One thing is certain, there is a perpetual struggle within us between these two personalities: one that wants to do nothing and finds satisfaction in putting an end to a task, and the other that generally recommends doing what is necessary but whose voice is often not very loud. The apostle Paul said that the good he wanted to do, he couldn’t do, but the evil he didn’t want to do was what he ended up doing. It seems there are laws within us that condition our ceiling of diligence and productivity.

If our body refuses certain important activities for the life of the spirit it carries, this same laziness does not spare the activity of the mind, one of the most important: reflection. On October 12, 2000, we witnessed the appearance of the Nokia 3310; at that time, the phone allowed two essential activities: calling and texting.

At that time, we only had physical media to read a book. Plans were expensive, making it impossible to have an hour-long phone conversation. The Sharp TV had only two channels in Gabon, Canal+ was inaccessible for most, with subscriptions costing 400,000 CFA francs. The level of concentration at that time was much higher, and the reflection was deeper for consumers of Nokia and Motorola products.

With technological advances today, phones serve as books and storage boxes. They are very accessible. Internet connection for all, buttons have given way to touch screens. Phones are now televisions with which one can connect to Netflix at any time. CANAL+ offers low prices, and even the humblest in society have at least a subscription of 5,500 CFA francs. What about the increasingly bizarre scenarios in series and movies? What about Facebook and TikTok updates with the scrolling feature? And Snapchat with the My AI option? We can now obtain a large amount of information with a click, but how many people use artificial intelligence to educate and instruct themselves?

These instruments, however, will become time-consuming gossip tools for many people. When a child is born, parents can more or less set limits on their consumption. The more parents feed their children, the more they will ask for. This is the operating system by which industries have transformed populations into more consuming and dependent ones. This makes the current generation more idle and distracted than that of the 1990s.

In truth, everything around us is there for our distraction. Numerous leisure activities prevent reflection. When Peter saw the glory, he didn’t want to leave the mountain. The sensations of well-being the body feels prevent evolution. The improvements and innovations of SONY with PlayStation and Microsoft with XBOX keep consumers away from the power of reflection.

Yuval Noah Harari explains that he wouldn’t have been able to write three successful books if he hadn’t meditated during a six-month retreat. The world is made to distract us every minute. People are so desperate that they find refuge in comedy and other things that, in the end, won’t improve their lives in five years. There was a time when I was very spendthrift, and when it came to checking my account or summing up all my expenses, I fled, I didn’t want to face my irresponsibility regarding my financial life. It’s the same with reflection: people surround themselves with all these distractions to avoid self-examination and the effort of objective reflection.

The best way to achieve this is to disconnect from everything for a while, face your personality, and recognize whether or not we have acted well. My finances started to grow because I thought about it. Reflection allows for evaluation because everything that is not evaluated or measured will never grow. Reflection will get you out of confusion and make you more efficient…

This text is an excerpt from the book “HOW TO GOVERN THE WORLD” written by N’GOUARAKA Cris Brendan.

We invite you to read the following article “LASTING REIGNS“.