where happiness lives

You probably sat in a fancier conference room the last time you refinanced or heard a pitch about life insurance. There's a table, some off-brand mesh office chairs, a bookcase that looks as if it had been put together with an Allen wrench and instructions in Swedish.

To reach this room, you pass through a cubicle farm lightly populated by quiet young people. Either they have just arrived or they are just leaving, because their desks are almost bare. The place has a vaguely familiar feel to it, this air of transient shabbiness and nondescriptitude. You can't quite put your finger on it ...

"It's like the set of The Office," someone offers.

Bingo.

Who writes like that??? I guess there's a reason not everyone with a pen and a decent language set (read yours truly) works for Time. The people who write for that magazine are just in a league all their own. That was the start of their 2008 Person of the Year story, featuring, of course, Barack Obama, and that guy was describing the office Obama sits in till he becomes the President officially this month. Anyway, that was just a sidebar, someone I hope is going to be me soon. 2008's gonna go down as the year a black person won the US presidency with no experience and against two candidates who were basically institutions in that country's politics asides from being white, a black person won formula one for the first time ever, Federer lost number one since he first got it some time in 05, a new powerhouse was created at the Olympics by the name Usain Bolt (as in the stars just lined up for this guy, coz how else do you explain his parents naming him Bolt and him growing up to be, like, a FAST runner), Vladimir Putin gave up the Russian presidency and was immediately appointed Prime Minister, the last Harry Potter was released and instantly became the fastest selling book in history (11 million copies in one day!!!! just in US and Britain, interestingly a record previously held by the previous Harry Potter, which had in turn unseated the fifth Harry Potter - that's literary power) and JK Rowling became richer than the Queen, and still despite all this a person we hardly ever think about made it to the top of the 100 Most Influential People list - the Dalai Lama. It's amazing because by his own philosophies he can't be vocal, can't draw attention to himself in any way, can't forcibly advance his beliefs, and of course doesn't go to parties with Paris Hilton or endorse Armani gowns.

He's supposed to be the guy who sits and watches silently while the rest of the world oppresses him, and prays for them, probably writes them an angry email once in a while just to let them know he's also human, in case they'd forgotten. But unlike Gandhi in the 60's, this guy is facing the Chinese communists, who, unlike their British counterparts, are not likely to be given to sudden attacks of conscience that will lead to Tibet's freedom. In fact, conscience doesn't even seem to have a Chinese translation - I looked it up! (ok, maybe I dint try hard enough :) If they gagged the media even during the Olympics there's not much these people won't do! And yet he still thinks kindly about them. "I don't dislike the Chinese, only their actions," he says. So then therefore the most mystical thing about this guy is also the most ordinary, seemingly: he's happy. In the midst of all the chaos and turmoil he's happy. Knowing that he's up against the largest civilisation and has only discipline and hope on his side, the Dalai Lama still wakes up in the morning and smiles. How does a person do that? Millions of people turn to him for inspiration. They prop him up on a pedestal and aspire to be like him. Where does he turn to? Not George Bush, that's for sure :)

If there's one thing his story shows us it's that happiness does not depend on possessions, even the intangible, widely regarded as lofty ones, like peace of mind and self worth. Just as easily as you choose to detest those who would oppress you and stew your insides over in all the grudges and ill feelings you harbor, you could choose to forgive them and wish them well, and free your mind to be truly happy. Existentialists believe in existence over essence - that the self, the very being of the person, rather than some predefined notion of human essence, defines what it is to be human. Basically, a person should be able to believe himself anything, metaphorically speaking even a superhero, and be it. The existence comes before the essence, and so we are totally in control of everything about us, including whether or not we're happy. We don't find a stereotype and grow into it. Instead, by how we live we create the stereotype.

They say, though, that man is a social being, and also that misery loves company. Thinking transitively, that would imply that man is somehow inherently miserable. So then he has to actually take measures to make himself happy. It won't just fall on him. But the thing is, what measures? Since hate and fear and worry are not like things you actively do, they're not physical, how do you stop? How do you make yourself truly free? When it comes to destiny and fate I tend to agree with the existentialist principles - we are wholy and completely in control of our ends. I don't believe there are people who are destined to be wretched and they don't have a choice in the matter. So I know there's something we should be able to do about it, but what? I don't do new year's resolutions, coz really we're usually just carrying over last year's ones into this year (unless we're Steve Jobs and our goals are things like make the iPhone the standard in mobile communication), but this year I want to find out what it means to be truly happy. I want to be able to stand in the midst of all the torrid goings-on around me and tune them all out and marvel at the wonder that is nature. At the beauty of roses, and the magnificence of the sky and the ocean, and the grandeur of mountains, and the gracefulness of the swimming duck. Anne Frank says "The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature." and yet Albert Camus thinks differently: "You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." They both seem to have a point, I think. I just don't know whose is the stronger one. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, they say. I guess it meanss something that the Dalai Lama wears none.

