Dark nights always bring bright mornings

 

I do not know about you. As for me, if the carving on my tombstone was left to myself to carve, I would think of no other wording than this strapline: dark nights always bring bright mornings. 

Five years ago - in May to be precise - I relocated from Masaki to the city where I currently live in. I was new to the city. This other day, I decided to drive on the city’s main highway to appreciate its traffic and familiarize myself with its key landmarks. In front of me, an old man was driving a blue convertible Chevrolet. He behaved strangely. He kept throwing clenched fists in the air jubilantly and moving his head giggly from side to side. Humming. Curiosity got the better part of me. I rolled down the window of my car. I realized that the fella was listening to some enlivening music with speakers modulated at full volume and was singing along. The piece being played was the famous Christian hymn – ‘It is well with my soul’ – written by Horatio Spafford who is reported to have lost his whole family after a ship that they were sailing with, capsized. I wanted to overtake the old man. But something told me to trail him for a while. As I continued to drive behind the old man, I caught sight of a shiny sticker pasted at the back of his car. The words on the sticker read – ‘no matter how dark a night may be, it always gives way to a bright morning.’ The statement hit me. It kept me thinking. Stirred my sixth sense. At that moment, a leadership question popped up in my head - ‘what is it under the sun that separates people who thrive amidst adversity from those who barely survive?’ I immediately came up with an answer – ‘it’s how we manage life challenges and negative experiences.’  

In my formative years, I was privileged to have been taken under the tutelage of top leadership coaches. Coach Elijah was one of them. Coach Elijah gave me a grounding in personal mastery that I want to share with you. Today. It is an indelible brain tattoo and a sure-fire creed that can be taken to one’s grave. Paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr, Coach Elijah contended, “. . . heroes are born not in time of ease but during periods of discomfort and pain.” Then, I did not know what that meant. 

Fast forward to December 2019. I looked back. In hindsight. I started to connect the dots. I was reminded of Viktor Frankl who became known at the notorious concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau. His professorship in neurology and psychiatry that he obtained from Vienna Medical School had nothing to do with his actualization toward ‘man’s search for meaning.’ Martin Luther King Jr is known for his contribution to the civil rights movement during the Montgomery bus boycott at the height of racism. Mister Robert Mugabe became comrade Robert Mugabe amid mistreatment during the struggle for self-rule. Nelson Mandela became the man he was - that you and I knew - not in the presidential palace in Pretoria but during his prison incarceration on Robben Island. Former chief executive officer of IBM, Louis Gerstner’s success is attributed to his unbending turnaround business decisions that he made when IBM was in trouble, on its knees to collapse. The iconic Steve Jobs became Steve Jobs when he was detached from the company - Apple Computer Inc - which he co-founded. Great leaders always use adversity and grim times to improve themselves and others. This is what separates people who thrive amidst tough times from those who scarcely survive. This is the hallmark of great leadership and heroism. 

We all have heroes in our lives. You are a hero of our time. Heroism is not about lack of fear but rising above destitution. Heroism is about going through the unknown with hope and conviction. Heroism is not reserved for those with a certain blood group or people with a certain body height or with privileged backgrounds. No. A hero is one who does not surrender when dark clouds of uncertainty float over one’s head. 

I personally do not know you. You may wonder why I call you a hero. Because you rose above it. Yes, you braved it. The pandemic. From December 2019 to April 2022, the world trekked in the abyss of a bottomless valley. Mankind went through a bumpy ride, right in the eye of a deadly storm of the covid-19 pandemic. Mother Earth’s supreme creation, homo sapiens – you and I – was under threat of being wiped out by a deadly virus. Everyone feared the coronavirus storm. The elderly, the youth, and the young were all low-spirited. The temptation to surrender was strong. If truth be told, many people indeed did surrender to the virus. Fatalities rose. Looking at the rate at which people were dying of the disease, the world population was trimming in leaps and bounds. Unprecedented. Then, we could not tell how long the tempest was going to blow. Both the rich and the poor were on their knees. Troubled. The future looked dim. Every soul on the planet smelt its death. Preachers of doom cropped up, mushroomed, and started to sermonize about the end of the world. They quoted divinatory literature. About the end of the world. Who could blame them? Scientists abandoned their testing apparatus in laboratories. Anxious hours and difficult days rested ahead. Hospitals were no longer nursing homes but death bays. Business prospects appeared uncertain. There were so many things chasing our time. Too much information to absorb. Too many updates to acquaint oneself with. We were afraid of tomorrow. We feared our loved ones, but we still socially distanced them. We were afraid and suspicious of each other. We were no longer family. We did not know who would be next to go. It was a challenging time for our generation. 

Did I not say that you are a hero of our time? Yes, you are. You panicked but never despaired. You braved the storm. The storm eased. Then passed. The crisis ended sooner than most of us had expected. Robert Schuller understood this precept well and expressed it better than I could when he said, “. . . tough times never last, tough people do.” The famous KN95 mask and PCR tests were no longer required. The disruption was over. Sooner than thought. Lockdowns were unlocked. Businesses opened shop. Life became better. Markets started to open. Families reunited. Planes that had been grounded were dusted off and started to fly again. In unpolluted skies. Jettisoned ships dis-anchored from the wharf and started to plough the seas. In cleaner waters. The infection rate slowed down. Mankind started to smile. Again. Hope was restored. At that moment, I was reminded of what Coach Elijah had shared with me, paraphrasing the wise words of Warren Wandel Wiersbe, “. . . even the strongest of the storm brings rays of rainbow. . .  if you want to enjoy the rainbow, be prepared to endure the storm.” I committed the message to memory. Up to this day. 

