I’m not a retired Permanent Secretary

By Aniekpeno Mkpanang

My eventual severance from the Civil Service promptly foisted a brand new toga on me.

Almost instantly, people started referring to me as ‘Retired Permanant Secretary’, making it sound more like a baptismal nomenclature rather than a spent label I truly might no longer crave.

One could grapple with being addressed as Permanent Secretary when one was in ‘active’ service, but one is yet to come to terms with being actually depicted as such, and at the dawn of retirement!

Now hemmed, within this intriguing mental barbed wire and the unyielding steel bars of unsolicited public christening, I am constrained to ask myself if this is indeed who I am now.

One of the most eye-opening discourses in the New Testament Bible is the one about Jesus and his disciples while on one of their peripatetic evangelical missions to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. At some point on that trip, he asked them, ‘Who do people say I am?’

Lately, I have not stopped wondering why Jesus asked his disciples that question.
(This is one of the things retirement can do. It can get you thinking and asking questions and sparking an array of self-appraising and soul-searching monologues in the process).

Today, as I stand at that intersection of reflection and revelation, I am reminded again of that timeless poser by the greatest teacher of all time: “Who do the people say I am?”

In the unpretentious attempt to answer that question as it relates to my person, I have decided to reconcile the disparate voices, to weave together the fragmented narratives, and to uncover the truth behind the tapestry of perceptions about my real identity, purpose and mission after three decades and a half in the Civil service.

Is this where it all sums up, or is this a rostrum of sorts for some imminent induction into the mainstream ‘Public’ Service? Is this a new journey into the very heart of one’s existence, a quest to understand the complexities of one’s identity and an even bigger chance to truly showcase the essence of one’s predestination? That sounds more like it.

Consequently, as I reflect on the winding path that has brought me to this moment, I am struck by the realization that the journey itself is the destination. The twists and turns, the triumphs and tribulations, have all contributed to the ever-unfolding arras of my total being.

In the end, it is not the arrival that will matter, but the travelling. Not the destination, but the journey. For it is in the midst of motion, in the uncertainty and the unknown, that we discover the true essence of ourselves.

As I jettison the old folios of the civil service and open the new chapters of my odessey into a lifetime of public service, I make bold to say that I am not a retired Permanent Secretary. I am someone who retired from the Civil Service as Permanent Secretary after a most creatively involving stint and at the very zenith of the ovation.

Today, faced with the daunting task of minting another level of public service, I humbly carry with me the prudence of the ages: that identity is a fluid landscape, shaped by the currents of experience and perception; that the self is a work of art, constantly evolving without borders and forever in motion.

*Aniekpeno Mkpanang;
International Volunteer and Global Public Servant wrote in from his Avalon Retreat in Alpharetta, Georgia, USA.

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