Since I joined the Global Health Corps fellowship six months ago, I have had time to reflect on my past and analyze the present, as I idealize what the future holds, especially in the short term, after the fellowship. I must say, it is never too early to have such thoughts. This is because the future is only bright to those who plan ahead. Throughout this process, I have been overwhelmed by positive imaginations but it would amount to collective amnesia to downplay the amount of fear I have confronted. This fear has come at a time when I am coming up on 30 years of age – a very critical time where every choice has consequences.
Like anyone else around this age, it begets more thoughts of how the world perceives you. This is especially so when one comes from communities which are rooted in extended families. This feeling isn’t good, at all. And when you embrace these thoughts in their fullness, you become incarcerated. While I have become a victim of such thoughts, I have at the same time grown to be optimistic about my future and have thus crafted a well-thought future trajectory that tries to harness my skills, and leverage the privileges and the social capital that I have built for the last decade. This is where I always find solace, when looser feelings begin to take course.
At the height of these thoughts, I have tried to make comparisons with some of the prominent people that we, most often, hold in high regard. En route, I have realized that there are things that worry us a lot, yet they do not matter in life. These are things that have left us upset and often inconsolable, yet at the end of the day they have no significance to our success. Hence, I thought it prudent to share with you some of the things that don’t matter in the real realm of success, at least from experience.
Choosing a Professional Career
During my primary school days, I was always told how my English teacher missed the chance to be a lawyer, and my science teacher the chance to be a doctor. I never minded about the authenticity of such wishes but ideally it reflected how they admired these professions – although choosing to teach despite the little salary the profession attracts. The lawyers and doctors mocked the teachers and social workers. “You will never be employed,” the professionals chanted in their hallucinations. This created a bad feeling, altogether. So, 6 years later, either driven by ambition or negation or both, I am back at the university to become a “professional.” However, as I pursue another degree in Law, the fundamental question remains: who is a professional?
The truth is that, in life, profession does not make a person successful. From Bill Gates to Steve Jobs and to all the rich people that this world has ever known, it remains to be seen that pursuing what your heart desires both for curiosity and commercial reasons is what makes one a professional. As an economist, I have come to crystalize the hypothesis that for as long as you pursue something – of value – and learn how to put a price tag on it, whether in anthropology or in engineering, that is the best profession you can ever have. As you read this, doctors in Cuba – a semi-socialist country in Latin America– are turning into Hoteliers so as to earn currency that is internationally recognized
Our Past Mistakes
For a long time, I was a captive of my past mistakes until I came to the agreement that I can’t change my past but I can change the future. Our past mistakes should teach us lessons but should never swallow our ambitions. Concentrating on your past is similar to commissioning a postmortem on a dead body thinking that the results will return it to life.
Your background
The world we live in is a fitting place for all disciplined and enduring characters. Whether you are a son of the president or a peasant in my home village, Kisoro, surely you will meet challenges on your way to success albeit of varying degrees. As long as you are a progressive person, one who will never settle for less, you ought to face challenges. What is important is how you deal with these challenges. From an African setting, many of our leaders both in private and public sectors, will tell you how they were herdsmen, charcoal traders, hawkers in the famous Owino market (Kampala’s cheapest market for second hand clothing), etc. But owing to their enduring characters and discipline, they overcame such challenges. You should never ever be captive of your background, regardless of how excruciating it may be.
Level of Formal Education
Needless to say, this is a fallacy held by many – that formal education is a guarantee to success. Despite my appetite for books, I underscore the fact that success depends on one’s speculation, creativity and positioning amidst scarcity of resources. Anything else, including formal education, is but mere symbolism. As a matter of fact, the extremely rich billionaires of this world are not academic professors – this does not mean to undermine education as feasible investment. For instance, with advent of technology, we have come to see the same people who used to repair radios and watches shifting to repairing computers without being taught how to do so? This is what education for employment as opposed to education for academic tittles means.
In our times, the best education is that which teaches one how to make money but not the theories of the evolution of money.