END

somewhere between lovers and friends

I finally get to write a lamentations edition... I think I've met a girl. Actually met isn't the right word, coz I've known her for a while, maybe even five years on and off. We used to talk when I was in high school, then we stopped, then we started again when she was in high school, then stopped, then started again when I was in uni, then stopped, then started again when she was in uni. Then I got complimentaries to Nu Metro about four months ago and out of the blue I asked her to go with me and she said yes and we started hanging out after that ocassionally then her birthday came and went and I didn't know so she told me. That was now two months ago. After that it all seems like a blur, but right now I know she's away and it's the strangest thing - more than anything else I want to see her. I always used to look at my friends when they were here and laugh and think how weak they were, and that that stuff wasn't for me. Little did I know. This is all new to me, but I think I really like this girl, and I can't tell for sure if she feels the same way, but I know for a fact I want her to. She makes my heart race sometimes, I am physically unable to say no when she asks (but I try :), when we're together hours last only 10 minutes, I wanna hold her hand when we're walking (although I don't, dono why, maybe Im scared), and I can't seem to stop thinking about her lately. Why didn't all this happen to me the normal way - when I was still in kindergarten? Then I guess things would have been a lot easier to handle, and I'd now have a lot more experience. But no, it had to go and wait until I was old enough that I know what it is when someone's stomach is turning on the inside (which is what it does when she's not around and I want to see her - it is NOT fun!) I haven't told her yet, coz I keep thinking the feeling will go away somehow if I just leave it alone and my heartbeat will go back to normal, but it does not seem to be cooperating. In fact I think it gets stronger. That guy who said absence maketh the heart grow fonder was definitely onto something. But she hasn't the tiniest inkling what a blog is, let alone that I have one, so Im safe on this front :)

See now I have all these questions. I really don't think my problem with relationships is committment phobia the way the stereotype says. For me it's always been that I didn't feel the need to. I didn't seem to have that void people want to fill with love, and so everything was just peachy. I was single and I loved it. Now I don't know if that void has developed or I've just had a brain aneurism! How do I know it's not just a crush that will die down with time? Why didn't I feel this way the first time we met? She's still the same person I knew back then, I think Im still the same person I was, so what's changed? And why now, when all of us are going away for the holidays and will definitely not meet? Im not very big on phone conversations. For one thing, the other person can never seem to hear what Im saying, ati I speak too fast, mara Im not loud enough, plus I tend to run out of things to say very easily, so I only call to set up meetings or to find out specific things. Juzi when we met we were walking down memory lane, rehashing how we met, and I think it's remarkable that we both still remembered, given how long ago it was and that it wasn't like love at first sight or anything. I did like her even back then, but those were the days when I was like an island, entire unto myself, so going out never even came up. I just used to think it was nice having someone around to hang out with. But now do I want more? And what exactly is this "more"? And now that we've been friends this long won't it just ruin everything if I were to make a move and things went south. She's coming out of a long relationship and so there's that chance that I could just be the rebound guy and that never ends well, so I hear. There's all these things to consider. So much to think about. But then on the other hand there's the chance that it could all work out and I could end up the richest man in Babylon. If I'd been there before then I'd know if that chance was worth risking everything else. Now my problem is I've never been so Im at a loss here. Life would have been so much easier if we could hire people to make these decisions for us, or if we could just take a slight peek into the future to see how stuff turns out first, or maybe if I just had a Beamer(TM) :-D

The best song I've heard all this year I think is Broken by Lifehouse, and it's just now playing and I can't help but think how almost apt those lyrics are. Im not fully there yet, but Im finally starting to get a sense of what it is people mean when they say she's driving me crazy. It's a painful feeling, and beautiful at the same time. You have anxiety on the one hand and anticipation on the other. You can't decide whether to cry or to laugh. So maybe it wasn't meant to be love at first sight everytime. Maybe she just needed to walk by again, a coupla hundred times :), but regardless how I got here, Im here now and I just spent two hours writing this article and listening to Broken and Im really not comfortable on this sappy side. It's always been me empathising with those other people. I didn't ever think the day would come when I'd be in their shoes. Am I ready to do the boyfriend thing? I don't know. I don't even know what this "boyfriend thing" is, but I can already tell that if it means spending time with this girl I might want to give it a spin. I had always imagined I was going to be indomitable forever, and that I was never going to find myself just sitting down thinking about someone and wishing they were here. How wrong I was. But still, in the pain there is healing, and in her name, I find meaning. So Im holding on.

