I believe obedience to your conscience transcends
all definitions of our world’s understanding of success.
Success is great, sweet and we all want it.
No one is looking forward to failure, and as we know it, success has many
fathers. But of higher value is significance. Significance is derived from our
value system. Our conscience informs our value system. It's important to strive
to have a clear conscience when faced by situations that could be tempting. A
clear conscience is worth more than what this world can offer. It's the peace
of mind. When you can sleep in peace, eat in peace, walk on the street in
peace, that's what this is all about. This world and its materialism can't
offer that to you.
In this day and age, we are looking for
material things. We are willing to do what it takes to get what they want. We have
a generation that is living a plastic life. Social media has even made it
worse. We post things that we very well know is not true, but we want people to
see an image of us. We wake up to create a perception of who we should be. We are
all caught up in a bubble. Some fantasy out there. Where is the courage to own
our stories? To embrace who we are so we can work on who we want to be. That’s
why we get conned, taken for granted, used by people to achieve their own
success why we remain wounded and hurt.
I once had a chat with a senior friend who
told me that in life, we seem to be caught up in the following; Success,
significance, then submission. We go out doing whatever we can to gain success;
once we get it, we remember we need to be significant, then we realize we are
out of strength and now have to submit to those around us to help us even do
the basics of this life. This is if you are lucky to live long enough. I'd
rather you get caught up in significance because it does come with its twin; success.
I have a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
I’m glad I went through the process. It formed me and set me on a path that
became my story. On the early days of building AYLF Kenya, I received a number
of offers for good jobs. Tempting offers that would have changed my life. I
remember attending an interview only to reach there and be told that they
forgot they had set up an interview for me. Weird, isn’t it? I went all dressed
up, ready to convince these guys to give me the engineering job since the AYLF
story was not working. They told me they would contact me about the interview.
I'm glad they have never contacted me. I sent out a few more applications which
I wonder if they were being received or it was just not meant to be. There are
a number of interviews that for one reason or another never happened. I wonder
if I went on pursuing an engineering career. Maybe I would be successfully,
perhaps not. But what I know, I have a lot of joy and satisfaction when I get
back home after a long day spent in figuring out about AYLF and related issues.
I derive significance in doing this. It's been a journey worth taking, and I'm
still on it. God has blessed me with material things that I used to wish I
would get. I know He has so much in store for me. I sometimes wonder what God
is up to when he exposes me to things that I had not even imagined.
This might make sense to you or not. But if
you find yourselves caught up in the race of pursuing success so that one day
you will be significant, I invite you to rethink that approach. This does not
mean you abandon your career, but how can you pursue your career in a more
significant way. In a way that is driven by your conscience and value system.
Inspired by what you believe in. This will call you to be obedient to your
conscience, assuming you care about it.
If this resonates with
you, seek to obey your conscience. Look for a small community of friends who
you can do this together with. Being accountable to a few and practicing with a few. It’s about
building a community of friends to share each other’s journey of significant by
obeying their conscience. You have to be
deeply committed to each other and desire to see each other grow in this
journey. You have to create support, encouragement and accountability platform
for each other. The community has to be as small as possible so that there is
active engagement by all involved.
Find a community
around you and see if these conversations make sense to you.
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