One of the easiest things in the world is to mistake an outcome for a story. A beautiful home. A thriving business. A failed marriage. A child in an expensive school. A forty-year-old with no savings. Someone who seems to have it all. Someone who appears to have fallen behind. We see the destination and instinctively begin filling in the journey. Hardworking. Lazy. Disciplined. Irresponsible. Lucky. Entitled. Deserving. Wasteful. Perhaps the most dangerous thing about human beings is not that we judge one another. It is how quickly we become certain that our judgment is correct. Because every life has invisible expenses. Not just financial ones. The kind that never appear on a bank statement or a résumé. Some are chosen. Some are imposed. Some are wise. Some are costly mistakes. Most are a complicated mixture of both. One person reaches middle age with very little savings because they spent years paying school fees for younger siblings. Another because they repeatedly made poor financi...
You’re excited. Your boss is sharing a big vision — expansion plans, revenue targets, new markets. It sounds impressive. Maybe even inspiring. You start seeing yourself as part of something grand. But somewhere in the quiet moments, you realize something: Just because the company is winning doesn’t mean you are. Your salary hasn’t changed. Your title hasn’t changed. Your workload has. You start to wonder — am I helping build a vision that has no space for mine? Poem (to keep the spirit of your other pieces): They built the dream, And I gave my days. They earned the billions, And I stayed the same. Now my rent is due, And their name is in the news. I forgot to dream my own dream While building someone else's. The Illusion of Shared Progress In Kenya, company branding can be seductive. We love to be associated with the “big names.” Safaricom, Equity, Google, KCB. There’s status in saying “I work there.” But here's the honest truth: Company growth is not employe...