Sunday, November 30, 2014

My Life Without Education (Poem)




I wake up every morning
To see the brightness of the sky
But I feel its dullness
Everyday

My hunger for food is a mood
I hope to be full
But no matter how much I beg
I don’t get full not to ask for more

Oliver Twist you might see in me
But my sight for the future is bleak
Education we fight for
People like me might never win

At 10 years old I don’t know my ABC,
The ABCs to making a living
But the 10s of 10 naira I make from begging
Makes me think I know mathematics

Since I was born I eat with no spoon
But shouldn’t be deprived
From having my children
 Born with a silver spoon

Poverty the disease I live with
Eating deep into the life
I keep with pain

Life we the living all have
But what then is living without a life
If my future is Cautioned with Education
Poverty and Crime I would be armed to fight
With my full might
Till the full moon night

But not now
When no help comes from the sky
But under the ground


Written and composed by Taiwo, Kehinde Oluwaseyi

Sunday, November 16, 2014

TIME: Taking Into Moments Everything

TIME: Taking Into Moments Everything
What does TIME mean to you? Whenever the word TIME is mentioned, so many things and meanings come to mind but incidentally time would not permit me to have it all listed.
a.       Race against time;
b.      The time is always right to do what is right (Martin Luther King, Jr.);
c.       There is time for everything (Thomas Edison);
d.      The greatest resource is your time;
e.       Time waits for no one;
f.       Time is money;
g.       A stitch in time saves nine;
h.      Time flies, it is up to you to be the navigator (Robert Orben);
i.        We must use time as a tool, not as a couch (John F. Kennedy);
j.        Your greatest resource is your time (Brian Tracy); are just a handful of the phrasal and idiomatic expressions denoting its wide-range usage.
From these above, what matters most at every point in one’s life is how well every moment is cherished which could be determined by how well one spends one’s time. The essence of TIME cannot be overemphasized, as it isn’t unique to anyone. Every 24 hours is the same added day given to all living humans to plan, complete a given task, expectations and self-target or ambition.
But what then is the difference? On this note I would say it is how time is spent by one which could be measured by ones level of fulfillment in the success or attainment of a pre-planned activity irrespective of what such activity is, including having a nap as well as one’s attention to details the TIME allotted to various ongoing tasks.
Interestingly no individual has the rare privilege of having more time to oneself and vice versa.
Moreover, no matter how good an individual is at completing a task and delivering to what is expected of one, the timeliness of such would sum up ones efficiency and perhaps indispensability for as long as such time-consciousness and expected output standard is maintained at the highest level.
But these all said, the million dollar question is what could drive the materialization of timeliness in production in all spheres? Respecting time, seeing time as one’s life for without time there is no life. In such, like a colleague of mine once said, “life + time = Lifetime”. The mathematics of Lifetime exudes the inseparability of TIME from humans.
Making TIME a factor of production: Economics, one of my best subjects in secondary school, stressed the essence of production and the need for the production factors to be closely considered in meeting the goods and services produced. The essence of these factors of production; Land, Labour, Capital and Entrepreneurship with their respective rewards being Rent, Wages/Salaries, Interest and Profit cannot be overemphasized.
But in as much as these cannot and should never be taking for granted, I opine that there is a missing factor that has long been underemphasized and interestingly taken for granted. Time!
Time being a factor of production would further provide attention given to production and ensure that hitches in meeting production timelines are brought to the barest minimum. These production handicaps include the African time syndrome (a regular excuse for pardon in the delay of producing or providing goods and services); avoidable handicaps by government like bad roads and transport networks, as well as the recurrent delay in the discharge of services in government parastatals and agencies; Minimal labour with maximum output expected to mention the very least.
On bad roads, if the time spent in traffic is closely thought of, then one can imagine how productive one would have been if such wasted time is put to good use. The Poem ‘Lagos Traffic Jam’ summarises what a horrific traffic experience feels like.   
If a given goods and services produced and rendered respectively aren’t timely delivered, such could be a big blow in keeping customers, satisfying customers and create a big vacuum in getting new customers due to the delivery trust gap created. 
With time closely considered and given a serious level of attention, production would be maximally attained across board and delivery trust would be strengthened.
Think productivity, think TIME and then Efficiency (the projected reward for time as a factor of production) would always be attained.