END

all tomorrow's parties

It's been four years since I joined uni, and the four years have been heaven! What! Ever since I decided to make the switch (I'd originally been called to go do building economics), I've always thought that B.Com is the best course in the world. Never mind that every half decent (and I do mean half decent) college now has their own flavor on offer (including, but not limited to, one Makere satellite college which Makerere insists have no affiliation with them whatsoever), plus really, I was at the best one of them all so that wasn't really a problem for us. When I was still in my old course, I had a classmate who'd actually done and passed those international baccalaureate exams and I used to wonder why would she go here when she could fly out, and her reason was that some friends of hers had told her "You haven't lived till you've been to the university of Nairobi". At the time of course I thought that was a pretty paltry reason for not wanting to go outside (and never come back). I still do, and turns out she does too, she was really just whiling away the time waiting for acceptances, coz once they came Uon was dropped like a hot stone. But having been through the machine myself, I can now say with a certain measure of authority that those friends of hers were onto something.

Life at that place is just out of this world. First by sheer numbers alone, you come to believe there's nothing you all can't do if you just agree on it. People are resourceful, as far as entertainment and events go, and if you know the right guys there's really never not anything to do. Stories abound - about both the students and the lecturers, but I was never a fan of the administration coz it never used to appear like they're doing me any favors. Or even like they even loved their jobs, so there's very few lecturers I even knew by name. I discovered I like gossip. ALOT! And that I don't care when Im gossiped about, although the way the system's been made you'll never know if it's about you, which I like. There was once this one bit about a guy who used to live with his girlfriend (the rooms were like 4 feet by 12 me I don't even know how you live two people inside there!!) and then killed her and hid her body under his bed, and no one discovered till about two weeks later when the body started smelling. Christ! The things we hear. No one ever talks about how he did it, but I think she probably suffocated to death - wasn't enough air for both of them in there. But as to why, stress is cited.

Then there was this band - The Journey. DAMN, I was a fan! They used to do these renditions of pop-rock hits both gospel and otherwise and it used to chuck so realistically. The first time I went as a first year I remember they played Breakfast at Tiffany's and at the time it had been forever since I'd heard it I was just blown away! I even went and looked for it just to relive old memories. Even after I moved to the upcountry campus I still used to find time and come attend their concerts, and they just got better with time. Although after leaving school I find it hard to go, bogged down with work and all. Then we used to do these road trips at the end of a semester where we hire cars and go out of the city for a day then come back late at night, and something always used to go wrong during them culminating in a major accident involving one of our cars and a matatu in which the matatu actually rolled and our car was wrecked. That was a scary one! Mercifully no one died - one matatu passenger just broke a leg, but naturally the idea of a road trip was not floated again following that incident. And then of course, who could forget, SIFE. In third and fourth years I discovered just how big a part of my life both in and out of campus SIFE was when one Sunday we'd decided not to meet coz nothing was happening and I couldn't remember what I used to do on Sundays. By 2PM me I was ready for the next day! I can truthfully say that if ever any single group of people outside of my parents have had an impact on my life it's my SIFE friends. And it doesn't hurt that we got to go to NYC and Paris. Doesn't hurt at all! :)

So the reason Im reminiscing like this is the graduation list recently came out (must say I'm impressed - we usually just graduate on expectations, they publish the list much later when we're all done with the masters!). And Im in it! With honors no less. I wish we also called it cum laude, like those other places, but for now who cares! Im graduating with honors! I love my life. I love the fact that I did not throw away my uni years just studying, and still came out on top. You know, maybe it's a good thing I didn't get taken for that elec engineering that i'd wanted coz it's possible id be speaking a very different story right now. For starters, I'd still be a student! Fate and its master, the Lord, seem to always be on my side when it counts, and that so far has been my saving grace. So on graduation I won't just be celebrating the closing of a chapter and the beginning of another one, I'll also be celebrating a life well lived. I did a lot of things in uni I'd never done before, I got a lot of exposure, I learned a lot of things, apparently I even came out with a degree, but most of all, in uni I met people who changed my life. And that is what all tomorrow's parties are going to be about.

END

to make my father proud

I've been self sufficient for a while now. Ok, not really, two months. But a glorious two months! Feels good putting food on the table (feels even better putting the table in the house first, hehe). But yesterday I had a row with the old man. I dint even know we were having it. We were discussing stuff about the future over phone then I started joking as usual, he got irritated and I couldn't tell so I went on then he swore he'd never talk to me about that future again, and hung up. And it still didn't click he was mad. So as it happens he told my mum who told me. I freaked out like even I didn't believe when I heard. Until I apologized I couldn't stop worrying about what I was going to say, you know, how he was going to react. We rarely kosana so it had been a while and I'd forgotten just how much influence they have over us. Or me, maybe it's just me. What's surprising is that they still do, even now after we've sort of stopped depending on them. I remember a time when everything I did I used to do so my father would notice. Before I was old enough to have dreams of my own his were mine. I used to say if it'll make him happy it's got to be good enough, and if he even so much as frowned I'd go back and change the whole thing. He balked at my handwriting once so I had to go and change it completely. I mentioned Starehe once and saw how his eyes lit up, so it became my goal (although it became a goal for real when later in class 8 I visited it and fell in love). I started ironing clothes because he strongly approved, and many other things. In fact I don't think there have been many major things during my growing up years I didn't do to get his approval.

