EDITORIAL
JAW WAR 2014: WALKING THE TALK
“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” – Mother Teresa
First: a tensing of the jaw muscles, then a flush of intellectual fervour; a gritting of the teeth with a belligerence against the invisible enemy – ignorance. At the sight of the lectern, it was an uncontrollable blastoff from tenacious souls. Words rolled out with extraordinary intelligence. The audience…? They watched the unfolding confrontation. They watched as speakers’ teeth, not swords flash in the heat of argument. They saw salty cold sweat rest on speakers’ furrowed brows, as if to ease the tensing, but the reverse was the case. The gripping denouement of the championship was a thrusting to the ground, the flags of the Faculty of Arts and Tedder Hall – a settling of the raised dust.
Plaques glittered in the hands of speakers, satisfied for being in the hands of them that worth them. Freedom from the opposing sides was crystallized by raised trophies; however, a hero is he who understands the price that comes with his freedom – responsibility.
The atmospheric composition of the cosmos is not gaseous substances as we suppose. Interestingly, words are what fly around us. Promises are what permeate our environment and unfortunately, we are choking! We are choking from an atmosphere saturated with unrealised promises and knowledge. We can still cope with the newly released ones, but the old ones are already a stench to our nostrils. They decayed out of sheer negligence and apathy to take action. In fact, awards were presented to those who released them into the atmosphere, but no application consummated the knowledge. If we talk the talk, we should walk the talk.
Benjamin Franklin has the best words. According to him, “Those things that hurt, instruct”. We debate the things that hurt us. We write about the things that upset us; however, we fail to let them instruct us into action. The world would never know the development it has robbed itself of by not walking the talk. Nothing happens to advance our potentials and the piled up knowledge until we step up and say, “We are responsible.” We sidestep responsibility and thus lose control over our lives.
Ernest Hemingway advised; “Never mistake motion for action”. Our debates are our motions. Intelligent write-ups that grace the press boards are signals of better days ahead, yet, the efforts of the legs are futile if not supplemented by the performance of the hands.
The ultimate step in taking responsibility is making sure our actions line up with our words. This is what author and consultant Frances Cole Jones describes in her book The Wow Factor. She writes: “In the marines. “riggers” – the people who pack (i.e, reassemble after use) parachutes for other Marines – have to make at least one jump a month. Who packed their “chute”? They do: one of the parachutes that they packed for others to use is chosen at random, and the rigger has to “jump it”. This system helps to make sure no one gets sloppy- after all, “The chute you’re packing may be your own”. The Roman army used a similar technique to make sure bridges and aqueducts were safe: The person who designed the arches had to stand under each arch while the scaffolding was being removed.” Our lives depend on what we do rather than what we say and write.
We judge ourselves by our intentions and others, by their actions. It is high time we stopped being unfair! Debates and write-ups will always be futile without a desire to change ourselves. Howard Markman, a professor of psychology in the University of Denver once said that “The breakthrough comes when we realize that by making even small changes in ourselves, we can effect big, positive changes.” If we talk the talk, we should walk the talk. If we write the write-ups, we must right our written hurts! Have a lovely week!
