Johnny Briggs@Unsplash
Disclaimers are always plentiful: don't drink and drive; excessive use of tobacco will damage your health; use a condom when you can't resist unfaithfulness; don't swim in this river infested with crocodiles; and park your vehicle here at your own risk. But they matter less to the addressee than the addresser. 90% of the time, we laugh at the disclaimer. It's just a disclaimer, and we do what we set out to do, contrary to what it advises us.
Actions have repercussions, and they come later, sometimes much later, when the deed has been forgotten. We are faced with a consequence, but we fail to realize it's the consequence of a far-fetched deed. We now want to find a fix.It is said that when a man is given a nail, he'll take everything for a hammer. Nails take different forms, and hammers do too. But the most common one is that everyone with the capacity to fix something will want to fix it. It is our default.
If you walk past a leaking tap and you are a plumber, you'll feel guilty if you don't fix it. Not that someone has asked you to fix it, but just that it's within your capacity to fix leaking taps. You know you should fix it, but you haven't. To a counselor reading a tragic tale of suicide in a newspaper, a certain guilt over his help not being given strikes him. He was far from the event, but the fact that if he had had a chance, he could have saved a life, makes him guilty. It's easy to shrug it off, yet it's true.
Harry Grout @ Unsplash
There are plenty of fixers and plenty of people in need of fixing. What to fix and who to fix depends entirely on what you know about the fixer and the fix.Humanely, you always want to help where you are capable of helping. Humanely, not everything that you can help fix needs your fixing. Humanely, not everyone you think and feel needs fixing needs your fixing. It is better to let the leaking tap leak and the bleeding wound bleed unless you are asked to plumb the leak and dress the wound. It sounds as brutal and unkind as it always does.
The man clouding the air with cigarette smoke knows he is puncturing his lungs. They choose not to take care of their lungs but to take care of the smoke filling their lungs. The man smashing raw knows condoms are even free, but they choose to ride raw. The motorcyclist riding without a helmet knows the risk they are exposing themselves to, but they choose to do it. And they enjoy the consequences too.
It's funny how humans enjoy the consequences of the deeds they commit, more so the harmful deeds.
At some point in life, we realize we need a reason to complain about life's tragic nature. And we have no reason enough to desist from all harmful acts. I mean, without an action, there's no reaction. The lung rarely punctures without the smoke, and gonorrhea rarely transmits when a condom is used. But caution is for the "fool," and the "wise" throw it to the wind.
If we do the harmless thing, we'll have nothing to complain about. And though bad things aren't prevented by doing good, they come because we are vulnerable enough for them to come and because it is in the nature of things for the bad to happen even to the doer of good. The prophet is crucified not because he is bad but because he is vulnerable to the bad in nature. And so it goes.The worse is to destroy oneself for a reason to rattle on about the badness of life.
Prevention is better than cure. Some things don't withstand prevention but require a cure. Fixing is better than preventing something that can't be prevented. Not to fix is better; it's a preventable thing. And though you may feel guilty for not fixing what you could fix, know that it's none of your business to fix everything and everyone. People don't want to be fixed. Things want to be left as they are, and so should you.
No more fixes unless you are required to fix them. No more fixes unless it's your business to fix what is in need of fixing.
Kabwere Musa
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