I've been lucky, I guess, on two accounts: that I always managed to succeed at whatever I tried, and that the person I picked to be my beacon had a persona that could always find the true north. When with just one word a person can make or break you, it helps if that person's intention is purely to make you, and I'd say his has always been. And even after I was old enough to start having ambitions of my own I remember my father's opinion always counted. Like my first real love as a career was law. Actually I think it still is. I sit down and watch The Practice or A Few Good Men and I see people spit facts and argue law and convince juries and I can't help but think wistfully about what could have been. I know law isn't nearly as glamorous here as I see it on TV, but no one can contest the fact that enough of the great people of our times had a legal background - starting with the biggest one of them all - Barack Obama. I tell myself that could have been me (not the president, a lawyer!) But he didn't think it was a very good idea to go into law at the time. So I changed my dream to engineering. This one I held steadfast, coz I genuinely liked it and coz, of course, he seemed to like the thought. But JAB had other ideas. So when I finally settled on B.Com we both sat down and recharted my future, and so far it all seems to be going well. He's the kind of guy who seems to have something to say about like everything, so when Im in doubt about very many things it's never not come up to ask him. One of his favourite phrases when he was laying down the law and knew we weren't going to like it was "As long as you're living in my house, eating my food...", so there were times when all of us couldn't wait to go out on our own. Well, for me that time did come, and it came on good terms (which is abit more than I can say for my brother), but it still took me aback when I found out just how much Im still under the influence. I guess it never really ends, when you look up to someone as much as I did to him. The student never really becomes the master, especially when the master constantly keeps reinventing himself.

Anyway, I did apologize and now we're good so all's well that ends well. They keep telling us there's no teacher better than experience, but I think if you look really carefully and are willing to learn, you can find a few. And I think in him I found mine. There must be a reason why they say things like "like father like son". Or "the apple does not fall far from the tree". Fortune [the magazine] keeps running these features on the most successful people in business and asks them who the most influential person in their lives has been, and 9 times out of 10 they say their father. I know Iacocca did, Al Gore did, Trump did, Bill Gates did, and Welch did (Obama probably won't, coz he didn't really grow up with his dad :). But you get my point. I look up to very many people. I read about very many people. And when I grown up I have dreams about being very many people. But at the end of the day the one voice I want to hear sanctioning my hopes and dreams is still that same one I listened to when I was still a child - my father's. And this time I actually know for a fact it's not just me. There are very many of us. The title of this post is the name of a song by Michael Jackson. This is the guy who bleached his entire skin and put tonnes of product in his hair and almost lost his nose trying to make himself white just so he could look more like his idol [Diana Ross], and even he thinks about stuff like what kinds of things would make his father proud! Imagine that.

END

madness, and a little bit of hope

Im pretty sure this has been said like a million times by now already, and I know I pretend to be original and all but deep down inside Im really just a shallow flag-follower. (nah, Im not, but I still wanna add my voice to the mix). There's a black man in the white house. For the first time ever! I was looking at his story and I can't seem to be able to stop marvelling. I mean this guy is like 47, he's never been to Washington before, he was born by a Kenyan father (although I really do maintain, there is not a single drop of Kenyanness in the guy, why we're insisting he's a "son of the soil" is a bit beyond me!), this was his first time running for high office, he was also a first-time senator, and he didn't just win, he won by a landslide. He stands up to speak and everyone shuts up and listens. Back in '04 when he was delivering the DNC keynote address by the way me I think he even overshadowed Kerry himself. How does one man manage to do that?? These are some of the things you just can't explain, but you know you want to be a part of. Early on in the campaign the Obama effect became pretty clear, when he started to catch up with Hillary. He didn't bring an imposing larger-than-life presence to the table, he didn't bring experience, he wasn't as well known going in as was everyone else, and basically the odds were all stacked against him. All he brought was that one word: hope. The promise of a better tomorrow. And it soon became apparent that he had a gift - he could galvanise and excite people like no one else could. He was all about the future. And the longer the campaigns lasted, the more people, yours truly included, crossed over to his side. Turns out no one really stood a chance against the force that was Obama.

And then I was thinking about his kids. Im moved by the guy and Im all the way across the Atlantic. So how must it be for them, right there in the same house as him. I mean, how do you not excel? How do you not turn out phenomenal having grown up in such an environment? With a father like that, and a mother like that? In a country like that? I saw the sixth season of The Apprentice and on there Trump brought his daughter Ivanka to be his eyes and ears, the thing George used to do, and she's a bit of a story herself, having gone to the Wharton School of Business. Same as Bill and Hillary's Chelsea. Hillary wrote a book, about her life, and she called it Living History. And I find the title so apt, coz basically as the president of the United States you have a say in like everything that happens of significance on the world stage. How beautiful is that? To be able to say you've lived history, you know, that you were right there in the center of it all when it happened. It's a many-facetted thing, history. So much so that even Fidel Castro knew it had a place for him when he told the court after being arrested for leading a rebellion against the government of the time:
"I know that imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty. But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me."

