THERE’S an old English proverb that goes: “Cut your coat according to your cloth and cut your cloth according to your means”, which really advises that we live within our means or to do whatever is within our ability to do. This is an adage that had some meaning in the past, but hardly seems to matter today from either a personal or national standpoint and it is perhaps something we need to remind ourselves of time and again. The highly materialistic and entitled environment which Namibia has become in recent years makes it more and more difficult to advise our youth, in fact people generally (and our government) not to spend more than we have because if we fail to do so, the consequences should be clear to us all.
ON a more personal level, ‘getting rich’ appears to be one of the driving aspirations of the youth. This is of course the consequence of an increasingly consumeristic culture to ‘have’ as much as possible in material terms. While there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to do better and have more, it becomes problematic when this is the main goal and striving at the expense of some of the better things in life.
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