Korle Klottey MP, Dr Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings, has urged people not to allow the hatred or resentment of others to derail their purpose in life.
Speaking on the JoyNews podcast Talk No Dey Cook Rice, she said each person has a destiny, and it must not be sacrificed by reacting to negativity.
“I think human nature is what it is, and it doesn’t matter where you are or who you are, but you can choose how you will be.
“You can choose to rise above it and be who you will be, rather than be as a result of a reaction to how people are behaving,” she said.
“Each of us has a destiny, and your destiny is kind of the path on which you’re on, like an electron in its path or something.
“And when you start looking too much at what somebody else in their path is doing, you may lose your path, and then you don’t fulfil the purpose for which God created you.”
She explained that many people say unpleasant things, but dwelling on them only distracts from one’s mission.
“Of course, when people say things, it’s unpleasant, but if you dwell on them, you’re losing sight of where you’re supposed to be heading,” she said.
Dr Agyeman-Rawlings reflected on how her father, the late former President Jerry John Rawlings, handled leadership and public scrutiny.
“I will not publicly or privately turn my back on my parents, because I know what they did. I’m also aware of the sacrifices they made with regard to parenthood, and sometimes the loudest voice is not the most honest voice.
“And I’m not under any illusion that my father was loved by everyone. There has been a lot of misinformation,” she said.
She recalled her father often took responsibility for things he was wrongly accused of.
“As a leader, he decided that he would let the buck stop with him. So a lot of things that many people had accused him of actually had nothing to do with him, but he took ownership of everything, because that’s what you do as a leader,” she said.
She also remembered her father’s counsel when she was young.
“I remember my father actually saying to me, ‘Don’t make enemies of your parents’ enemies, which I thought was very profound, and it stayed with me, and it’s something that I’ve lived by.”
Dr Agyeman-Rawlings stressed that leadership must come with humility and respect.
“With greater responsibility, with positions of leadership, should come greater humility, greater decorum, greater respect for one another, because those are the ways in which you set an example for what leadership should look like,” she said.
She acknowledged that abuse and callousness are common in public life but insisted she does not condone such behaviour in her own political space.
“I do not take kindly to people on my platform abusing or assaulting other people. It’s not something that I like to endorse for exactly the reason, because I understand what it’s like to be on the receiving end of something that you may have had nothing to do with,” she said.
For her, prayer and faith remain essential to rising above such pressures.
“To a large extent, I do pray a lot. And there’s a thing you do in terms of you just surrender certain things, and you just pray for the grace to move on and just to keep focused on what it is that your purpose is,” she said.
She added that people sometimes attack with the hope of discouraging others from pursuing their convictions.
“If God says that this is the role that you’re supposed to play, and that is what it is, only you can change that. So if you allow other people to distract you to make you decide you won’t do it again, then you’ve lost your path,” she said.
“Sometimes, some people realise that they can see the level of conviction you have, and they know that perhaps, if they try and attack you and make you feel bad and try to make you feel like it’s too much stress, maybe they can get you to move away from that thing that you do believe in.
“So you have to also try not to be reactionary so much that you lose your pathway. And then it means that those people who aren’t even doing what they should do, but have decided to have a go at you, then they’ve won.”