Pick a social media channel and you’ll find individuals offering advice and commentary. Within the mix is humour, seriousness, and heartfelt life events. Turn on SSBC, and more talks happen. Some give the blazing glimpse of the obvious while others fill time with inconsequentiality, press conferences, more talks, public even addresses, even more talks, tune in to the radios or turn newspaper pages, still more talks. More than ever, there is a lot of talking going on.
Less Talking Please! We need less talk and more action or, at least, a better balance. The talking vs. doing ratio needs to shift to more doing and less talking. What do we gain in all this chitchat about the obvious?
By the way, let’s face it, we are entering an interesting political cycle. With all that is going on in this country, you can be sure something is in the air. They don’t happen for nothing. One obvious thing is; we cannot afford just small talk or empty talking heads. We need more doing. We need to act upon the change we wish to see.
Most of the talks are distracting and adding little value. Focusing on where the value resides is crucial. The leaders of this country should be informed that the citizens are getting wiser. The country’s mass is a sleeping giant. And this often-ignored giant will wake up to judge each leader by the grades of right or wrong blend of talking, and acting or sleeping on what is being said. It will be a case of if individuals talk to rallying the positive or the negative, civil change or unrest, and stimulating our deeper thinking on issues or mere superficiality.
When comparing talking to acting, we get interesting insights. When a majority talk a lot without acting, we create more barriers to overcome. More than both impediments, the talkers are setting the example that just talking is acceptable behaviour. We create a culture of complacency.
The leadership; and indeed, all South Sudanese, need to talk less and act more. We all have something to do to transform this complacency that has buried us neck deep in this mess into doers of the talks: into people of their words yaani.