The Law of Success in Life

 

Paul Kipchumba

(Submitted for Delivery on the Occasion of Sahara Africa Elimu Networks forum at Kahawa, Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday 20 April 2017)

I do not know what it means to succeed or to be successful in life. At least up now I am very certain that I still have a long way to go. But since I have been asked to make a presentation on this, I would like to base all the discussion on the experiences of my life.

First, I observed that most of our people live very simple lives when they are poor, but live very complex lives when they make money. A friend moved out of a modest estate in Nairobi to a better place because he became a lecturer in the university. He gave the excuse that he was moving out because his students were also living with him and could witness him waking up in the estate every morning. He disliked the fact that he could be of the same economic status with his students. “It is living in denial, isn’t it? Where on earth won’t you find students who are far much better than yourself?” I said. Equally, I observed that most of my friends are conscious of how they dress, where they eat, where they drink. These mannerisms are a complete distraction to a lasting success.

Just as the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy observed in “On Labour and Luxury” that simplicity leads to grandeur, the American transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau in Walden Chapter 2 “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” similarly observed that simplicity of life but elevation of purpose is the game-changer in human affairs. This is where you find key philosophers, influential leaders in the world. He further said that a man is rich in proportion to the number of things that he can let alone. His firm belief that you can be rich without any damage to your poverty is very interesting. This refers to your choice towards certain ends, not really into wealth creation, such that those who may have amassed wealth should not think that they are ahead. According to him the brutes (uncivilized people) have beaten the civilized in their life of simplicity.

However, I was interested in the meaning of simplicity and how to sustain it. What is simplicity? Material lack is quite often interpreted to mean simplicity, that is modesty means ensure that you live a rather limited life, devoid of luxury. A hermit or an ascetic can sustain a life with limited material means. It is a rather challenging postulate. I would observe that simplicity is a commitment to certain ends and the means that can deliver them. This is quite often achieved by discipline and self-control. For instance, if you are a nun or a priest you have got to be disciplined towards sexual desires. If you want to succeed in business you have got to save and innovate with discipline. If you want to be a general in the army, you should be able to keep secrets. Laozi in “Daodejing” observes the same: “Hence the sage is able (in the same way) to accomplish his great achievements. It is through his not making himself great that he can accomplish them.” Therefore, simplicity is that sense of commitment that can be sustained by its means. It is not necessarily wearing tatters or eating one meal a day. But you will agree with me that sensual pleasures and material indulgence are not often compatible with the ideals of a simple life. However, most of our people keep to a simple life when they do not have but overindulge when they get – this is not simplicity of life and elevation of purpose, it is simplicity of life with no purpose.

In “Of the Duty of Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau I was impressed by the quotation “The best thing that a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavour to carry out those schemes that he entertained when he was poor”. I have interpreted it literally and found it in accord with my view that way. I have had some wonderful ideas when growing up. However, it is almost an impossible feat to implement them now because more money comes with more luxury-trappings. Sometimes it is just hard to settle in a poor environment if you have money in your pocket. But it does not mean that you live less if you have little. In fact you can live a more organized life with little than with more depending on your capacity to organize yourself. I find it a nobler objective to transform the world in the way I used to think when young, poor. That to me translates to “simplicity of life but elevation of purpose” paradigm.

In addition, I should say that the owners of Khetia Supermarket chain in Western Kenya are Asian brothers who have demonstrated consistency of business acumen. They have been in operation over 30 years as of early 2013. I visited two of their stores in Bungoma and Kitale, successively between 2009 and 2012. I had an opportunity too to meet one of the brothers in Parklands in Nairobi early 2013 over a drink. He was really frank narrating to me of their expansion to Australia and Tanzania and how they managed to have one of the largest go-downs in Kenya in Kitale before our discussion entered into morals of trade. I asked him why Kenyans haven’t demonstrated that level of industry. He said, “Ni rahisi sana! Ukiwacha kufuata wanawake, kukunywa pombe ovyo ovyo na kucheza kamari utaendelea kwa biashara.” He replied in Swahili that success in business comes about if you avoid pleasures that include chasing after women/ prostitutes, overindulgence in alcoholic drinking or engagement in gambling.

