All the time in the world

Blessing Musariri Shelling the Nuts

In this new age, it would seem that digital devices are the new pockets where we keep our hands. For the people whose work it is to do so, they see the tangible results of their days work. What about for those whose work, it is not?

My father’s life motto was kugona basa kuriita. I am not much of a translator, more of an expander, so speaking diagonally, I would say, actions speak louder than words, because it goes with his other favourite saying, talk is cheap.

Suffice it to say my father believed that a person’s worth lay in their ability to produce tangible results.

A good and honest day’s work spoke for itself.

Sometimes I would be conscripted as his driver and as we made our way to our various destinations, he would point out someone in the street, anyone who inspired in him an opportunity to teach a life lesson.

On this one day, it was a young man walking casually down the street, hands in pockets — life lesson 101, hands were not made for resting in pockets, but for working — I figured this was what had brought the young man to my father’s attention. The young man was dressed well enough, clean clothes, ironed, his hair was combed (uncombed hair on a young man was usually another area of contention), and he had on a decent enough pair of shoes.

My father said to me, Here, take a look at this young man. Where do you think he’s going?

I don’t know. To town maybe, I answered. What do you think he’s going to do there? He asked. It was mid-morning on a weekday so I knew the conclusion of this young man’s intentions for the day were not going to be impressive. And so the narration began. It’s 11.30am so he’s obviously not going to work.

He’s not carrying a bag so he’s not going to school either. If you stop him and ask, he will most likely tell you I’m going to visit my uncle. Where? You might ask him. He works in town. What do you need from him that you must visit him at work? I haven’t seen him in a while so I just thought I would pay him a visit, he’ll tell you.

This young man, my father continued, has left his home, where he has probably not even made his bed or swept his room and he has left pots caked with last night’s sadza in the sink but he has felt an urgent need to get up this morning and pay a social call on someone who is busy at work.

I felt somewhat bad for the young man in question because he had had his aimlessness exposed and at the same time I thought, well really, it doesn’t take much to make your bed and do a quick clean up if you have no other pressing engagements.

That is not to say the assessment could be taken as gospel truth. Perhaps this young man was on his day off and on his way to run errands.

Perhaps he ran a small business of his own and was on his way to a meeting — except his casualness made this unlikely and for my father to have brought the subject up, it was more than likely that a conversation like this one, with a young man such as this one had actually taken place at some point. The fact of the matter is, on drives like this, there were too many young men past school-going age who were casually strolling up and down the streets looking like they had all the time in the world. My father could not see why any able bodied person should have their hands in their pockets when there was so much work, in a lifetime, to be done, even if that work was hoeing a few beds of sweet potato by the side of the road or watering and weeding one square metre of garden in your backyard, your yard, by the way, which had no business being untidy, just like your bed had no reason to not be made or your pots unwashed at home while you walked casually down the street.

If it was today, that young man would probably be on his way to his uncle’s office to sit and take photos of himself somewhere cool-looking, maybe behind his uncle’s desk with his feet up in an office with a great view behind him, wearing his best clothes, to post on Facebook, “Chilling like a baw$$” and all his friends would click “Like”on his photo and think wow! This guy is living the life. Which brings to mind another saying, this one that I am quite partial to, never praise a busy man until you know what he is busy about.

Social media is the great deceiver. These days you don’t have to find ways to talk your life up to people, you let your social media presence do the talking for you. For some people, this has become a job in itself. A lifeline; here world, see how great my life is, and if you believe it then I might actually start believing it myself. Incidentally, as I typed the word world, above, autocorrect changed it to wolves. This is eerily apt because if what you have posted is received the wrong way from what you intended or if a frenemy feels like causing trouble that day you will find that you have literally thrown yourselves to the wolves. On social media, people feel safe enough to say exactly what they feel and there is no restraint because you may never actually need to ever see that person in the flesh and repeat what vitriol you have spilled on their wall/feed.

Of course no one can have 500 friends, in reality it is very likely you have a handful of true friends and then the rest are more than acquaintances but far removed enough from your inner circle to just be people you know with whom you are friendly when you encounter each other. They are likely to invite you to a party or a wedding but you don’t know their family and are only on passing terms with their intended/partner.

If you want to cull your friends and acquaintances without having to make excuses, here’s how to go about it: open a social media account, add all your friends and acquaintances. Post a status where you strongly state an opinion on something topical, usually, race, religion, politics or sexual orientation and fan the flames of a heated debate. During this debate, take offence at those people who fail to state opposing opinions respectfully or who refuse to apologise for how they feel, get a little sidetracked until the replies take a personal tone. Tell that person to get off your wall because as a matter of fact you are now unfriending them. Click on the button to unfriend, click again to say yes you are sure you want to unfriend this person. One down 499 to go.

What I find infinitely interesting is the number of people in full time jobs who are on their social media profiles prolifically during the day. Yes, there are people whose job it is to be active on social media and those who depend on social media to raise their profile, but what about all the rest? Are we perhaps heading for a change in the way people work? So much that social media becomes an integral part of work process? How does this affect the way we work and the quality of the work we do? Does presenting images and status updates of an amazingly dynamic and purposeful life full of profound and meaningful insights translate into a truth? Is this the new reality of what it means to be at work? If it is this, in itself, it is a job well done, because as far as social media is concerned, every one is busy being or doing something that is so interesting and entertaining that it must be shared with 500 or more of their followers at the same time on a daily basis, proof that I am doing something, being someone productive and my contribution is worthwhile. I saw a poster once, on social media, that said, “One day our lives will be as fantastic as they appear on Facebook”. The irony is in the word fantastic, derived from fantasy — a thing imagined, that has no connection at all with reality. Or maybe it isn’t irony at all as I have heard often, that life is what you make it.

In this new age, it would seem that digital devices are the new pockets where we keep our hands. For the people whose work it is to do so, they see the tangible results of their day’s work. What about for those whose work, it is not?