Refusing Comfort as a Coffin: Bashing the Beak of Professional Complacency

The Doors We Never Try

At times we believe that opportunity eludes us because of a lack of knowledge, because we were standing in the wrong room at the wrong hour, or simply because the universe dealt us a cruel hand. What we rarely admit, and what I certainly never admitted to myself, is that so many of the doors we assume are locked were never tried. Not because we lacked the key, but because we lacked the conviction to reach for the handle, to open our mouths and say:
I belong here. I have something the world needs to hear. I was this person.

This is not a novelty, and it is not mine alone. It is an ingrained fracture running through the heart of Zimbabwean society, a silent inheritance passed especially to young women across Africa: the belief that advocating for yourself is unseemly, that hunger is better than audacity, that excellence should whisper and never shout. In a culture that praises the quiet woman and punishes the outspoken one, self-advocacy is not merely overlooked, it is actively discouraged. To demand more is to be the exception, not the rule. To fight for your own seat at the table is to become an abnormality, an inconvenience, a threat. And so, we learn, from childhood, to fold ourselves into shapes that make others comfortable, never realising that every fold costs us a piece of who we were born to become.

The Trap of "Fullness" and the Economy of Fear

Peakpoint Services circled this ingrown trait in me. It had taken root so deep that I did not even know it was there. I had passively grown comfortable in life and called it peace. My quiet was seen as respectful by the elders, justified by my peers, and as admirable by those who looked up to me. But underneath the quiet, something was dying. I was losing my spark, my drive, my passion, my fire.

Let me speak plainly about the world I graduated into, because the numbers deserve to be heard out loud. Zimbabwe’s official unemployment rate hovers near 8.6 percent, but that figure is a polished lie. The Afrobarometer found that real unemployment reached 21.8 percent in the third quarter of 2024, and more than 2.5 million Zimbabweans between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four are not in education, employment, or training (NEET). Two-thirds of the population rely on the informal sector to survive. For young women, the wound cuts deeper still: 56.4 percent of youth in NEET status are female. The economy does not simply lack jobs; it systematically excludes the women most qualified to fill them.

Along the way to my dreams, I lost the fight in me. Slowly, the way the sun sets, you do not notice the light leaving until you are standing in darkness. I had started to believe the same narrative that everyone sings in my community: just because you are hardworking and educated does not mean you will make it in life, let alone attain a position worthy of your sacrifice. When I fought tirelessly to prove society wrong, applying for jobs without ceasing, doing any work I could find to make ends meet, pushing the glory of my achievements aside and humbling myself over and over, I actually did it. I got employed. I broke the cycle. I shattered the norm.

But when I took in that deep sigh of relief, something devastating happened. I also let go of the very hunger that was supposed to propel me forward. I exhaled the fire. I was full. And fullness, I have learned, is the most dangerous form of stagnation.

This is the quiet crisis nobody speaks about. Across Africa, job retention among youth is driven not by ambition but by terror. The fear of losing what took years to gain, the fear of being replaced in economies where one salary feeds an entire household. Workers stay not because they are growing but because they are afraid. And in that fear, potential rots. Dreams decompose. The extraordinary becomes the adequate, and the adequate becomes the permanent.

Bashing the Beak

Lukewarm. That is the most honest word I can use to describe what I had become. I was toddling along the best way society had taught me: be respectful, be exemplary, blend in. And I could have gotten away with it in any other workplace. But I was not in any other workplace. I was at Peakpoint Services, a company that truly believes in the excellence of every human being in association with it, a company that does not just offer employment but demands that you become the fullest version of yourself. The norm at Peakpoint was insanity, and I say that with reverence. The norm was a relentless need to change the world, to give other excellent people a chance in life, to truly believe in their capacity even when they had stopped believing in themselves.

I had finally become the exception, not the rule, that I had always dreamed of becoming. But because I was lukewarm in a place of excellence, my exception was a betrayal. My "good performance" my half-baked, colouring-inside-the-lines, following-the-rules-and-nothing-more performance, was no longer good enough. It was bare minimum. It was my new rock bottom.

There is a story told across cultures of the eagle’s rebirth. The legend says that when the eagle reaches a certain age, its beak grows dull, its talons lose their grip, and its feathers weigh heavy against its chest. At this crossroads, the eagle faces two choices: die, or retreat to a mountaintop and endure a painful process of transformation. It bashes its beak against the rock until it breaks. It waits. It regenerates. It emerges renewed: sharper, lighter, fiercer than before. Every person who has ever hit the wall of their own complacency knows that the metaphor is the truest thing they have ever heard.

I had to bash my own beak. The epiphany was perfect—harsh, searing, and necessary. Evolution of oneself is painful, but it is required. If you do not push yourself out of the norm, you cannot gain a different outcome.

Excellence is my new insanity. And I am at peace with that.

No matter how uncomfortable it is, I have to redefine my rock bottom: no longer unemployment, but a lack of global change. I have to refuse comfort. I have to articulate and advocate for my needs, fight for them, shout for them, no matter how insane it may seem.

A Call to the Invisible

To every young person reading this, in Harare or Nairobi, in Lagos or Lusaka, in a township or a village or a boardroom where you feel invisible... please hear me: you are a unicorn. And a unicorn was never meant to be hidden. Your silence is not humility. It is a sacrifice the world cannot afford. Your voice is not disruptive; it is the very frequency that this generation has been waiting to hear.

Be the exception and not the rule. Refuse to be silenced by social constructs, economic barriers, or gendered expectations. Refuse to let comfort become your coffin. Refuse to let gratitude for surviving stop you from thriving. Show up. Speak up. Fight for your seat, and then fight for the person behind you who does not yet know they deserve one.

You do not need permission to be powerful. You do not need validation to be valuable. The moment you decide to speak, to advocate, to articulate the greatness that lives inside you, that is the moment the anointing begins. And no one, no system, no statistic, and no silence can take it from you. We are the new baseline. And we are just getting started.

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About the Author: Joanne Hungwe is a Zimbabwean biochemist, published author, and health-tech professional at Peakpoint Services. She holds an Honours degree in Biochemistry and Biotechnology from the University of Zimbabwe and is the author of Amasa: Tribulation Amidst the African Sun. She believes that every young African voice that learns to speak is a future that refuses to be erased.