I reminded him that even Africans who do not indulge in such pleasures have not demonstrated industry. Of course, our cultures also stand in the way of our work edict. For instance, a friend asked me why I should labour too much! “You just need a small job and a cow so that your children can get milk!” he said. Also, our level of concentration is compromised by our search for quick, simple recognition. We do not aim at competing with the rest of the world. An Asian can sit in his stall for a long period of time, some from 6 a.m. to past midnight without complaining. There is an element of heightened consistency, hard work and commitment. There is no self-importance, just as they could manage to come from their sub-continent to Africa. Although for some of them there are underhand tactics that are exploitative, I tend to think that their success hinges on business values, especially shrewdness. Anyway, I was going to say that we need to tell our generation that most businesses as they stand, demonstrate a long-term effort, more than 30 years for most of them.

Thoreau in Walden observed this by saying that the greatest education that young people get from university education is the interaction they get from highly cultivated members of the school community. Sometime back a friend asked me why some teachers cannot write their experiences of their teaching trade even after ten years of service. Why is it that some teachers cannot raise their eye-brows after producing Ds (poor results) consistently? Even some teaching in the university cannot publish even if by publishing their careers are secured. A university graduate gets first class honours in a certain field, they go into the job market, but after five years they cannot remember what they were taught, not even cite some of the prominent references in the field! Some even change careers several times in their lifetimes, failing to get deserved recognition in any. Our priorities become misplaced at some point in our growing up. More important, we lack consistency in our dealings.

In May 2011 in Eldoret, Kenya, I asked a friend the late Ambassador Benjamin Edgar Kipkorir, “Why is it that your approach to things is so mechanical?”

“You ask why! Look, at your age I had achieved more than you have done. I had a wife and had finished schooling. I had a piece of land too!” he replied.

“Doesn’t it mean that even if you took off very well, you have lost all the justifications why you should not rank among the wealthiest or among the greatly revered intellectual sprawls?” I asked.

It is one thing to believe that you are better off than others. It is equally another thing altogether to be better off than them. I believe most people fall in the former. There is nothing exceptional about them. If they go to school, they don’t labour in intellectual rigour backed up by an element of sacrifice and ranking among the best globally. If they go into business they would not rank among the list of global wealthy their entire lives—they end up struggling to justify how they have won the economic battle by buying small cars or big ones and owning big houses, buying alcoholic drinks and growing big tummies. I haven’t seen anything much in that kind of life. At least for me, if you mean business you mean it. If you want to shoot, shoot. Do not keep saying ‘I will shoot’ or ‘I was the first one to attempt to shoot’.

Then I observed before the late Ambassador Benjamin Edgar Kipkorir that a successful life is determined by how it ends, not how it starts, because if you were the last one to shoot, possibly you could be the one who killed it. And that is all about consistency.

In conclusion, in the recent past I began by writing my diary entitle “Living a Sustainable Vision” to cover the period between 2010 and 2049 in 8 volumes of 5-year duration each. I began by looking at past heroic personages such as the Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 BC); the military general Alexander the Great (356-323 BC); spiritual figures such as Jesus Christ of the Christian Religion, Prophet Mohammed of the Islamic Religion, the Chinese Confucius of Confucianism, Laozi of Daoism, the Indian Gautama Buddha of Buddhism; political figures such as the Russian Vladimir Lenin, the British Winston Churchill, South African Nelson Mandela; industrialists such as the American John Rockefeller, Bill Gates; inventor-scholars such as the British Isaac Newton, the American Albert Einstein; Philanthropists such as Henry Durant the founder of the Committee of Red Cross, among others. I discovered from them that there are two very important traits that make a successful life: (1) simplicity, and (2) consistency.