Ephrem Endale
There’s nothing more frustrating than those of us who overstayed our welcome and still fail, deliberately or otherwise, to notice it. Look, if those of us who should have said “Sayonara!” when the time was right did so the world would have been a much better place. What’s happening is that the square pegs are trying to force their ways into the round holes and look what’s happening all over the place.
Here is a stand up comedian’s hilarious joke. This singer was performing in front of a full house. He plays a song which originally was sung by one of the country’s musical legends. When he ‘finishes’ there follows a thunderous applause with calls for him to play the piece again. He does so. This time too the applause was thunderous. After repeating the song a few more times and the applauses kept coming he apologizes; “I’m exhausted. I’ve to rest.” It was at this time a member of the audience springs up and shouts, “You’re going nowhere until you play the piece right!” Ha! And our poor singer thought he had nailed it all and probably must have started thinking about doing his own album! If he plays it five or six times and still sounds nowhere close to the original maybe, just maybe a “Sayonara!” would save him from further embarrassment. Because that is what overstaying your welcome amounts to, embarrassment.
Talking about ambitions, when misplaced ambitions without the slightest chance happening refuse to let us go that wouldn’t be a nice experience some “Sayonara!” might make sense. Take a girl who all her life dreamt about being an air hostess. Nice dreams indeed. But life doesn’t work on such timetables. She ends up with some accounting job in a building which looks like a remnant of the Ethio-Italian war. Still she refuses to let go of her ambitions. Even after physical changes occur pulling her further from what could have been an air hostess’s physique she still prefers to imagine herself as a very smartly dressed and beautiful air hostess. That is when the real danger comes. I mean it might viciously demolish the self-confidence she kept building all her life. Someone close to her telling her, “I think you’ve to drop that dream and face reality;” would be doing great though it wouldn’t make him popular in her eyes. The fact is that there are times when we have to say, “Arrivederci!” “Au Revoir!” “Sayonara!” “What is in me that they refuse to give me the job!” after all the qualities the profession demands have slipped away wouldn’t be the smartest thing to do!
Say there’s this boss whom you have known for over a decade and all through those years you haven’t seen him accomplishing anything significant, but he still sits in that same chair as if his was a lifelong posting. The staff is fed up with him and his has been a decade where the place registered the most number of resignations. The riddle here is how his superiors have failed to see all the mess he was doing. He has spent the most paper and ink writing warning and expulsion letters. His handling of clients is so arrogant and unnerving it’s difficult to find any smiling client leaving his office. By some strange work of fate he mostly “…is not in the office even when he physically is in the office! Look, executive secretaries are the last breed we consider as saintly since most are nowhere near to that. But then you couldn’t help sympathizing with executive secretaries of such bosses who, to ensure the daily bread is not interrupted, are forced to sin umpteen times a day because they can’t ask their boss, “Why should I say you’re not in office while you are in the office!” She’d probably get the reply, “Get out of my face and I don’t want to see you ever again!”
Such bosses should have taken their, “Arrivederci!” “Au Revoir!” “Sayonara!” And because they don’t do so many suffer!
Take a guy who always dreamt of working with the scalpel. But as life seldom gives you your wish ends up with wrenches and the like in his hands. Working with the scalpel and working with the wrenches are two completely different scenarios; so are the criteria they demand. Our innocent young man just might not be smart enough to wear the white gown and is, contrary to his dreams, faced to wear the blue one. There is nothing wrong with that; the only problem is, with things as they are in these confused times, the dreams don’t leave him soon enough and he lacks the guts to admit why her couldn’t realize his dreams.
“So how is work? You must be doing good as I see a lot of cars in the garage where you work. You must be happy.” Noticing the guy’s features weren’t what they should normally have been he asks, “Why the long face! Is anything wrong?”
“I’m not that happy. You know I always wanted to be a doctor.”
“Oh, really! So how come you ended up as a mechanic?”
“Well, you know these days you can’t do things if you don’t have someone up there!” The guy is talking foul play! That’s what most of would have done to refuse to admit our dreams don’t fit us, because we fall very far short of the skills and the mindset it takes to realize them. Saying, “Arrivederci!” “Au Revoir!” “Sayonara!” to dreams that couldn’t be realized would have been the perfect medicine for most of these days.
I can tell you that in the world of politics it is my belief that there are quite a number of ‘politicians,’ ‘activists,’ ‘commentators” and the like who should have said their “Arrivederci!” “Au Revoir!” “Sayonara!” years back! However unfortunately as they are in no way willing to do they mess up everything and arrogance and stupidity reigns where there should have been wisdom and integrity!
The Ethiopian Herald 18 June 2023