Anyway, Obama. The stories about people who get inspired aren't false. I know, I've felt it too. Having read about him and Welch and Iacocca, Im starting to think that maybe I do want to be in public arena. Im still sure it's not politics, but Id really like if one day someone walked up to me and told that they're who they've become because of me. Id be overcome! I wanna find out some time that parents tell their kids to go study if they want to be like me. And I'd like to know that all those people who used to see me as an underdog now wish they were me. One day. We get these instances every so often in our lives, that arouse feelings within us. They stay with us. As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered. And remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped. And movement stopped. For much, much more than a moment. And then all of a sudden, the moment's gone. But at the end of it all, I like Barack, still believe in a place called hope.

END

uptown downtown (misery's all the same)

It's official. If I never count stock again it'll be too soon! I was out on one all this
weekend, and it was apparently an exotic place - flower farm in naivasha. But as im
finding out, the exquisiteness (is that a word? hmm) of a place massively depends on the
reason you're visiting that place. Naivasha to Crayfish - rocking place. Rocking
weekend. Naivasha to count flowers - not so much! I swear we were doing that stuff all
night. They wait till 12AM to start the process (who does that?!?) and so as to preserve
freshness and all the rooms are temperature-controlled - 2 DEGREES!! You put on like all
the sheepskin in the world but still when you just go in like this it's windy so when
tears start chucking from your eyes its ice droplets. I kid you not!! Ok, I do, but it
was REALLY cold. That coupled with the fact that there was about a million flowers
distributed all over the country and did I mention it was one in the morning? OMG! Have
you ever gone back home and just wanted to collapse on your couch and realised you don't
have one yet coz this is your first month living on your own so you're still working on
the whole furniture thing? Yep, that was me. :( Then Monday morning I get a new email
from our office admin with an attachment - new schedule for stock counts in Dec. No
prizes for guessing who's on that list. Thrice! Altho in all fairness so is everyone
else. I guess misery really does love company. But either way, Murphy must have been a
very wise person.

Anyway, do you find it odd the way everyone is all US elections and how they won't go to
school/work/the bar on Wednesday if McCain wins (actually the sisters have remained
strangely silent on the subject of bars on Wednesday - turns out ladies' night [read
free entry] is quite addictive.. :) ). It's been happening every four years for two
hundred years, but apparently this year there's a twist - the boy we want to win comes
from here. I mean, seriously, who're we kidding?? HIS FATHER came from here. The boy
himself was once here for two weeks trynna trace his genealogy (I hear for his MBA
project) and all of a sudden Kogello is now being renamed Obamaville. That road has been
tarmacked all the way from the airport to the grandmother's house. Can you believe!??!
Anyway, Im not complaining about that one coz apparently it was done by the British
government(!) I just want all us people to get our heads out of the clouds, and realize
that that boy is an American citizen running at a time when his country is tumbling down to
the doldrums and there are american-grade problems for him to think about and so all
this camaraderie and warm feelings of kinship coming from us will probably remain very
one-sided. The way I see it, when he keeps talking about a father from Kenya, the point
is usually not supposed to be the "from Kenya" part, the way we'd like to believe, coz
he never misses to also mention "a mother from Kansas". The point he's usually trynna
make is parents from two different worlds. His father could have been from The Gambia,
and he'd still be telling the same story. I know victories are pretty hard to come by thisides and
we need to celebrate the few we get, but seriously, they need to be clear and present.
And REAL. But hey, that's just me.

END

la vita è bella

Sidebar: For a while now I've been using song and album names as titles for my posts. Today I found myself at a fork - to use life is beautiful which as actually a song by Vega 4, or its Italian counterpart la vita è bella, which is the name of a movie. As you probably already know, the movie won out. Italian sounds so exotic....

A friend of mine's grandmother was killed recently. The worst possible way - she was first stabbed, then when she failed to bleed to death she was strangled. Here's the kicker - by her son, now the friend's uncle. And what's worse, this friend's mum got to the scene before the grandmother died, so she saw it all. The trauma is real in their house. Real!! It surprises me at times, how fleeting life can get. One moment you're here, the next you're not. I find it a little ironic, that life is God's most precious gift, bar none, and yet of all of them, it's the one gift we're sure is going to be taken back someday.Regardless of religion, creed, belief, culture, upbringing, we all converge on this one point - we're gonna die someday. The English even coined a phrase around it: as sure as death and taxes (turns out the government is pretty efficient when it comes to collecting those...:). But the sad part, is that for those who remain life has to go on. The hardest part of saying goodbye is having to do it all over again, every day for the rest of one's life. Having to face the same truth each new day, that life will never be the same again. Our time here is short. It feels like a part of us has been ripped off. And I guess it usually has. I've so far had the good fortune of never having lost someone close to me. I can't even begin to imagine what it feels like. It's been 4000 years and we as a civilization still haven't grasped the mystery that is death. The closest we've come is to call it the Grim Reaper.

