Society

What or who?

I recently watched a scary video of an emergency landing in Brazil of an Avianca Airlines jet earlier this year.
The jet was carrying 49 passengers and crew. When the Fokker 100’s front landing gear failed to deploy as a result of failure in its hydraulic system, the pilot declared an emergency aboard the aircraft.
He then circled the city for some time in an effort to burn fuel and lighten the plane’s weight. A bystander captured the aircraft’s landing on video as the pilot brought the aircraft in on its rear wheels and kept the nose aloft as long as possible until it inevitably tilted down into the tarmac and the plane came to a stop. No one was injured.
In such incidents, we are all curious to know the cause of this type of emergency. During my training in defensive driving a few years ago, our trainer said when an accident happens, the question to ask should not be who is in the wrong but what happened. Often our curiosity hinges on discovering whose fault the accident is as opposed to what happened, which will eventually help us determine who was at fault.
In families and marriages, things can go wrong without notice. Like the aircraft emergency in the account above, things may have previously passed our verification test and we were pretty sure that everything would turn out just fine.
Unfortunately, as the Chichewa proverb says, Chakudza sichiimba ng’oma (eventualities do not always forewarn us). You arrive home and you discover your child is not home yet and this is 8pm. You had expected nsima to be available on your arrival, but it is far from being ready. You had agreed with your spouse that you would both be ready for the trip by 5pm and you get home, she is far from ready. The string goes on and on.
An effective solution to such frustrating situation depends on us asking the right question—what happened. Often, we are quick to blow up and jump into conclusions. We are looking at who has messed up. If only we had held our peace, we would have discovered that this child who was late—their school bus had a breakdown and there was no means of calling home. You would learn that the kitchen had to battle with mbaula as electricity only came back 10 minutes before you arrived home. You would find out that your spouse was interrupted by unexpected visitors, hence her delayed readiness.
The tip is uncomplicated: express yourself only after knowing the facts. Our problem is that we often jump to conclusions without first assessing the facts. We are prejudiced by previous trends and events and we conclude that what we are seeing is a repeat of the previous occurrence.
Our children and spouses should be presumed innocent unless proven guilty. We presume them guilty unless proven innocent. My school teacher of old used to tell us that before he starts marking our compositions, he awarded 100 percent to each of us. The task that each one of us had to do is to defend our mark when he started marking our paper. He presumed each student excellent unless proven otherwise.
Our relationships in the family, at work and in the community will soar to greater heights if we learn to be more accommodating and relent on our tendency to judge others before we have all the evidence!

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