Before the pandemic, it is reported that there was so much malevolence in the world. Mother Earth was being mutilated. Mankind needed a wake-up call. A head-up. We needed to press the emergency brakes on the pedal. To slow down. A bit. There was too much of a ‘business-as-usual’ kind of setup. We needed to reboot our global ecosystem. You do not have to be a sage from the East to appreciate that nature has its own way of recalibrating its system. The pandemic is one of them. 

Oh. Lest I forget. There is one thing that I would like you and me to learn from the forgone disruptive pandemic. Thank Heaven, we are in a new era. Covid-free. The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a statement on 5 May 2023 that the covid-19 pandemic is no longer a global health emergency and threat to humans. WHO directed countries and organizations, globally, to go about conducting their businesses. Normally. But, in this post covid-19 era and going forward, I can attest that the business environment will never be the same again - as was in the pre-pandemic period. Things have changed. So much. Things will continue to change. Businesses will incessantly be devising, implementing, and championing phlegmatic neoliberal strategies. To plough back the lost glory. What does this mean, for you and me? A lot. I can foresee new sets of structural adjustment reforms being implemented by leading global institutions and leaders, concomitant with the new business environment, all aimed at promoting priority niche markets. I can foresee the public sector adopting planned de-growth of certain sectors and channelling resources to priority sectors with a view of spotlighting the well-being of vulnerable populations over profit. I can foresee a post covid-19 business environment that is grounded on self-regulation. I can foresee a world whose population travels less. Yes, I can foresee a sedentary lifestyle that stays and works more at home than elsewhere. I can foresee the inverse of pre-covid-19 learning, growth, and business regimes. 

New dawn. New thinking. New normal. New opportunities. Embrace the change. Don’t sit on your laurels. This is the time to rebuild and remould. To recast your vision. To unlearn old practices. To learn and re-learn new models. The dark cloud that had been threatening mankind and business has gone. As a dealer of hope, I appreciate that the pandemic was there to prepare you and me for something big. For new opportunities. Businesses, knowingly or unknowingly, are now playing by a new rule book. The new rule book has created - and will continue to create - new markets, new risks, new operandi modus, and new opportunities. These changes, in turn, demand new skill sets.

No matter what you have gone through in your life - recently or in the past - or what you are going through currently, understand that you have the opportunity to grow from your dire situation. Tragic events inspire us to reform and unearth opportunities or positives in seemingly difficult situations. The death of a loved one, for example, may offer a lesson to prioritize family and that we should not take the affection of our loved ones for granted - they are not with us forever. Loss of hard-earned savings due to bad investment decisions teaches us to be more careful in risk-taking. Lack of physical fitness is, perhaps, nature’s way of petitioning you to upgrade your eating and exercising habits. Everything that happens to us in life happens for a reason and it will not leave us until it has taught us the lesson we needed to learn – to recast the wise words of Tibetan Buddhist, Pema Chodron. Of course, it is traumatic to see an opportunity in misfortune. Trust me, the opportunity is there. It is indeed difficult to see something positive in a tense situation when the chips are down. Behold, the positive is there waiting for us to be discerned. Understand that exceptional fortune, great leadership, and ingenious personal mastery that our parents experienced in their day and those we witness today, were all forged in times of distress not in times of ease.

A story is told about a chicken farmer in Sumbawanga whose farm flooded every rainy season. Government authorities tried to move the farmer upland but to no avail. He acted vehemently against the idea. Instead, he devised a strategy that required him to monitor weather conditions on a regular basis to ensure that he moved his flock to higher ground should the farm flood. It was undeniably a struggle for the farmer to move the flock upland due to the large number of chickens that he was rearing. This other year, the region received severe rainfall. The farm flooded. It was the worst flood that he had experienced and endured in his lifetime. The entire flock drowned. It was a disaster. Dejectedly, the farmer told his wife,“. . . I have had it. I cannot afford to buy another farm. I do not want to sell this farm either. I simply do not know what to do.”  The wife saw a positive in her husband’s despair. After a long pause, the wife smiled and replied, “ . . . buy ducks.”

Next time you face a bleak situation in your life, remember the uplifting message on the shiny sticker stuck on the old man’s blue convertible Chevrolet; remember the chicken farmer in Sumbawanga who involuntarily transited from a superficially good business to the most suitable business for a farm in his situation. Yes, remember Horatio Spafford who lost his whole family when the ship they were sailing in sunk. He still found the strength to proclaim that ‘it was well with his soul.’ Next time someone cuts you off in traffic or swears at you or wrongs you in one way or another, learn to forgive – remember Nelson Mandela was tried four times and kept in prison for twenty-seven years, yet he invited his jailers to his inauguration when he was being sworn in as president of South Africa. Next time you lose your investment due to malice or social injustice, remember the Biblical Job who lost all his children and property mysteriously but uttered no negative word about the loss. If you are in business development and it happens that your new product flops to garner critical mass in the marketplace, take relief in Thomas Edison’s experience – he hit 1,100 product development trials without any success. The larger point, dear reader, is that when something bad happens to you, look for the positives in the situation. Look for the good. Look for the lesson. Look for the gift. Life, as the wise among us say, has a fair accounting system. A bad situation - debit - always carries a hidden positive - credit. Our task is to look for this hidden positive. Those who find it, rise to greatness, and become heroes.

Lester Chinyang’anya ǀ General Manager - Operations ǀ Minet Malawi