That said, it's not so hard to tell how bad death is from the effects it has on the people it surrounds. No matter how bad someone was alive, there will always be nice things to say about them at their funerals. It's a twisted stroke of fate, that people should find the heart to share all these great things about someone when he's no longer around to hear them. They say the one thing worse than having loved and lost is to never have loved at all. But I would like to contend, the worst thing that could happen to someone, is to die before their time. Before they get the chance to realize all their dreams. Before they get to show the world just what it is they're made of. Life owes it to us to last until such time as our potential is fulfilled. Preachers preach and a lot of them call the grave yard the richest place in the world. They say it's coz it's full of people who died with dreams untold. People who didn't live long enough to see their ambitions through. That, I think, is the worst thing that could happen to someone.

And as terrible as death is, life is that much better. It's under the cover of life that we can, well, live. And love. Learn guitar. And play the music in our hearts. Travel. Meet new people. Climb the Everest (or maybe just the Nandi Hills, but still). Win an Olympic medal. Get an autograph from Snow Patrol. Exercise. Eat fast food. Listen to indie rock and rebel against the law. Fantasize about Jessica Alba. Run a blog. Fly. Freaking anything we wanna do!! And then turn right around and do it all over again. Ever wondered what it would be like if you weren't there? If you were suddenly gone, how would your world react? Well, whatever you thought you were wrong. There can be nothing glamarous about death. Grief is like the ocean. It's deep, it's dark and it's bigger than all of us.

So, does life really end at death? For most of us, yes. But Mary Elizabeth Frye wrote the euology of eulogies, and I'd like to to be mine:

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn's rain.

When you wake in the morning hush
I am the sweet uplifting rush.
Of quiet birds in circling flight
I am the soft starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die.

END

a rush of blood to the head

So it's been a pretty long week. Actually a long month, coz this is the first month I've spent working. Like ever! I never did any of that internship thing when I was in uni, I just used to bum all holiday long. It's a new experience, like being thrown into the deep end (that would actually also be a new one for me literally - don't know how to swim :). But yesterday I did something good. I bought something big for my new house. It's not new really, I've kinda been living there for about a month already, but I haven't gotten anything at all, except for the bed which I really did need. Anyway, the big thing. It's not really big, it's just a coffee maker. I decided on that one coz Im an absolute lover of coffee, I think they're really cool and convenient, and it's something I've always wanted. But mostly it was that I could afford it at the time -:). Im a guy who likes symbolism to some extent, and so to break it in and mark the day all I had was coffee. Breakfast, lunch and supper. Ok, not lunch coz I was out for that one, but definitely the other two. And its been great. Now I want a TV and a Playstation. (What's that? Im too old? No Im not. Leave me alone!)

The first time I paid rent was depressing. I can totally see now how it is our parents got so old so fast! Growing up the way I did, one never realises this day is going to come. I was a pretty sheltered kid, add that to the fact that I grew up upcountry and you have yourself naivette at its best. We weren't really rich, but we comfortable, Id say, and I got most of what I wanted (except for a certain mountain bike that has eluded me to this day..:( ). And so you tend to learn to not care where stuff comes from. All you know is if you want it it can be found. The stories about hungry kids in Sudan don't really impact us the way they do white people coz we're so close to it all. It's that case of familiarity breeding contempt, I guess. Of course as a kid you don't really think like that anyway, these are things that just cross my mind in hindsight. When I try and think about how different I probably would be if I'd grown up having to hustle for myself. Or if I'd ever been in the middle of a live strike (can you believe I've still never seen one??!) and had to escape the scene.

Im not complaining by the way. I loved my childhood. And I think my parents did make me who I am today, together with Starch of course, no one goes to that school and chucks without being changed in some way! It's just that now that I have to get all my own stuff and pay all my own bills it's a little new. There's no lifeline at the other end of the phone to bail me out. (ok, there is, but who're we kidding?) But there's a sense of achievement, I find, that comes with being able to call something mine. It's refreshing, like a breath of fresh air, knowing deep down inside that my life is now my own. Coz it is. I answer to no one but myself. If you don't count my boss that is - all 60 of them [and they say it's a flat structure. What!!]. Ok, not really 60, but still.

Coz of this new-found freedom Im learning all the fundamentals. How to be fiscally responsible. Savings. Investing. Budgeting. Even the word "mortgage" keeps coming up. It gets overwhelming at times, but truth be told I've never had so much cash in my life, and so I really do need to learn these things, at the very least to keep me from bouncing off the walls after payday. Everytime I get a chance now that I live close to a megastore I go window shopping and there is ALOT of stuff to buy out there. You can never not find something, even things you weren't looking for. Or things you have no idea when you'll ever need to use. Discipline is hard. But necessary. And it starts now, with me admonishing myself over that skateboard I bought. Oh, wait, had I not mentioned that? Ya. The coffee maker Im proud of. The skateboard, maybe not so much...

