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Why are most Kenyan’s always in a hurry?
When Kenyan students from Nairobi come to study in Uganda, they are always astounded by how Ugandan taxi drivers in Kampala treat their passengers. When Ugandan taxi drivers are picking a passenger, they stop and will wait for her to climb inside the taxi and will not move until the passenger has sat down. And when the passenger reaches her destination, they stop again for her to get out of the taxi, and they do not move until she has safely exited the vehicle.
But this is not what Nairobi’s Kenyan taxi drivers do. In contrast, our Kenyan students usually say that Nairobi taxi drivers do not stop at all their speeding taxis for passengers to get in. They simply slightly reduce the speed of the taxi, and the passenger must jump in very quickly while the vehicle is in motion. And again, when the passenger arrives at her destination, the driver does not stop for her to get out. They just slightly slow down the speed once more, and the passenger is expected to leap out as quickly as she can while the taxi is still moving.
They claim that they don’t have time to stop. They consider stopping for the passenger to get in or out of their taxi as a wastage of time. To them, time is money, and they have to move as quickly as possible to make as much money as they can before the day ends.
There is more to life than increasing its speed!
But just like Mahatma Ghandi observed many years ago, we must all acknowledge that, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
— Mahatma Ghandi
Broken relationships
It is true, we live in a fast-paced world. We strive to be more productive by cramming more activities into each minute of the day.
In his best selling book, Man in the Mirror, Patrick Morley also affirms that in today’s world,
Our secular culture has stirred man’s natural inclination to pursue fame and fortune into a cauldron with his selfish nature to create a strange, unstable mixture of ambition and vision of grandeur. All too often, this concoction explodes in his face, scattering what should be his most treasured possessions – his relationships…
Most people begin their pursuit of the happy life with clear thinking and pure motives. Our goal is to raise our family’s standard of living. The task is intended to serve merely a means to an end, but not as an end in itself. But we can become so engrossed in the task — which can be wonderful — that we lose sight of why we are working so hard. We become confused and our pursuits that were originally intended only to serve as a means to an end now become an end in themselves.
Our distorted view of success which is usually evaluated in terms of professional and financial achievements consumes an excessive amount of time from its participants. It keeps everyone so busy and always rushing. They are always on the move. Some people are so busy that they don’t get enough time to rest or sleep. They are so busy and very much focused on making as much money as possible that they neglect their families and children. They leave home early in the morning before the children wake up and return late at night after the children have slept. Many people become so preoccupied with their careers and professions and get so engrossed in pursuing their ambitions that they neglect to be good husbands and fathers or to be good wives and mothers.
As time goes on, cracks start to show up in our relationships, and marriages start to fall apart. In the process of pursuing their ambitions, many people have lost their families. Too many kids have grown up with caretakers and without seeing their fathers or mothers. One of the key causes of broken relationships is a lack of contentment, which causes men and women to become obsessed with accumulating wealth and achieving an increasingly higher standard of living regardless of what it takes.
Nowadays, people are greedy and unhappy.
The story is told of two old friends bumped into one another on the street one day. One of them looked forlorn, almost on the verge of tears. His friend asked, “What has the world done to you, my friend?”
The sad fellow said, “Let me tell you. Three weeks ago, an uncle died and left me 10 thousand dollars.”
“That’s a lot of money,” his friend observed.
“Two weeks ago, a cousin died, and left me 25 thousand.”
“Sounds like you’ve been blessed….”, his friend remarked with admiration.
“You don’t understand!” he interrupted. “Last week my great-aunt passed away. I inherited almost 75 thousand.”
Now he was really confused. “Then, why do you look so glum?”
“This week… nothing!”
Greed and a lack of contentment have permeated almost every aspect of our modern society. They have robbed happiness from many people and is destroying many Christian homes.
Proverbs 30:15-16 tells us that, “The leech has two daughters.‘Give! Give!’ they cry. There are three things that are never satisfied, four that never say, ‘Enough!’: the grave, the barren womb, land, which is never satisfied with water, and fire, which never says, ‘Enough!’, ”
Our greed, discontented craziness, and obsession with materialism have made our lives like the three things in Proverbs 30:15 that are never satisfied and the four things that never say “That’s enough.”
Yes, you may acquire more professional and financial success that you are restlessly craving for and tirelessly pursuing to gain, but at what cost? Did you know that you can be efficient, without being effective? You can race through life and accomplish much. You can follow the ambitious plans you have set for your life and achieve great financial success. But of what profit will all these monetary gains be to you if you end up with a broken family? How happy will you be if you end up with regrets about your wayward children whom you neglected to spend time with and raise properly and have turned out to be thugs or street children? You might look wealthy on the outside, but deep inside, you will be miserable and you will live an empty life that doesn’t seem to find fulfillment in the academic accolades, financial success and other worldly pursuits you have achieved.
There is indeed more to life than simply increasing its speed!
