Inspirational Quotes for the WEEKEND

By Dr Charles Leyman Kachitsa

Football and for that matter any sport is fascinating when you think about it. What makes it exciting is a matter of interpretation and perception. There are people who like sports for its competitiveness, making their blood boil in anticipation of their team winning. Others like its strategic attributes in that to win you need a robust game plan, complete with marked areas of the pitch where if the team has to win needs to concentrate on. The people with a more strategy mind would be said to more or less liken the sport of their interest to a game of chase.

Still there are a section of lovers of sports who like it because of the politics in it, whether on the occasion in play or outside play. Thus including its administrative areas where the planning of the games take place. On the same human interaction attribute, you have those that are called Monday coaches; outsiders who can say and read the game on their terms and talk of their team winning all the time usually after play has finished, giving tips as indisputable techniques. Amongst these will be those who benefit from its recreational side and therapeutic properties which make people forget all including themselves as they embark on analysing why a few people donned in shorts in the case of football run after and follow a piece of leather.

After all is said, we can all agree that sports is a unifying factor which has no language, no territory as well as no discrimination as to who has to play it. After all the stars in sports have mostly come from a story they tell of living a life of lack. Sports has given some people who had lost hope, the true meaning of life. It has taught people to define what it means to live life purposefully, willing tomorrow to come as it has always a promise. A happy people means progress!

The quotes this week are a continuation of extracts from a book that defines diverse social values as a point of celebration if we understand and interpret them in context. I am sure the selected quotations below for this book will enlighten you to one or two life lessons, read and enjoy:

CULTURES AND ORGANIZATIONS by Geert Hofstede

\”In human thinking the issue of the equality or inequality of the sexes is as old as religion, ethics, and philosophy themselves. Genesis, the first book of the Judaeo-Christian Old Testament (which was codified in the in the fifth century BC), contains two conflicting versions of the creation of the sexes. The first Genesis 1: 27-8, states: ………..\”

\”Even more than reducing risk, uncertainty avoidance leads to a reduction of ambiguity. Uncertainty avoiding cultures shun ambiguous situation. People in such cultures look for a structure in their organizations, institutions, and relationships which makes events clearly interpretable and predictable. Paradoxically, they are often prepared to engage in risky behaviour in order to reduce ambiguities, like starting a fight with a potential opponent rather than sitting back and waiting.\”

\”A shift from a short-term towards a long-term orientation seems highly desirable, not only from a point of view of economic growth but also in view of the necessity of surviving with an increasing world population in a world with limited resources. Confucius\’ answer to Duke Ching: \’Good government consists in being sparing with resources\’ will become even more relevant in the future than it was 2500 years years ago.\”

\”The personality of an individual, on the other hand, is her/his unique personal set of mental programs which (s)he does not share with any other human being. It is based upon traits which are partly inherited with the individual\’s unique set of genes and partly learned. \’Learned\’ means modified by the influence of collective programming (culture) as well as unique personal experiences.\”