Human Life... (continued)

Fear of failure is a natural human tendency and limits us psychologically, but fear of success is also a major limiting factor. With success comes many unintended consequences, i.e. more money, less privacy, lovers, haters, changes in the id and ego and cognitive perception.

I think that, as far as we know, since this is our one shot at the human experience, we need to make sure that it is carried through with meaning. While that might mean a fabulous career or a healthy family or being in love or helping others realize their dreams or simply watching all this with wonder, it is certainly an individual choice.

To be continued... (finally)

I wrote those lines in 2012 and left them hanging. In my defence, life intervened. After AIT, I did something my younger self, the one tallying big ledgers by hand in 1997, would not have predicted. I left the familiar and became a Banking Consultant.

The translator's job

Consulting took me into the depths of a core banking solution, and I learnt that the real work was translation. A banker thinks in natural terms: this customer is good for it; this account needs a closer look; this exception deserves a conversation. A machine thinks in fields, flags and workflows. My job was to turn the first language into the second without losing what made the original worth doing.

A system can enforce a rule, but it cannot remember why the rule exists. I did not fully appreciate that until COVID arrived.

When the machines met COVID

Between 2020 and 2025, deferments came in phase after phase, each with its own cut-off dates, its own eligibility, and its own interest arrangements. Government and banks shared the interest burden, then the arrangement changed. Borrowers who kept paying got a rate discount. Interest support was paid, and later refunded. Loans were rescheduled, closed and reopened, moved off the books and brought back in.

No software was built for this sequence. A machine applying the rules as written would have looked at a loan with no instalments received and called it overdue, which is technically true and humanly wrong. Every phase needed someone to ask what the policy was trying to achieve, which was to ease the borrower's burden without making the bank's books dishonest, and then to shape the accounts and the system to match. That is why we created separate interest accounts for each deferment period. It was human logic first and configuration second.

The machines carried the load, and they did it well. But it was the people who knew why who made it work.

One room at a time

My learning went deeper from there: Credit Operations, Retail Banking, Trade Finance, Correspondent Banking, and everything that connects them. Credit taught me that every number has a story behind it. Retail showed me that a bank is judged by its smallest customer experience. Trade finance and correspondent banking showed me how much trust crosses borders on the strength of a few lines of text.

For a while I thought I was becoming a complete banker. Then I noticed that every room I entered had another door in it.

Thirty years, and still a student

I have spent about thirty years among numbers, and I am still learning banking. I used to think this meant I was behind. I now think it is simply what the profession is. Regulations change. Products change. Customers change, and technology changes how they behave faster than any manual can keep up. The ledger I learnt on is a museum piece, and the principles underneath it, such as trust, prudence and honest records, are the same ones I would teach anyone today.

Numbers are patient teachers, but they are also humbling. The day a banker stops being surprised by his own numbers is the day he should worry.

What this has to do with a human life

Which brings me back to 2012, and the two fears I wrote about. I understand the fear of success better now. It is not really about money or privacy or the haters. It is the fear that once you are called an expert, you may no longer be allowed to say "I don't know."

COVID taught me the other half. When the rulebook ran out, what remained was judgement: knowing what a rule was for, and caring enough about the person on the other side of the counter to apply it sensibly. That is not a banking skill alone. It is what a human life asks of us all, again and again.

I wrote at AIT that "till death, education continues." I thought I was being poetic. It turns out I was being accurate. Meaning, as I said in 2012, is an individual choice. Mine, I think, has been to stay curious, to keep choosing the harder road, and to remain a student long after the certificate was framed.

To be continued. For real this time.