END

love in the time of science

When the Time Magazine decided to do a Person of the Century edition back in '99, it was
to award the person who they thought had had the most impact through the entire century.
Now Time does a lot of cover spreads, and they're almost always who's who. So who better to pick the best out of the best than them! As you can imagine the list had like all the big names. FDR, JFK, Mahatma Gandhi, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs (ya, he of the ipod fame), Elvis Presley, and even (SHOCKING!!!) Adolf Hitler. But among them, a little known scientist was crowned king. Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity won out. He wasn't the loudest, or most eloquent, or most influential, and by no means even the smartest, person on the list. But see according to the guys over at Time, the one thing for which the 20th Century will be remembered for the most will be its scientific developments. Apparently science was a really big part of the last hundred years. So in a world full of scientists, what does it mean to be in love?

Is it the ancient mythic asian folk tale handed across generations depicting a conversation between two drunk people:
Drunk #1: "I love you!"
Drunk #2: "No you don't."
Drunk #1: "Yes, yes, I do. I love you with all my heart."
Drunk #2: "No you don't. If you love me, why don't you know what hurts me?"

Is it the whole romanticized idea of a guy bringing a girl the moon (or a red rose) and crossing the ocean for her? Does it necessarily mean sacrificing, to the point of giving up your life for another? Is it blind? When belabored with conditions, does it cease to be "true"? Does it take you breathe away, and does it never end? Is everyone of us really meant to end up with just the one person? Is it written in the stars? And if it's destiny, then is this just God's experiment in which we have no say? O ya, and what if the earth doesn't move?

Or is it the Hollywood interpretation, what Julia Roberts meant when she stood before Hugh Grant in his bookstore telling him "The fame thing isn't really real you know. And don't forget, Im also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her." Or what Anne Hathaway meant when in answer to Jason's question "Why me?" she said, "Because you saw me when I was still a nobody." Or what Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio shared when deep in the Atlantic she held his hand telling him, "I'll never let go!" Or what Chad Michael Murray was feeling looking deep into Hilarie Burton's eyes and telling her "It's you. When all my dreams come true, the one I want next to me. It's you,
Peyton." Or the connection Sanaa Lathan had with hip hop, all the way from her childhood, in the form of an apparently strapping young fellow by the name Taye Diggs. (BTW I think I now need to get a life coz these examples just keep flowing. What!!)

I think love is one of those things that doesn't have an absolute definition, it's purely subjective. You could ask a hundred people in love what it means to them and you'd end up with a hundred different answers. Much unlike the Theory of Relativity above, love is one subject that remains as fluid as the air. You can never really put your finger on it. To some it could be complete trust. To others it could be putting someone else's dreams and ambitions above one's own. And to yet others it could be
accepting the other person exactly as they are, warts and all. And I think all these people would be right. It seems to be the kind of thing that's really easy to confuse with want or desire (spelt l-u-s-t ;). See my thinking is one is fleeting, and the other lasts for a while (forever if the romantics are to be believed). One is superficial and the other runs deep. In hindsight it's usually pretty easy to describe love - after all, if after 27 years you still make each other's hearts skip beats then it sounds like love. But on that first day, can you usually see the next 27 years? Herein lies the problem with
defining love. It's one of those things that is until it's not. And when it stops being then you'll know it wasn't true, if it doesn't (stop being) then you'll know it was. (Eh, am I in danger of becoming a philosopher here?...)

We spend our whole lives searching for true love, which is why our lifetimes are divided into two - there's that first part where we're still searching, and then the second part called "the rest of our lives" when we've found it. And don't take my word for it: just turn on the radio. Depeche Mode - The Meaning of Love; Air Supply - All Out Of Love; Angels and Airwaves - Love Like Rockets; Ashlee Simpson - Love Makes The World Go Round; BarlowGirl - I Need You To Love Me; and that's even before I go into the R&B songs! Turn on the TV: One life to live; One Tree Hill; Felicity; Dawson's Creek; Tell Me You Love Me; Melrose Place... again, I haven't even broached the subject of Mexican soaps! Or go to the cinema: The Other Boleyn Girl, Titanic, Casablanca, If Only, The Notebook, Love In The Time of Cholera, The English Patient... I could really go on. And yet love
remains the most misunderstood concept of all time (although a pretty strong case can also be made for E=mc2 :)

I found this paragraph on the net some time and I think it sums it up pretty well: As an abstract concept, love usually refers to a deep, ineffable feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Even this limited conception of love, however, encompasses a wealth of different feelings, from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the nonsexual emotional closeness of familial and Platonic love to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love. As in even they admit it's impossible to explain (ineffable). And of course, no discussion on love would be truly complete without The Bard adding his voice to the mix:

Love is not love which alters when it alteration
finds. It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempis and is never shaken. Love
alters not with time's brief hours and weeks, but bears it out, even to edge of
doom.

