Petty minds are not harmless irritants; they are active dangers. They confuse loudness with relevance, self-advertisement with worth, and ego with achievement. In their frantic need to appear significant, they inflate themselves beyond measure, unaware that emptiness expands fastest. What they dig in malice for the wise becomes, by a cruel irony of reason, the grave of their own making.
For pettiness is self-consuming: it entraps its owner long before it ever touches its intended victim. The petty do not destroy others; they exhaust themselves, mistaking constant agitation for progress and perpetual comparison for relevance.
When the petty eventually collapse under the weight of their own excesses, observers often mistake the calm of the wise for prophecy. It is not foresight; it is discipline. The wise do not pause to wrestle shadows. They do not descend into trivial battles or trade focus for applause.
Their strength lies in principled indifference to heckling, in a refusal to be summoned by envy, and in an unbroken devotion to purpose. Silence, when chosen, becomes strategy; restraint, when sustained, becomes power.
In a political landscape hostile with jealousy, sabotage, and small-minded aggression, such a person moves by an unassailable compass: the conviction that excellence owes no explanation to noise. That one’s best must be rendered fully, consistently, and without distraction.
This fidelity to purpose becomes armour. It is what renders pettiness powerless, exposes envy as weakness, and allows dignity to outlive malice.
History does not remember the petty for their noise; it records them for their disappearance. It remembers the focused not for their quarrels, but for the work they quietly finished while others were busy tearing at shadows.
If we must advance with clarity and impact, then certain habits must be consciously abandoned. In the coming years, we must shun:
- Petty rivalries and ego-driven contests
- Unnecessary comparisons with others’ journeys
- Distractions dressed as urgency
- Noise masquerading as relevance
- Envy disguised as criticism
Our intellectual energy is too precious to be wasted on trivial antagonisms. Instead, we must dedicate our intellectualism and creative force not to comparison, but to:
- Purpose-driven thought and strategic clarity
- Consistent self-improvement and disciplined growth
- Building institutions, ideas, and legacies
- Excellence in craft, leadership, and service
- Long-term vision anchored in values, not applause
Progress is never born from rivalry alone; it is born from focus. The future belongs not to the loudest voices, but to the clearest minds.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General
The Narrative Force
