DON’T JUDGE PEOPLE BY PROFESSION

Sir,

I am sure we’ve all made the mistake of judging people by their profession and giving them less respect because they are either poor or not learned enough. I have been making this mistake for some time and it ended the day I boarded a kombi from school to Manzini and sat on the passenger seat, where I made a profound and life changing discovery.

The kombi driver, dressed in a sky blue T-shirt and blackish chino trouser and black All-star, taught me something I couldn’t get from any of my brilliant teachers

, my awesome parents or even my best friend.

Talking

So we started talking about girls where he shared an advice my dad had never shared with me; that a girl who loves you would never leave even when she had zillion reasons to do so. He even made an example of a mother and a child, that no matter how many times you do wrong she will still love you the same way she did yesterday.

Just when I thought our conversation had ended, he then touched on happiness. He said happiness is the most important thing in one’s life because it makes us be the best people we can be. He told me the reason he was a driver was because he loved driving since he was young. He even joked about suspecting that he was the one who drove his mum to labour.

He told me he was educated and even graduated at UNESWA. In my disbelief he showed me pictures which proved the earnestness in what he was saying. He went on to tell me he was building a bedsitter for himself and owned a Golf 5. So I asked why he didn’t find a job and be called sir or boss.

Dream

He told me that was never his dream, his dream was to be a kombi driver because that made him happy and felt great for being entrusted with ferrying passengers from one place to another. He told me he learnt so much from passengers’ conversations.  Before I got off, he said something I believe was important. He told me how we, people, took drivers for granted or any other profession that doesn’t pay much. He told me that emaSwati judged people by their position and didn’t consider whether the people were happy in the positions they were in.

He went on to say many people are living lives that they are not happy about, but their parents are happy about. He told me the most important thing in this life is to make your parents proud by doing something that makes you happy.

So in my amazement, I asked myself how many engineers actually wanted to engineer. How many teachers are happy being teachers or are they doing it so they could survive; what about soldiers and the many other professions in our country? This was when I discovered the big mistake we make as people and the knowledge we deprive ourselves, because we have too much pride to even talk to drivers or people of that category.

Anonymous

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: