It is a fact that the legendary Kobe Bryant died yesterday (26th January 2020) at 41 years of age only. I come here today with a quick reminder:
What matters is not the number of years in your life but the life in your years.
Isn’t sad to remember that some people have never lived for 365 days in any of the years they have so far spent on earth? They have been busy merely existing, never truly living — but just worried about the future.
Hey, you do not need 90 years to leave a mark. Martin Luther King Jr. departed at 39 years of age. Jesus left at 31 years of age, having officially worked for only 3 years. And many other people changed (or are still changing) the world at a very tender age. Consider the following:
• Melati and Isabel Wijsen at 10 and 12 respectively, about global usage of single-use plastic.
• Sierra Leone’s Kelvin Doe at 11, about local innovations.
• Marley Dias at 11 in Sixth Grade, about books with black protagonists.
• Greta Thunberg at 15, about climate change.
• Uganda’s Benjamin Bagyema at less than 13, about basic financial literacy.
• Emma González at 19, about stopping gun violence.
• Nicholas Lowinger at 11, about equality for homeless children.
• Ryan Hickman at 7, about recycling.
• Zuriel Oduwole at 13, about filmmaking (interviewing 30 heads of state and being the youngest to be profiled by Forbes).
• Pakistan’s Iqbal Masih at 10, escaping slavery and fighting against it.
• South Africa’s Nkosi Johnson died of HIV/AIDS at 12 but gave a great boost to the fight against the pandemic.
• Zambia’s Thandiwe Chama at 16, receiving the 2007 International Children’s Peace Prize for her work as an educational rights activist.
I could also talk about:
• Young Mikaila Ulmer, about the passion for saving bees;
• India’s 14-year old Yash Gupta who was inspired to collect eyeglasses for children in need;
• Gitanjali Rao being awarded $25,000 at 11 years old for inventing a device that can detect lead in drinking water;
• Ann Makosinski who at 15 years in 2013 invented a flashlight powered by body heat;
• Maya Penn who at the age of 8 in 2008 started creating jobs and saving the environment by launching her eco-friendly fashion house, Maya’s Ideas;
• Louis Braille who completed his alphabet of raised dots by the time he was 15 and gave the blind a chance to read;
• Philo Farnsworth who was only 14 when he came up with the idea of inventing television;
• To mention but a few.
Dear reader, how old are you… and what are you doing with your life? Just hoping to live for 120 years? What for? Here is an important truth: You do not need all those years to make an impact, to leave a legacy, to make a significant contribution in the world. Even remember that you don’t need to die on the job. There is honour in retirement too. Stepping down is okay. Knowing when to go is a mark of leadership maturity.
Kobe Bryant has died at 41 only but left a great mark of excellence, dedication and great work ethics. He has demonstrated in his 20-year basketball career at the Los Angeles Lakers that what matters is indeed not the number of years in one’s life but the life in one’s years. Will you stop counting your days and start making your days count? The choice is yours.
I feel super-charged up right now!
#YouWillManage
