To move forward there is need to take responsibility through self-reflection and self-transformation. PHOTO | FILE
By ANNE M. MWANIKI
Whilst researching the word “mess”, I came across
“Bidonvilles du monde” on Pinterest, full of appalling images of trash
filled slums.
Among them, Kibera. What broke my heart was that children
are literally swimming in rivers of trash and yet, in their innocence,
can afford to smile and greet a stranger. They are playing in the filthy
trash that we, their elders have created. The most bizarre of legacies.
In stark contrast, I read a story in Citizen Matters, about Ms Kalpana Kar, an ex-Tata employee and “waste evangelist”.
She heads the Bangalore Political Action Committee
and runs around trying to align three stubborn elements in her city —the
citizens, the garbage collection system and the government.
“I feel that competent corporate people should
bring systems and processes to government machinery so that it starts
delivering effectively,” says Kar.
“If making the society better is a mad venture, then I don’t mind being its crazy CEO.”
One must ask what it took for her to become a
“waste evangelist”. As an ex-employee of a multinational corporation,
how could she make cleaning up garbage her crusade?
No one likes dealing with garbage
Except, perhaps, Roc Emerson, the Baltimore garbage
collector of the 90s American sitcom, Roc. People in the waste handling
business are seen as being of low social status and often shunned by
other citizens.
As mountains of wastes grow, some overwhelmed
countries are now trying to re-establish an intimacy between people and
the wastes they generate.
In essense, we have distance ourselves from our
wastes, just like we have with the nagging issues in our lives. Before
we discover or values, we therefore need to throw out some garbage.
From fear to freedom
No one enjoys taking the garbage out. It can never
be an enjoyable experience. In the same way, we do not want to expose
and discard our limiting values and beliefs which do not serve our
purpose or our leadership.
In order to move from fear to freedom, we have to take responsibility through self-reflection and self-transformation.
I’ll be the first to admit that it is scary to take responsibility for fixing things that have gone wrong in your life.
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