Determined to succeed

A lawyer friend of mine recently took me to his chambers on Rwenzori Courts where we chatted about many things from politics to culture, the economy and success. By the time I left, my heart was overflowing with such inspirational thoughts that my life has not been the same since.

This friend graduated in 2004, but is today a partner in one of the best law firms in Africa, headquartered in South Africa, and travels the world representing huge companies and magnates. How has he been able to pull it off?

Gordon Wavamuno is one of Uganda's most successful businessmen.

"By knowing my value, which has helped me to think really big and work hard and smart," he told me. He then narrated a story of an inspirational event he attended in Kampala hoping to get inspired because he was thinking of how to raise one billion shillings to start a business.

"I learnt that the main motivational speaker himself needed motivation because he was talking of starting small and saving some money every month…if I were to follow his advice, I would probably need over 100 years to save the money I needed to start my business," he said. "It is misleading to keep telling people to start small...people need to be told about the immense potential in them that if explored could turn them into billionaires within a few years. Boxer Floyd "Money" Maywheather and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are two examples of people who have explored their potential."

I couldn't agree more. If we are struggling, it is because we have limited the inherent ability that is a gift to every human being. According to Rick Warren, "The average person possesses 500 to 700 different skills and abilities – far more than you can realise."

Imagine if these abilities were fully utilised! We have to stretch our minds innovatively, and as powerful ideas take definitive shape, they will impel us into action and propel us to great successes.Woe betides them that cling to frustrations and refuse to flush down thoughts of their poor backgrounds and lack of connection. They will live a life of want and regret.

Let us be inspired by the drive of The Economist magazine which has since 1843 been taking part in "a severe contest between intelligence which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress." I am all for intelligence that presses forward.

I will marry when I want

My young brother wed last week, and some people pulled me aside to say that surely, I need to do something as well, because time is not just running out, but flying away on me.

I found it ironic that one of these people got married and separated from his wife just two months after their wedding yet here he was, pushing me into something he has miserably failed at.

My brother Allan weds Editor

In my opinion, marriage is not something you rush into because "time is running out". Marriage is serious business one must prudently prepare for physically, morally, financially and most of all psychologically.
There is the all-important first step of finding the right partner. In this highly cosmetic world, one must tread carefully, lest you take home the "liberated woman" who will soon get busy scaling the corporate heights than making her marriage work. Will she breastfeed her baby or buy a bottle because she wants to keep her breasts firm? If she prefers the bottle, she will also rather deliver by C-section than risk losing her elasticity by pushing the child through her legs.

My friend, the password in today's Uganda, especially among educated folks, is "no money, no love!" That means you should have a nice car, ready before you even pop the question. If you think the modern woman is going to hustle like the 'commonplace' woman you are in for a rude awakening.

It now truth widely acknowledged that the women that raised us are almost extinct. Oh, where and who can find a prudent wife! Now all the fantasies I had growing up as a young man, fantasies that were predominantly about finding a noble woman and lavishing all my virgin love on her, are going with the wind! I find myself wanting to emulate Jesus or Mother Theresa who never married but still led full lives.

Yet in the name of optimism, I cannot let scepticism win. For I know that God ordains marriage and whoever finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favour from the Lord. But this is all about a real man finding a real woman and the two becoming one in body, spirit and soul until death do them apart. This is the kind of consecrated marriage I want.

So I will marry but when I want.

A good man is not that hard to find

In Flannery O'Connor's famous 1955 short-story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find", Sammy Red bemoans the difficulty of finding a good man: “It isn’t a soul in this green world of God’s that you can trust…everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more.”

Many would agree especially in this individualistic world where greed for riches and power coupled with poverty and unfairness has turned the hearts of men into stones. An accident happens, but the victims are robbed instead of being helped. Friends and relatives borrow from each other without intentions of paying back. We have become like O'Connor's fictitious character, 'The Misfit' who kills an innocent family of six to get back at the world that has wronged him.

I ate an expensive hotel meal without money and was forgiven

Yet random acts of kindness still happen; pushing back the darkness of the world and inspiring men to do better. That good apple in the basket of rotten others continues to scatter its good seeds into the soil for posterity’s sake. That is why darkness roars and foams but fails to obliterate a ray of light.

That is what I discovered early this week after I ate a hotel meal only to discover I had no money on me! I remembered all the stories of patrons forced to do embarrassing chores after enjoying services beyond their means, and prepared for the worst. Would my phone get confiscated or would I be grabbed by the belt and dragged to a jail cell?

When the waitress brought my bill, I told her there was a little problem: "I’ve just discovered I don't have money on me; I'm not sure I left my wallet home or just lost it."

 Silence and discomfort followed as she probed me with her eyes, her expressive face saying things that only a gifted illustrator’s pencil could capture. After a torturous time returning her gaze, she said, "I believe you. You will bring the money tomorrow."

I left feeling like a man who had been forgiven a huge debt, and realised a good man is actually easy to find. The kindness of the waitress so fired up my faith in others and has inspired me to give a chance to strangers and replicate the goodness that was shown to me.

Embracing the simple but valuable things

One of my favourite movies is Citizen Kane (1941) about a media baron whose dying word, "Rosebud", is the name of a toy car he had as a boy. This way, the film powerfully sums up the truth that riches and power are not the source of fulfillment. Simplicity of life is what gives us lasting joy.

