Hurling yourself into Mental Depression
Mugaya was working as a driver for an international organisation for four years. Life had been progressive compared to when he used to ply city routes as a tan-boy, begging arrogant passengers to board his brother’s mini-bus. “Phew!”, he would sigh; whenever he recollected how hard life had been then.
Things were different these days, given the meagre salary that he was earning. For starters, he had managed to finance a sizeable portion of his wedding with savings from his income. And, when their daughter Namukasa was born; he had footed the hospital bills without a wince; thereby winning some ‘long-sought-after’ respect from his wealthy, yet demeaning in-laws.
However, Mugaya had one dream yet to be fulfilled. He longed to build a house of his own. Not only would this rid him of unending rent bills from money-hungry landlords, but it would prove to his pompous in-laws that he was indeed ‘a man’. Therefore, he had been praying day and night that he would be promoted from the drivers’ pool to ‘personal driver’ of one of the bosses. For word had it that such drivers were earning a salary that would enable him to build his house ‘just like that’.
Mugaya’s prayer was answered when he got promoted to ‘Administration Manager’s driver’. “Now, our dream will become a reality”, an excited Mugaya had assured his wife Neema, as they downed sodas and charcoal-roasted cassava in celebration. And, within a few months, Mugaya had managed to deposit some money on a plot of land nearby.
However, things took a dark turn the day the Manager, Nyayo, instructed Mugaya to pick an international donor from the airport. On arriving at the hotel, the driver had assisted the guest to carry her luggage to her room. But no sooner had Mugaya returned to the office than Nyayo called, inquiring if the driver had seen the guest’s laptop. “She left it in the car”, the boss insisted, with a slight edge in his voice. Mugaya checked the vehicle…, but the laptop was nowhere to be seen. An exchange of words followed, with the Manager claiming that the guest had left the laptop in the car, and Mugaya maintaining that neither had he seen the computer nor touched it. “You mean it disappeared in thin air?” the boss shouted, with gross sarcasm.
A few weeks later, Mugaya was demoted back to the ‘pool’ on the grounds that not only had he proved to be careless, but he had ruined a golden opportunity to obtain much needed funds from the donor. What was most painful for Mugaya was the reversal of his income to what he had been earning before, a thing which forced the driver to forego the ‘much-sought-after’ plot of land as he could no longer afford to pay the balance.
Mugaya could not help but become grossly embittered against Nyayo. “How could that man call me a thief when I have worked so devotedly for this organisation?” the driver would recurrently ponder in frustration. The degrading contortions from Neema’s brother Nyoni, did not help either. “But is your husband worthy of you?” the in-law had retorted once, after Neema had begged for financial assistance from the village tycoon.
With time, Mugaya developed severe insomnia and later, was diagnosed with clinical depression. As we speak, he is on antidepressants for life.
Focusing on the wrongs that people have committed can be most counterproductive. Rather than propelling you forward, heaving with vengeance wastes your time as it eats into your productivity, paralysing your ability to think of creative ways to rise to higher levels in life.