Uncle Rwamiti once told me:

“My son, sometimes knowledge does not become useless. The world simply changes the question while you are still giving the old answer.”

Consider four people.

Andrew is 35. He has a master’s degree from Canada.

Four years after returning home, Dad is still helping with his bills.

Andrew is educated. Intelligent. Qualified.

But perhaps the problem is not that his education has become useless.

Perhaps he is still trying to activate it in the way he was taught:

Qualification → application → job.

Meanwhile, the world of work has changed the question:

What problem can you solve? What value can you create? Who will pay for it?

Across town, a petrol station owner has spent thirty years selling fuel.

He has valuable land, road access, parking, electricity, customers and decades of business experience.

Then electric vehicles begin appearing.

If his answer remains “I sell petrol,” he may see a threat.

But the world may now be asking:

“What else do people who travel need?”

Then there is the mechanic.

Twenty years repairing engines. He can diagnose a problem from a sound most of us cannot even hear.

Then the machines begin changing.

His experience has not suddenly become worthless.

But yesterday’s answer may need translating for tomorrow’s machine.

And finally, the parent.

Fifty years of life experience. Discipline. Education. Hard work. Responsibility.

Then his 16-year-old enters a world of smartphones, social media and artificial intelligence that did not exist when Dad was sixteen.

Again, the parent’s wisdom has not become useless.

The questions of childhood have changed.

Four people.

Four different worlds.

One problem.

The graduate does not necessarily need another degree.

The mechanic does not necessarily need to throw away twenty years of experience.

The petrol station owner does not necessarily need to abandon his property.

The parent does not need to surrender his wisdom.

They may simply need to reinterpret what they already know and possess for the world as it now exists.

That may be one of the great challenges of our time.

The world keeps changing the questions.

And too many of us are still proudly holding up yesterday’s correct answers.

— Uncle Rwamiti

Making sense of change through ethical storytelling.