Sample si lema.
Ever noticed how doing something wrong is so easy? How heavily incentivized you are to not do the right thing? The life of a man has been modified to reward short cuts publicly and hard, diligent work privately. That’s why ‘sample si lema.’
You may not be familiar with street parlance so I’ll explain what ‘sample si lema’ means.
When you’re selling something for a quick buck, whatever you’re selling is never heavy. You have to get it off your hands as fast as possible.
You’ll see a man carrying a wet carpet on his shoulder or a tractor tyre on his way to the market or town and he’ll do it without breaking a sweat. That’s the meaning of ‘sample si lema.’
Desperation, hedonism and theft emboldens a man. He becomes remarkably resourceful.
It’s the same when he’s doing anything against conventional wisdom or propriety. Men will have the most meticulous plan to rob a bank but struggle to come up with an idea on how to invest the same money in a sensible business.
A man will exert every cell in his brain to surgically find the money, organise a room at a lodge and sleep with a woman. Give him a task to organise logistics and accommodation for his departmental team building trip in Livingstone and his brain will be buffering.
Doing the wrong thing is very easy. You incentivize yourself better than when you’re doing the right thing.
This is the challenge for the modern man.
Easy is fast. Hard is slow. And you do this while everyone around you is supposedly moving at breakneck speed with their careers, assets, education, family, business or well being.
The easy way out becomes really attractive and well, easy. How heavy is it to simply cut a deal at work and make ten times your salary by smuggling out some stock through the back door and into a customer’s vehicle?
It beats working every day for ten months.
But the opposite of ‘sample si lema’ is exactly how heavy the weight of consequences become.
Married men dying or caught in lodges with somebody who isn’t their wife. Losing your job because stock take happened earlier than you thought. C5 killing you with stray bullets after you’re cornered. That’s when the sample becomes heavy.
Have you not noticed how, no matter how muscular or savage a thief might be, he loses all his strength to fight back when he is caught red handed? That’s the sample becoming heavy. Consequences becoming unbearable.
It’s something men these days must ponder. That the easy way out feels like a breeze when we’re making the wrong decision.
But the consequences weigh really heavily on us.
