Time and Chance: A Poor Man’s Prayer

There are many half-truths, some barely baked, others outright lies, packaged and served to the masses, especially to those clawing their way out of poverty. These narratives often arrive coated in sweet words, dressed in promise, and whispered like gospel. But in time, each person must wrestle with their own discovery of truth, usually the hard way, and often with a broken spirit.

They told us that hard work leads to a good life. But if that were true, then the men and women toiling under the sun, okada riders driving through chaos, hawkers chasing buses in traffic, would be living in mansions and cruising Land Rovers. Meanwhile, those who seem to float through life with effortless ease, sipping wine behind tinted windows, have never known the ache of bleeding hands or the weight of empty stomachs. Then they changed the tune. It’s not just about working hard, they said. It’s about working smart. But get close to these so-called “smart ones,” and what you often find is astonishing emptiness: laziness cloaked in privilege, reckless indulgence masked as ambition, and a lifestyle of excess funded not by wisdom, but by access.

They will tell you it’s discipline. But look closer, and you'll see that behind their curated lives is a network of invisible hands, connections, family names, political links, and golden doors swung open for them at birth. You might be the sharpest mind of your generation, brimming with promise, but without the right surname or someone to whisper your name in high places, your brilliance becomes a candle burning in the wind. And so you learn: success is rarely about merit. It is about leverage. And the most precious currency in this world isn’t hard work, it’s access.

Three-fourths of the world’s richest people didn’t get there by grinding harder or thinking smarter. They got there by proximity to power, by sitting at tables where corrupt deals are signed with handshakes and stolen billions are cloaked as national development. Politicians borrow in the name of roads and hospitals for the poor, but the contracts are channeled into shell companies created for lovers and loyalists. Projects are inflated beyond belief. The real work is done for a fraction of the cost, while the rest disappears into private accounts. This is the machinery of modern wealth, greased by greed and run by ghosts.

Those not born into wealth or power, but desperate to taste it, often learn to mimic the crooked road. They become faces for money they did not earn, names on companies they do not control. A young man or woman suddenly surfaces, claiming to have built an empire with a rag and a prayer. They speak at conferences, grant interviews, preach "grind culture," and parade office spaces bought with someone else’s dirty money. In truth, they are ornaments, masks for those laundering money through the lie of self-made success.

Don’t misunderstand me. Hard work and intelligence can still lift you out of the deepest holes. They can clothe you, feed you, give you dignity. But don’t expect them to buy you a jet, a mansion at East Lagon hills, or the kind of excess where luxury becomes boredom. That realm, in most cases, is inherited, stolen, or bought with favors that the poor can’t afford.

The world, it seems, is rigged to keep the poor where they are. And the ones who break through are not always the brightest, nor the most determined, but the ones who hold keys political power, elite circles, or a taste for darkness.

So for the poor, intelligent, but politically disconnected soul, there are only two choices. You can either corrupt yourself to survive, or surrender to the mystery of fate. As Ecclesiastes 9:11 quietly reminds us: “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong... but time and chance happen to them all.”

Isaac Kwaku Bawuah
[email protected]