The simplicity and joy of uncorrupted childhood is what made him long for his boyhood toy.

As Kabaka Ronald Edward Fredrick Kimera Muwenda Mutebi II of Buganda celebrates 20 years since he was crowned, I cannot help thinking how wrong people are to associate fulfillment in life with riches and power.

I believe knowing who we are and why we are here is what makes life worth living. For example, I was not born in a palace, but it fills me with joy and purpose to know I am created in the image of God, the King of kings, and that nothing can take that heritage from me. Thus I do not need a scepter in my hand and a golden crown on my head and enraptured loyalists prostrating before me and shouting "long live", to know how important I am to fellow humanity.

Each one of us is God's masterpiece and only those who have not discovered their inherent royalty get compromised. They believe possessions and positions will earn them the coveted reverence, comfort and class that come with royalty, only to be received by loneliness and misery in the "higher station" where their consciences poke them and the voices of those they trampled upon on the way up accuse them incessantly.

Also, each one of us comes from a womb and lives for a while before descending into a tomb. A grasp of this would give us little attachment to the things of this world as we would get busy living our lives to the full. Oh what simple but memorable delights there are in doing one’s household chores, tending your garden, walking to work and devouring boiled maize with close friends after a long day!

I tell you there is more health, power and untold beauty in such simplicity as there is in living a life of friendship and integrity. You don't have to wait like citizen Kane to be on your deathbed to realise that the abundance of life is not in riches and power. The simplicity and joy of uncorrupted childhood is what made him long for his boyhood sled.

Random reflections on Nelson Mandela

Of all the men living, no one inspires optimism like Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela does. In spite of being jailed for 27 years for standing up for his rights, he refused to despise his tormentors and walked the road of goodness and forgiveness instead.

The icon

He remains distinguished from other world greats because of his impassioned cause for the greater good of others. Consider his famous words: "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities... if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

Mandela's life and times truly teach that true legacy is only for those who forget personal comfort and pay any price to leave a worthy mark on the world. I am profoundly inspired by his words that "Many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again befo
re we reach the mountaintop of our desires." He proved that the "shadow of death" is only a scarecrow that hurts nobody, so one must quit playing small and strive to attain the life that he/she was created to live.

Enjoying Mandela's autobiography

To Madiba, "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." It is amazing that while in prison at Robben Island, he took classes at the University of London by correspondence! The authorities tried to break him down with abuse and hard labour, but failed to reach his brain which he kept alert and inspired through voracious reading.

This later gave him good judgement of the head and the mind with which he continued to preach reconciliation. In fact every word that comes from Madiba's lips is a delight to hear because of its wisdom and inspiration. No one could have grasped the divine truth better that death and life are in the power of the tongue! He uses his tongue not to cut down like pessimists do, but to build up and give hope to the hopeless.

The world is not ready to lose a man of such rare optimism, courage, understanding, humility and versatility. His dream for a better South Africa extends to the whole of Africa; an Africa whose leaders he urges to act with courage and vision to solve the problems of the continent, foster peace and unity, and make us blossom with greatness.

Get well soon, Madiba!

It is not beauty until it is comprehensive

A week after Stella Nantumbwe was crowned the new Miss Uganda, many are still asking if she was the fairest of all. There is nothing that by definition is as relative as beauty. There was a time when to me the true definition of beauty was Nicole Parker! But one of my friends thought I was nuts.

Miss Uganda 2013 Stella Nantumbwe

"If I was to undress her and hold her in my arms, it would be like holding a skeleton," he said of the petite actress. To him, Mariam Ndagire was the epitome of real beauty: "Look at her eyes, the way she smiles, look at her lips and hips, her fullness... yamawe!"

 And that is where we get it wrong. We put beauty in a box by limiting it to physical stature. Does she have to have full hips and lips to be beautiful? Does "broomsticks" for legs disqualify her? Must she have eyes that shine to dispel the darkness Umeme likes to unleash?

That kind of beauty has been weighed and found wanting. An accident, childbirth, hard times, overeating, name it, can easily take it away. That is what the old men that were looking at their reflections in the river meant when they shook their wrinkled faces sadly and said all that is beautiful drifts away like the waters.

Thus beauty must be measured wholesomely. Everyone is born beautiful but those who stand out are those who nurture that inborn beauty till it is flowing effortlessly like a stream that never runs dry.

In her poem, "Phenomenal Woman" (1994), Maya Angelou captures this altogether beauty like never before. Her protagonist is not "cute or built to suit a fashion model's size" yet she irresistibly leaves the prettier women burning with envy while men swarm around her like bees around nectar. The poem enumerates that her beauty is not just in the span of her hips and the curl of her lips, but is more in her inner mystery, the fire in her eyes, the flash of her teeth, the joy in her feet, the sun of her smile, the grace of her style... "When you see me passing/ It ought to make you proud…"

This evidently is a woman who knows who she is, which helps her to radiate from inside out. This assurance and intelligence fires up her creativity and productivity - which combine to earn her the envy of other women, and the admiration of men. Her beauty is phenomenal because it is comprehensive.