Wednesday, October 14, 2009

LET'S WORK IT


This piece is written with the objective of shaking and waking our fast slumbering mtv, youtube generation and to encourage those of us not sleeping on our oars to keep it up and do more. This is because the youth stage is our best formative years, a time of experimenting, discovering and preparation. A time to plan for failure to plan is a plan on itself, to fail. It is a time we have to mould whatever shape we desire for our future, because the youth of any country is the future of that country. So the kind of youth we produce today will determine the kind of future we have as humans. Let me put this in another way; the kind of youth we are today determines what we will be tomorrow.

The dictionary definition for work most suitable for this piece is: “the use of physical strength or mental power in order to do or make something”, this can include a job, household chores, school, or personal projects. Your work or what you do defines you, gives you content, quality your personality and helps in charting a course for your life. To some extent, it gives us a way of life, and sometimes, purpose. But at just the mention of the word some people, especially teens and young people, cower, cringe and/or quiver. To these people, it connotes a punishment of some sort, an intrusion into a perfect easygoing lifestyle. It sounds to them like an adult word created for the sole purpose of turning ‘normal’ people away from enjoying life.
Now, because of the mass of information at our disposal and the technology available to us in this day and age, our generation should be trailblazers, forerunners, and people breaking old records, creating new ones and generally making things happen. But no. instead we suddenly have a generation that abhors hard work or any form of work for that matter. A generation that just wants things handed to them on a silver platter. That wants the normal standards of doing things lowered for their sakes because they say, “it’s too difficult, we can not….” That have made laziness their watchword and the order of the day and so have become too lazy to even lift a finger to work but prefer to lazy about all day everyday watching cable TV, playing video games or wandering aimlessly at the mall.
While it is true that some are born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths, and some, yet, probably with wooden or earthen spoons, work is still needed at various points in life especially if you want to be a responsible person or be seen as one. Imagine you have the entire Bill Gates fortune handed over to you; you will lose it all eventually if you are lazy.

Let’s not deceive one another. Nothing good ever comes easy. Who has ever achieved any real, tangible and lasting thing without working hard at it? If we really want to be good at what we do; if our desire is to succeed in our individual endeavours and not always throwing in the towel each something “difficult” comes up; if we must leave this world just a little better than we met it, then we need to work very hard at it , and then some. As far as we are physically and mentally fit, bending our backs to do some sort of work won’t kill anyone (has never). Ask any successful person on our planet today- be it an entrepreneur, entertainer, scholar, athlete, politician, etc- and they will tell you the same thing, “success can only come with hard work”. We must pay the price for success, put in that extra hour, that extra effort and pick up some friendly Ds- diligence, discipline, dedication and devotion. We must shed some of that unnecessary comfort, there will time for that, I guarantee you.