The Attitude Lounge with Kodwo Brumpon: Being benevolent

“The one, who defames another’s character, also defames their own.” – Nigerian proverb

Once you are graced with the gift of life, she ennobles you by showering abundant gifts on you. But life does not share these gifts equally; otherwise living would be as boring as hell. She drops a pile of talents here, and a pile of abilities there.

Then she leaves out a few spots and showers some other places with bits and pieces of wisdom and a variety of other gifts. She does these so randomly and so skilfully that no matter how hard we try, we cannot all have all that we want.

As always, there is a reason for this act. It is a means through which life invokes us to be each other’s keeper. For the lucky endowed ones, life does not charge for all the gifts and graces she showers on us. Instead, she demands that we live responsibly for and to each other. To this end, she has captured it in the second greatest commandment; ‘love your neighbour as you love yourself.’ This is not a selective duty, nor is it to be done in ways that we feel like doing it. It should be done in its truism, for it is the balance of life; one through which life perfects us.

You may not like the sound of this, but you are under obligation to ensure the thrive of everyone who lives. It is that simply. As you seek to thrive, so must you seek to ensure that everyone else also thrives. Just as you do not want the bad and negative things, so must you seek to ensure that others do not and are not handed bad and negative stuff. This is the command of our responsibility towards each other and everybody. It is not something you do when you feel like it, rather it is what you must and always do.

We all want the best things in life, but do you also want the best in life for all others? If you do not, then you are not living, you are sucking the life out of life. The thrive of life depends on responsive altruism, a benevolent way of living. Put more simply, life wants all of us to be benefactors. We are to heap benevolence on our surroundings and on all we come into contact with. As we seek to be in the spotlight, so must we seek to push others into the spotlight.

What life is asking of us is essentially, to renounce all forms of self-interest and its egoistic bigotry. Such attitudes bring about unnecessary competition between us. They invoke animosity, bitterness and resentment towards those we are in competition against. Ask yourself; if you love your neighbour like yourself, how can you compete against him or her?

Does wisdom not teach us that we collaborate with those we love, not compete. And so if you want to obey the second greatest commandment, through which the first greatest commandment is manifested, you cannot and should not compete against anyone. What you can and must do is simply be your brother’s keeper – a collaborator.

Our duty is to be benevolent to society. And as we strive to do this, we must understand that we cannot perform such duty with pride. Some of us are quite benevolent, the rest of us are benevolent sometimes. It is good, but not good enough. This is because too often, we show off our benevolent activities. We want the world to know that we are giving and indeed we do give to the needy and the disadvantaged.

We make it look like a small service of love so that we look good in the eyes of the world. It defeats the very essence of benevolence. Think about it, if the tables turned and you found yourself on the other side, would you like to be handed the coins and the leftovers? The bulk of us would not appreciate to be treated the way we treat the disadvantaged in society. Is it not sad that even our acts of benevolence bring shame to the recipients?

To perform our benevolence in its truism, we need to learn to be really benefactors. We need to spare society, the humiliation of our benevolence. It should not be coins and leftovers. It should be a holistic drive of love where our benevolence would not show a ‘rich-poor,’ ‘superior-inferior,’ ‘me-you’ or a ‘you-us’ differential display.

It should not be a choice; rather it should be a part of us that builds the communal spirit of our society. Our thoughts, words and actions should be about wanting the best for ourselves and for everybody. That way we know that at any point in time when the changes and chances interplay and we find ourselves at the receiving end, we would not feel any less.

To be benevolent is an all-inclusive, all embracing strive for the best of life for our humanity. It is a cultivation of the awareness of virtue and vision of goodness and mercy. Its height, depth and breadth comprises of vivaciousness, altruism, neighbourliness, devotedness, amiableness and loyalty. Its mindset is love a flourishing society. That way we are honoured when society accepts our benevolence.

Kodwo Brumpon is an executive coach at Polygon Oval, a forward-thinking Pan African management consultancy and social impact firm driven by data analytics, with a focus on understanding the extraordinary potential and needs of organisations and businesses to help them cultivate synergies, that catapults into their strategic growth, and certifies their sustainability.

Comments, suggestions, and requests for talks and training should be sent to him at [email protected]

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