Speed Kills

One of the easiest jobs you can find today, is being a motivational speaker. It pays! And all you have to do is appear before a large audience and tell them how you became successful and by extension how they too can be successful. Many of us are willing to pay to attend, especially the very ambitious ones amongst us.

What are we told to do by these so-called successful businessmen? Simple- maximise your potential. In other words, be the best you can be. More often than not, we leave such seminars buoyed. We feel we are in the seventh heaven. Oh, but just wait for a day or two. Everything dissipates and before we know it, we are waiting for the next seminar.

Maximising our potential is good thing. I don’t think anybody can feel truly successful by being less than he or she can optimally be.

I’ve been thinking (Of course, everybody too has been thinking). One of the major causes of road accidents is over speeding. And the solution that has always been offered is to cut our speed because speed kills. How on earth will I buy a car with so much money, and not maximise its potential? Why should I have a maximum potential speed of 240km/hr and never be able to make even half of it? To me, it hardly makes any sense.

If you don’t want me to test the limit of my car’s potential, then restrict my maximum speed. Let’s say the motorway in Ghana is the one place that can allow for maximal speeding, why won’t our cars be custom made to suit our speed-limit?

The temptation is too great to avoid. Among other things, cars are advertised for their speed, so why should I spend so much money only to be asked to slow down. I’m sure every driver has at one point or another- inadvertently or intentionally, stepped on the accelerator pedal and realised how fast his car can go. If you don’t want him or her to repeat this thrill seeking behaviour, don’t expose him to a speedometer of 240km/hr or more.

Most of the problems of our world today don’t arise from our inability to control ourselves, but of the level of pleasurable stuff we are exposed to. Yes, we have free will, but society must help us manage our freedoms. For me, one of the most effective ways of doing this, is taking away all or some of the exposure. Taking away those tantalising images from our screens, taking away those sites from our servers, taking away those moneys from the brown envelopes, taking away confidence tricksters from religious circles and definitely taking away as much of our cars’ speed as is necessary(lol), will help us stay in line. SALAAM.

Natogmah Abukari Yakubu (NAY)

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