END

we might as well be strangers

Last Sunday's sermon was very awe-inspiring. It was about us being ourselves. Being the Africans we are meant to be. Unapologetically, so the preacher said. It really provoked me. Most of the stuff he said is actually true about us. We walk around wearing those loud t-shirts that scream Kenya in glow-in-the-dark colors and paint our faces red green and white, so that we show we're patriots. We make a loud hash every time we buy Kenya, so we can show we support our local industry. We try so hard to tell our friends where it is we come from, and we tell ourselves twenty times every day, "I'm proud to be Kenyan." So the question was: when has it ever been in contention that we're proud? Who asked? Who challenged the status? Why do we feel that need to outwardly go out of our way to prove our love for the motherland? It all sounds a little fake sometimes if you ask me. If it was real, if it was genuine, it would just come through. It's almost as though we're trying to convince ourselves that we love the motherland!

The things, according to him, that people who don't come from here love about our country and us: we're all family, you don't need to call ahead to show up at someone's door step, we own things communally, we place a greater premium on people and relationships than we do on time and systems, our mother-tongue interferes with other languages, like english, we cook a mountain of food every meal - just in case guests show up unannounced, cousing is not even a Kenyan concept - here we're really all brothers and sisters. If you look carefully, you'll find that these, the things others admire in us, are the things we're ashamed of. Someone is speaking and they shrub and we laugh at them. Someone shows up an hour late for a meeting and we call that "Kenyan timing." and that's enough to explain everything. We don't even trust ourselves to lead ourselves. We think we'll run our own institutions to the ground if left in our hands [and of this Im actually guilty. When Geoffrey Griffin of Starehe died, I was strongly of the opinion that if a black person were put at the helm of the school that was going to be the beginning of its downfall. Imagine. That's not even an outsider talking about a local, it's we ourselves talking about us! I stand corrected, btw. They put a Kenyan in charge and he took the school back to the top] You go to that Java at Adams and there's a ka-waiter looking askance at you like "Now this one, what does he want here?" A Kenyan. One of our own, not a foreigner!

We could perhaps blame this inferiority complex we have on colonialism. It's the kind of thing that cuts deep into people's psyche and damages sometimes irreparably their self esteem. Slavery is the worst form of oppression. It teaches us that we're not good enough. That we're somehow insufficient, and we need someone else to validate us before we can present ourselves to the rest of the world. From the gospel according to Willy Lynch, [a guy who was called in by slave owners in the south when they feared they were losing control of their slaves]: Keep the slaves physically strong, but psychologically weak and dependent on their master. Keep the body, but take the mind. But be that as it may, really, are African countries the only countries that were colonised? Wasn't the United States of America a British Colony in the 18th century? They fought for their freedom, and when they got it they set about creating their own identity. Never mind that the country has actually surpassed their colonisers. Let's just focus on the basics: today there is nothing American that reflects british influences. Nothing whatsoever! The britons have an unwritten consitution, Americans wrote down theirs. Britons are a monarchy, the American system is presidential. The Britons keep left when driving, Americans keep right. They even speak different flavors of English, and spell things differently. It's like the Brits were never in the States. Look now at our dear Kenya. The roads are still the same. The language is still the queen's. Infrastructure is still the same. We even used to have Kenyan Pounds as part of our currency. Our very legal system is like 60% English Common Law! Look at precedent, and you'll see names like Lord Demming, Lord Erroll, Oliver Wendell Holmes jr. et al. Surely, is anything we are that is a creation of our own?

I guess there comes a time when we have to ask ourselves: is patriotism a task or a life philosophy? Is there like a 21-point plan for being Kenyan? Are there things you have to do to show it? Is it in the dress? Is it in the fact that we speak our mother tongue fluently plus that of our next-door neighbor's? Can we quantify the amount of Kenyanness in someone? Langston Hughes wrote the poem I, too, sing America as a harbinger for the coming of the day of the black. Back then, before Rosa Parks and before Martin Luther King, when beaches were still segregated, here was a black person saying "Besides, they'll see how beautiful I am/And be ashamed--/I, too, am America." This should be testament to the fact: Things don't affect you psychologically unless you let them. Nothing external to you has any power over you, says John C. Maxwell. JD from Scrubs was once having one of his usual waking dreams, about being Robin to Turk's Batman, and he asked himself something interesting: "How low is my self esteem that Im the sidekick in my own fantasy?" At the time I lauged - it was a funny joke. But it's starting to seem more and more reality about us Kenyans, and Africans in general. It's our land, they're our minerals, the lakes and mountains were ours first, for crying out loud this is the cradle of mankind. Where it all began. And yet before the rest of the world we bow and ask, "How may I serve you today master?" 

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill/Of things unknown but longed for still.

END