty years, Coca-Cola continues to market itself as though it were a brand new corporation.
Businesses started and controlled by Ethiopians don’t last long because their founders and owners don’t focus on making them long-term successes, in my opinion. Companies often put short-term profits ahead of the long-term benefits that come with building a strong brand name.
Most people, to put it simply, lack long-term vision.
Whether they work in business or government, leaders have duties and must answer to the people they are in charge of. Avoiding this duty serves no constructive purpose. They are mostly responsible for any anarchy they see among the people they are guiding. Those in authority should take the lion’s share of the blame as well as the praise because of the weight they carry in the eyes of their followers.
If you ask me, our country’s leaders are reaping what they sowed. If they refuse to stop and think about what they could have done differently to stop the chaos, they have no right to feel regret when it consumes them.
