Question Everything!

It doesn’t matter your race, imagine yourself as being white, a whiteboard to be specific. A beam of light is projected on that white surface from a projector. Now the image, video or information that was fed to the projector now covers you. You were just a whiteboard before, but now the projection has given you a different appearance.

I was at a graduation party for a close friend and during her mother’s speech she said, “Fear always plays a part in our lives, we however have the opportunity to decide what percentage it plays.” The fear doesn’t always originate from within but sometimes is projected on to us by others when we share our ideas, dreams or plans with others. People tend to project their fears on others often innocently.

We are on different paths and have different experiences. People give advice based on the experience they’ve accumulated. This includes their personal fears and failures. We sometimes call them haters but in truth some are coming from a place of love.

There was a comment on social media about how if you gave 100,000 shillings capital to someone in the rural area they’ll probably start a shop, a cloth selling business, invest in a ‘nduthi’ or subsistence farming. If you gave one million to someone in an urban area, they would most probably buy a ‘matatu’, buy a plot, build rental houses or start importing something from China. If you decided to go against the grain, invest in the manufacturing sector perhaps, there will be resistance. Maybe these sets of people have seen someone try and fail or haven’t seen it being done before and will transfer their concerns and fear on to you.

“A winner is a dreamer who never gives up,” Nelson Mandela. One winner is Jay-Z who became the first Dollar billionaire in Hip Hop. On an interview he narrated how he told his uncle that he was going to be a great musician and the response was, “People from here don’t make it that far.” His uncle didn’t see it as possible because maybe he had failed himself or in his old age had seen many people from the ghetto try to make it out but fail.

We should seek advice and share ideas but we shouldn’t receive that advice without questioning what is said or taking time to process what were are being told. Critical thinking dictates that we listen but examine and evaluate what is being said. This will not only help us be more confident in our ideas but also help us refine them when we go on a fact checking mission. In this era of fake news and misinformation taking a second look is a necessary skill.

Albert Einstein once said, “Question Everything.” So that you can learn what you must and unlearn an idea that is past it’s time. Should you take my opinion with a pinch of salt? That would be a great start in the journey of questioning everything.