Take responsibility for your life, nobody owes you anything!

Victoria Seiketso Sethibe | Thursday January 26, 2017 15:52

Unfortunately, the moment you find yourself entertaining that thought, you must know instantly that you are still in a fantasy world, and that it is just a matter of time before reality catches up with you.

Below is a fictitious story that shows how sometimes people develop entitlement mentality, and the impact it can have on their survival:

John* is a young man of 21-years -of-age who has recently moved on an academic campus in a foreign country, where he is studying for a certificate programme. For the longest part of his life, he has been living with his hard working father and 13-year-old sister, Maria*, a primary school pupil at a local school.

Their mother passed on nine years ago and they have since been primarily under the care of their father, Michael*. Since the death of his beloved wife, Michael made a decision to give it his all to live for his two children. He made this decision with the aim of making them not to feel like they lack anything, out of the love he has for his family.

Although John and Maria have never shown any signs of disobedience to their father or grandparents, whom they usually visit during the weekends, they are just not used to doing any home chores.

All they ever have to do is wait for the house keeper to prepare some food for them while watching their favourite television programs.

The house keeper also does all the work around the house, even during the weekends or public holidays. Once in a while when the house keeper is not on duty, Michael either orders take away food from home or takes his children out to dine at restaurants.

The one thing Michael is concerned with is the fact that John and Maria are not performing well academically. Every time Michael asks his two children to account for their low academic achievement, they blame it on ‘boring’ mentorship from school, something that saw Michael having to move them between schools. After thorough assessment, it was found that according to John and Maria, ‘boredom’ was anything that required them to work hard. They are very comfortable in their “gare batle go ngakalala” approach to life.

 

Lessons John and Maria need to learn:

John, being an adult, owes it to himself to take a step to seek professional help to identify and overcome his academic challenges. “Mmapudi ga a ipone se se mo tlhogong” is a Setswana phrase that explains how challenging it usually is to precisely pin-point the source of personal problems, whether medical or social. The fact that at his age, he still has not found out the source of his learning problems should on its own ring a bell to him.

Both John and Maria should know that their father, grandparents and mentors did their best to care for them, but that does not make them super human beings. Instead of playing a blame game on all their mentors, they could benefit from acknowledging and being held accountable for their overly relaxed and passive approach to life.

By seeking professional counselling, they can overcome their issues resulting from entitlement attitude. For both Maria and John it is crucial that they also deal with the root cause of their issues as it will negatively affect them in the long run.

After all, the world does not owe anybody anything.

*Not their real names.