Socien's Blog

Hope for the best, be prepared for the worse. Life is shocking, but you must never appear to be shocked.

Maya Angelou

When I was reading a controversial novel “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown. There one of the characters in the narration of the author is said to have the anytime battle readiness of the Masai. The narrative said the Masai wake up ready to defend on all occasions. There is no lag between opening their eyes and setting up their bodies for the action of the day. It may seem to be a trait only specific to them. But it’s an art of engineering traits they would want their kind to be identified with as their kids grow. After proper research about these people, I reasoned that the best form of preparedness lies in good habits.

When a Masai man wakes up he picks up his weapons, even if there are no attacks yet. This is living with purpose. Purpose is manufactured in the heart that believes, and in the mind that thinks along the lines of what the heart believes. The true purpose is acted and performed by that which embodies the right and positive beliefs and a positive mindset. A Masai man is a fighter and this is his belief. Fighting is his purpose.

In a matter of seconds, a Masai man climaxes into one of the battle-ready modes any living creature is happy to regard as extreme. Picking up his tools of welfare is a sign that his new spell of waketime has just begun. Of course, most of the time, there is no danger to match his readiness. If you want to fight your way to greatness, wake up a fighter. The very time you wake up and what you do with it determines what your performance will be during the day.

I am much in favour of what I call sacrificial preparedness. In the article “Controlled Chaos” I referred to self-imposed austerity measures I lined up to raise capital: “Starving with the desire for a number harvest is the best seed you can sow.” Preparing for the future is an art of robbing from your present what rightfully belongs to it, then locking all the loot away somewhere in the future. You then make it a treasure only you would find.

A habit is the most extreme preparedness tool. Because no matter what you do it is always good. For the Masai waking up ready can only help them survive the savannah better. In modern societies, getting to build whatever habit that will serve you as a system destined for success demands more sacrifice than a wish for it.

You ruin your performance during the day by waking up only to immerse yourself in another streak of TikTok videos. Read a book, or find anything productive to do as soon as you wake up. Be ready. Treat yourself right. Some would start by taking a warm glass of water to condition their tummies, or go for a morning jog. Conditioning the body is one. Conditioning your mind is another. Read a book if you have time, read a list of your reminders and to-dos, etc. Bring your brains into the continuity of the last day so that they can remember quickly and move you well along the daily goals you need to accomplish.

Even when the situation speaks volumes of losses, recovering quickly and trying again to lay preparatory measures is a requirement. It sets you in motion. As you outline your measures the last thing you would want to listen to when it says things to you is desperation. Desperation, when given a chance, can be louder than your sense of discovery. This is because hope or the sense of discovery, does not promise any positive results. It simply gets you to wait when results are needed like yesterday. For instance, you may not need another week let alone months or years of waiting when you haven’t paid your rent for two months. I am talking about time bombs on reputational, financial, spiritual, emotional and physical things in our lives that we feel only immediate action can address. These things become our fears. What if they find out that I am not morally upright as I projected all along in the past?

You do not arrive at the desperation point through your input. The society’s and cultural demands, economic and political realities inter alia collaborate with own input to create various time bombs one might face. Desperation promotes action to evade your imagined and realised fears. But as these actions are done to achieve instant results, they miss the process. The process has a list of things that take time to be achieved, that accepts public humiliation over humiliation known to none except the beholder and a few who humiliated her. The process contains unrealistic plans that guarantee no success when judging from the desperation point as your viewpoint.

Favouring the process is, however, the only way to defeat desperation. In trusting the process over instant results, you build hope and preparedness. Out of hope and preparedness, you earn resilience and courage. These items guarantee long-term results. They, however, do not take away the pain and humiliation but they erase the possibilities of facing these pains throughout the future in moderate doses. They make you take all the pains now so that you can meet your true comfort in the future.

Angelou’s statement points out the impossibility of hoping for the best without preparing for the worst. Hope has two sides; the first being clinging to signs, promises and self-comfortations. One dictionary defined conformation as a “state of physical and emotional ease”. This state is exactly the opposite of the state you can find yourself in when you let desperation command you. The second aspect of hope is preparing for the worst Ben during your good seasons.

I also referred to Karl Marx’s Das Kapital in one of the articles on consciousness. Marx hinged much of his theory on the consciousness of the working class as a driving force of a revolution he had predicted in advanced capitalist states. Why would he do that? Without consciousness or full knowledge of the problem area action is compromised. The Japanese dominated the consumer electronics and the automotive industry in the second half of the 20th century because they were in pursuit of full knowledge. They made it easier for any low-ranking worker to flag any area that needed improvement so that their products could only become better and better. Knowing that “you are not there yet” creates a wider room for improvement. At a personal level writing down your incomes and expenses even if you have no business or a job and writing a journal can improve that consciousness. Consciousness can make you better prepared.