I see lots of our people, especially youth, these days who are inspired by this college-dropping story of Bill Gates, Mark Zukerberg or Elon Musk, who nonetheless have made it big. This implies education is not important.

Well, what one must also know is that these people were born with silver spoon in their mouth. They did not grow up being fed on WFP supplies or walking barefoot. Or go hungry even for a minute. They didn’t start off with no money. Otherwise they would also stayed there. Broke.

Bill’s mom was apparently a board member of IBM computers, who probably played a role in buying Bill’s software called MsDOS to drive the PCs. Mark’s parents were wealthy millionaire-doctors who could afford to send him to kindergarten where school fees were 30K per year. Elon Musk family owned an emerald mine in Zambia. To be able to enroll in Ivy league colleges, you have to be from a well-to-do family. To be able to drop off, you got to be really rich.

Hence, to be impressed by these people is fine, but for inspiration, look closer to those around you – unless you want to languish in a corner of a bar and whine all your life. Otherwise you have to have the right connections or solid financial backing like them – or both.

For most of us, the proleteriat from the fringes of the society, what matters is your education, and your zeal for lifelong learning, new skills, and hard work. A good education with a sound all-around knowledge is your only passport in life for you to move up the social and economic ladder. At least, it was in my case.

Fill your life and your social media feeds with people whom you can emulate and from whom you can learn one thing every day – and not with celebrities you dream of, or with billionaires whose life you will never have.

In one of my favourite films from my childhoo days, The Good, Bad, and the Ugly, Biondi (played by Clint Eastwood) tells the Ugly.

“You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.”

Yes, put your heads down and keep digging. We don’t have the gun.