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Sometimes the sun sets at dawn. The promise of a great life remains unfulfilled because there were just not enough hours in a day, or enough days in a life.
That is life. Its foundations are crooked and shaky, like many specimens of humanity. Some things we fix and shape to our desire, but no matter what the mentalists tell you, you can never iron out the ripples in a lake. They pander to the whims of the wind.
So stop beating yourself up when that young man or woman you had great hopes for suddenly disappoints you.
That too is life. And it is fine because sometimes the sun is unable to disperse the internal storms that eventually drown a young man or woman. That is when the mentor must abandon the protégé like a captain who has to abandon an unsalvageable ship.
It may sound despicable and unkind, but sometimes the right thing to do is not what our kind expects, because in our journey of life, we have edited out sacrifice and patience, and paved our path with easy-come.
Machines are easier to abandon because, for one, insurance will pay out and they will be duly replaced, but no insurance can replace a human being, much less a soul.
Behind the questions of success and failure, good and bad luck, discipline and the lack thereof, lies a more fundamental question: What drives an individual to succeed, or to self-destruct?
We now know that talent is not enough. Hard work makes all the difference. Maanda Tshifularo has a chemical engineering degree from the University of Cape Town. His mother was a domestic worker. She made all the necessary sacrifices to make sure that her son got a better life. He was not going to be a gardener. In return, he went all out to please her and got his education.
Some young people squander the love they receive from their parents, or the mentors they meet on the steps of their careers. They like to copy and paste the success they see on the streets without knowing the out-of-sight failures the achievers encountered.
So sail on, but know there are harbours you will not reach. Climb the highest mountain, but accept that there are peaks you will never get to.
Accepting that is in itself a gift. And when you get to the top, don’t beat yourself up when you discover the dream you pursued with the relentlessness of trade winds is bland after all.
Never regret the treasures you left along the way, for the one who plants is better than the one who gathers. Do not cry out for credit. Great men and women are seldom known to their generation. Julius Caesar doesn’t know that a great many books have been written about him.
From time to time, stop and ask yourself who or what motivates you. What drove you to be where you are today?
It’s important to know that, because once your motivator is gone, the fire to succeed will be gone, and you will crack and crumble like an old biscuit.
Tiger Woods, the world’s greatest would-be sportsman, crumbled not because of women, as his detractors would have us believe, but because his main audience – his father, Earl Woods – died.
A prominent advocate once told me she was going through a similar phase in her life. She had reached the pinnacle of her career, yet she did not want to become a judge. If her father was still alive, she said, she would take the post without thinking.
If your motivator has an end date, you need to find a new fire, one that will last you a lifetime.
Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive,an advertising agency
