Strange World Indeed

I got myself into trouble.

What am I suppose to do when the person I trust betrays me, and the stranger I don't know protects me? The saddest thing about betrayal is, they never come from your enemy.

It's a stranger's world I suppose - What a strange world? Indeed!

Let me tell you how it all happened.

Well, I didn’t agree with the point of prioritization; not only because I thought they were baseless, but they were also misinterpreted. Men, you’ve got to put yourself first. Look, all cabin crews (regardless the airline) will tell you to wear your safety mask first before helping anyone else on board - business class passengers are not even the priority here, we all are.  

Even at the hospital, the life of a pregnant mother in labor supersedes the unborn child when lives saving choices become critical. I didn't ask the doctors, I just know. 

And then the emphasis was on, "sacrifice." Like seriously?

Well, first of all, it's not mandatory that's why it's called sacrifice. And secondly, no one can sacrifice what he/she doesn't have - it’s a matter of choice. So you get it now - and maybe lastly, each one for him/her self, God for us all (I probably shouldn’t have added this bit - I guess so).

No one will fully understand the world before dying. As my good friend Bernard Sekyi Acquah said, "in 50 years to come, you'll lose some of your loved ones, if not all." Either you'll be buried or you’ll bury some of them. That's a fact, believe it or not. Some have come and gone. Some are coming. Some are going as we speak. We're here but we'll go. No one stays here but until we die, we live. Wait a minute, the world will go on whether you wake up or not. You're only a microscopic piece of matter in the universe.

So the question is, why do we do this to ourselves?

Sometimes the problem is the solution. Humanity is the problem and humanity is the solution. 

And I ask myself, how do I measure my life? 

Then I agree with Clayton Christensen that, “God doesn’t employ accountants or statisticians.” 

We often measure successful life as moving up on the hierarchy, either in an organization or in society. The higher you go, the more successful you are. 

Just like Maslow hierarchy of needs.  

Look, we have a finite mind. So when we want to understand what is going on in this world, we have to aggregate things. 

In your companies, you can’t keep track of every individual invoice, and so you have to aggregate all those up so that you have receivables, payables and revenues. 

You can’t keep track of every element of cost so you have to aggregate all that up to total cost category and subtract that from this….and there’s a number. And then we look at that number, compared to last year’s number and if it’s better, then we say we’re doing better. 

That’s the way we look at the world because of our limited minds. 

And sometimes we measure how high we go or how successful we are by how much money we make. But these are all as a result of we having limited minds and then having to aggregate measures of success. And this choice of measurement is actually a big deal. 

In a company if you measure profitability by return on net asset, that’s a ratio. Sure, you could be innovative by developing successful new products and take that profitability and stick it into the numerator of the ratio, but you could also reduce the denominator of the ratio by outsourcing everything. So the ratio doesn’t matter, whether you build it from the top or subtract it from the bottom. If profitability is measured by return on net asset, it causes us to manage it in a particular way. 

So how do we measure the success of our life?

God has an infinite mind and doesn’t have to aggregate up above the level of individual people in order to have a perfect understanding of what is going on in this world. 

And when I realized that He doesn’t have to aggregate up above the level of individuals, then I realized, oh my goodness, when I have my interview with God at the end of my life, He is not going to ask me to show Him how high I went in anybody’s organizational chart or how much money I left in the bank when I died. 

But rather, He’s going to say, “Okay Harry, I put you in that circumstance, now can we talk about the individual people whose lives you helped to become better people because you worked with them, or they were members of your family, or you just met them and they needed your help.” And “Harry, I stuck you in this situation, now let’s talk about the individual people whose lives you blessed because you used the talent I gave you to help them.”

And I realized that’s how God is going to measure my life, the individuals whose life I blessed.

So, we have choices to make but there are also temptations. Have you passed the Marshmallow temptation test yet?

I couldn’t agree more with Isabel Allende that, "Silence before being born, silence after death; life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences."


Credits: 
- Clayton Christensen
- Bernard Sekyi Acquah
- Isabel Allende

Youtube videos:
- ShareShare - "The Best Cutest adorable In flight safety video In flight attendant"
- LanaLoutfy - "Hierarchy of Needs in Ratatouille"
- Ppproductions1000 - "Very tempting Marshmallow test"

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