Thread by @joelanthony23

Tipsy Thread 🧵🍷
I'm grateful that -as a planned kid- my parents NEVER let me take it for granted that I was lucky.
I'm neurotypical, tall, male, from Western Uganda at a time when that's an advantage; I understand the social norms of the middle class that have given me access.

https://twitter.com/joelanthony23/status/1823805787904651342

I never had to worry about school fees, or whether I'd have a home to sleep in. I went to school with the cream of Kampala's middle class -people I meet in board rooms to this day. Countless advantages that if let to my own experience, I'd think this is normal.

I'm even more fortunate to have had my grandparents around to help raise me while my parents sought further education abroad and they brought vast cultural exposure to me.
All that set me up to where I am today. How can I call someone who needs my support lazy?

My folks didn't even cane me. Bougie as they were they'd give me time out or to do chores as they believed that hitting me was too easy. My big-headed self would have said," See you have no argument, just brute force".

Deliberately we were taken to see where our family came from

In time I learned that my folks too were blessed to be from homes that were able to educate them.
My father benefitted from a scholarship from Toro Kingdom to go and study.
Was that his doing? A child of a carpenter and salt miner born into a British Protectorate?

Growing up they always had some kids at home that they were paying school fees for. I KNEW we could afford nice holidays and stuff but we lived below our means, because other kids had to be given a chance.

For example, my great-grandfather had 3 sons and could only afford for one to go to school. He was expected to study and then help the others. MY grandfather took over the family business and resented the fact that he had to depend on his brother for school.

I remember one day in the village overhearing some of the people that we'd supported saying we thought we were such big shots. Talking absolute shite. I was incessed and went to tell my old man.

He smiled and said..let it go. It was only decades later he explained...

It was incredibly demeaning for them to have to rely on their younger brother to cater to them. But he was academically gifted so he got the chance to go to school.

A central lesson from him was - you have no excuse not to do your duty.

Read that again and Let me explain.

We often think of our duty as something we must do but would rather not. That's a valid feeling but the one thing we absolutely cannot do is distance ourselves from it. To do it as though we are being forced. Nope.

I tell the story of finishing Senior 6 and going to thank my dad for paying my fees and all and he said" No need to thank me. I'm your father. I owed it to you"

Now I had seen what sacrifices the man had to make. The enjoyments he'd foregone. And to make it worse he said

No need for me to thank him . How?

He genuinely meant it. He had made the choice to provide for us and so no matter how difficult, how stress full, he said it was his duty and he had to do it. Doing his duty was his ultimate freedom.

Without getting too philosophical about it, it was the first time he explained something my grandmother had told me " Freedom is at its highest when it feels like fate"

Imagine telling to a 10-year-old boy. I was lost.

Till later I heard it expressed this way...Think about something you freely choose to do...Like falling in love.

It's a free choice in some sense, but to the person who is experiencing it, it doesn't feel like freedom but something you MUST do. You have no choice.

That principle has served me in this life. Even when I'm having a difficult time or have every right to walk away...I know I'm where I'm supposed to be when despite all evidence to the contrary, I feel it's my duty.

It was my duty to pass on the good fortune that started when Mzee Mbeeta first set aside the money he earned from fighting in North Africa during WW1. That allowed Mzee Muganzi to raise a chapati-loving tech bro. How can I say all I have I have earned by my effort alone? How?

And I don't have the right to demand thanks for it. That's not why I do it. I do it because it must be done.

I often give Christians on here a hard time when I say we end up praying for God to intervene yet we are the body fo God on earth. We are meant to act.

Similarly, as much as it's within our power, we owe it to the ones less fortunate than we are to be the people we were fortunate enough to pave the way for us.

What good is your success if it isolates you from others. No wonder every major religion warns of excess.

Anyway...mob jazz to say, friends - Let's not start our stories in the middle. We may make choices but the options before us were determined by forces greater than us. The beautiful thing is we can play a part in elevating others.

Not to be" good people" or to feel good about ourselves. That's a bonus.
It's because that's what it means to be human. We ARE, because others set the way. People we could never thank.

And this is not to say we can't complain, or fall short or even be a little selfish sometimes. We're human.

But the one poison of success is it changes your lived experience. You will be celebrated. You will work hard and continue to earn. Good but it's not all you

And you can determine your duty too. The boundaries of it are negotiated and not fixed.
Modern life is dominated by capital and capital is dead labour. It's an abstraction that reduces the experience of human interaction to financial transactions.

As a bearded German once said- the material relations between people become social relations between things. It's how we can look at traders going on strike and think it's THEIR problem and not ours.

Some part of you knows w depend on each other but your lived experience doesn't resonate with that especially as you make money. Money buys you space and can make up for your presence. Money is human labor in the abstract. Don't let abstraction rob you of concrete relationships.

Eh. I've yapped.

But perhaps this will resonate with someone feeling the burden of duty. I know it's hard.
Find peers to help you cope, But please, don't flatten people's complex experiences with "They're just lazy or low IQ".

Don't lose your soul by gaining the world.
Bye