“It is difficult to cure the madness that originates in the family.” – African Proverb
The beginning of the year are moments when we remember that we can do more for ourselves. That is when the symphony of possibilities ring in our heads and vows of willingness engulf our hearts. The New Year is no different and many of us have promised ourselves a disruption in the pattern of our lives in order to reconstruct them in ways that will give us more confidence to live the lives we desire. As wonderful and noble as these causes are, we need to remember that we can achieve them “with great courage and great tenderness, for no territory of life exposes both our power and our vulnerability more brightly than a beginning.”
As we ready ourselves to live the new lives we have promised ourselves, one of the most essential things we need to do is to stop misleading ourselves. Our society is faced with an epidemic of deception. Too many of us think ourselves smarter in intelligence and better in looks than others. We assume our religion and cultural norms are dynamic and more inspiring for the good of our humanity than that of others. Some of us even dupe ourselves to believe that our political leanings and partisan affiliations can do no wrong, and that the ills of society are being caused by others who do not subscribe to our ideologies or belong to our sects. It is not surprising our forefathers lived with the adage that “misleading ourselves is the work of petty spirits leaving the truth behind in the dirt.”
There is nothing more absurd than this self-deception. For starters, it makes you miss out on the many facts that are present in any given situation, and this makes it impossible for you to process the full scope of reality. Once that happens, not only does it place you in the midst of the masses who are “rude, lame, unmade, and pernicious in their demands and influence,” in the opinion of Ralph Walso Emerson, but it you surrender your integrity, and adopt the pigmy mindset. That is you employ the standards and the values of people who have no understanding of the wonderfulness of the human being and thus think less of themselves. Afterall, we mainly use deception to create a social advantage that we believe flatters us, because we do not value our individual uniqueness.
It is this poor attitude that we must make efforts to put a stop to in this New Year. It is time to stop misleading ourselves for we build the foundations of all our relationships on them. All around us, the world is as it is because we have shaped it through the lies, we have told ourselves and others. We trade, govern and contest each other based on deceptions. The worst part is that even our love relationships are based on this self-deception. Thus, it is not surprising that life as we desire it to unfold, and life as it unfolds are two quite contradictory things.
The inconsistency in our lives reveals the impact of self-deception on life. We nurture flexible thoughts and feelings are inside us that make us behave any which way, and yet we assume we fully and completely understand how life should unfold, to the point where we insist on things happening according to our will. “It makes us mistake our models of reality for reality itself, which in turn pushes us to misjudge the strength of our certainty for the strength of the evidence.” Self-deception makes it almost impossible to remember the values upon which we are now acting, but in respect to other people, we can pinpoint their absurdities and flaws.
When we deceive ourselves, we cope by choosing fragments of the lie that resembles the reality around us. We start believing perceptions and notions that are not factual, and we resort to choosing delusions that adapt what we have conceived in our minds. All in all, this attitude is detrimental to the flourishing of our society because many leaders and those of us with influence surround ourselves with people who only agree to our suggestions and go extra lengths to promote our delusions. So, if we do not stop lying to ourselves, we empower these sycophants to propagate our twisted reality as the model to live by, and this prevent people from formulating strategies and solutions with factual foundations.
That is why in this New Year, we are all entreated to remember that words alone cannot make the coming days, weeks and months meaningful, unless we back our words with a change in attitude. We need to become more “dedicated, modest, honest and informed” about happenings around us. And we need to “submerge ourselves in service to our nation and our humanity.” All in all we need to “abhor greed and detest vanity; and renew ourselves till humility becomes our strength and integrity, our greatness.” That way, we will all have a Happy and Prosperous New Year…
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Kodwo Brumpon is a partner at Brumpon & Kobla Ltd, a forward-thinking Pan African management consultancy and social impact firm driven by data analytics, with a focus on understanding the extraordinary potential and needs of organisations and businesses to help them cultivate synergies, that catapults into their strategic growth, and certifies their sustainability.
Comments, suggestions, and requests for talks and training should be sent to him at kodwo@brumponand kobla.com
